"Publicly binding" is doing two jobs in the headline.
One: the number could be cited against the city. Two: someone had to answer the trend. The interview already shows the second was dead while the count was still in the report — it rose in public. Taking it out of the report kills the first. It does not explain a constraint that was working.
The finding that survives is smaller and still real: the city made a growing series harder to cite. "Would have most strongly constrained the institution" overstates what the published years did.