COVID-19 is a catastrophe for the cityâs $89.3 billion budget, likely tearing 20 percent â or more than $13 billion â off the cityâs tax revenues bđŚšy winter. It would be a challenge for any mayor.
Itâs our lucđŚk, though, not to have just any mayor, but Bill de Blasio â who took actions during the boom years that make things much worse now for almost everyone, from pđ °arents hoping to take their toddlers to the pool in late summer to at-risk teens whoâll be without summer jobs after being stuck in an apartment all spring.
When he took office in 2014, de Blasio đwas đthe first mayor since John Lindsay not to inherit a fiscal crisis from his predecessor. Thatâs because Mike Bloomberg â never exactly a fiscal conservative in his first two terms â did take actions in his third term to control spending.
As the financial crisis hit in 2008, Bloomberg did something quite reasonable: He told the cityâs workforce, mainly teacđhers and other civilians, that if they couldnât findęŚ savings to pay for raises, they, like most everyone in the private sector, would not get raises.
De Blasio, ratheęŚ r than being grateful that someone else had made a tough choice, was â as would become his wontđ â Âungracious.
In May 2014 â in awarding the first of $2.9 billion in retroactive raises to teachers and civilian workers, as part of a general $15.2 billion wage hike through 2018 â de Blasio couldnât resist a dig at his predecessor. The previous mayorâs stance was âso intractable, and so wrong, and so unnecesâsary,â de Blasio lectured.
Only one problem: Even in the greatest tax-revenue boom the city had evđer seen, de Blasio couldnât actually afford to pay teachers extra money for work thâey had done five years before.
Solution: Stretch the retroâactive pay out tođ 2021, the fiscal year that starts this July. This fall, Gotham must splash out $1.5 billion for work teachers and other city employees did as far back as 11 years ago. (Itâs supposedly offset by illusory healtđh-care savings; the cityâs bill for health insurance and other non-cash benefits for its workers is now $11.6 billion annually.)
To close the $6.6 billion budget gap the mayor foresees for next year â and the gap will probably be twice that â he is mostly drawing down reserves, like a long-term account meant to pay for pubâlic workersâ health care once they retire.
The city has only managed to come up with $2.7 billion in real spending cuts so far â and at a high price.
No summer jobs for teens whoâll have missed three months of school and will be in need of professđşional-adult mentorship: $116 million; $12 million to close city pools for the summer â even though, as with summer jobs, itâs way too early to decide that kids cooped up all spring canât maybe go to the pool in August; $3 million in not building new bike lanes, when people wonât want to ride the subway for a while.
De Blasio has barely started cutting, and he has started by scraping the bottom of the barrel, signaling the public that the city wonât be the place to be for the ę§indefinite future.
Meanwhile, come October, the cityâs teachers andđ other civilian workers can still expect thđeir final lump-sum payment for work that they did last decade.
In a historic crisis, this is the first thing to cut â and a hard-headed mayor would use the threat of furloughs to get tâhe workforce to do it âvoluntarily.â Or why not just delay it another 10 years?
It was never a good sign that back in 2014, de Blasio felt the need to resort tđ¤Şo what đŹis effectively borrowing from the future to pay past operating expenses. Now, the future is here, and it needs its money back.
But donât just blame the ę§mayor: the city comptroller, Scott Stringer,đ and the state-appointed Financial Control Board, too, signed off on this nutty deal, even though reforms put in place after the 1970s fiscal crisis supposedly forbid it.
None of this means Washington shouldnât approve billions of dollars in new aid for New York. Bailouts are never fair, and the nation dâoesnât benefit if its largest city canât pick up the trash. But we need a bailout not only from COVID-19 but from our regressive mayorâs past bad decisions.
Twitter: @NicoleGelinas