At heart, New York City’s budget mess is beyond simple: Billions more are going out the door than are coming in.
Yet most of our leaders want to keep spending.
That was the prime takeaway of Monday’s City Council budget oversight hearing.
Council leaders argued that Mayor Adams’ announced cuts to close a $7.1 billion gap aren’t needed because . . . tax collections will come in $1.2 billion higher than now projected.
You do the math.
Heck, Finance Committee Chairman Justin Brannan (D-B’klyn) admits that the city’s tax revenues are expected to shrink this fiscal year compared to last, but is still bullish on tax collections somehow coming in higher.
On the spending side, some councilmembers argue that the mayor is for some reason using the migrant crisis as an excuse to slash agency spending, as if the city weren’t spending billions it doesn’t have to care for tens of thousands of newcomers.
They’re right in the sense that Adams didn’t budget earlier this year for the city to keep having to spend on migrants — but they sure didn’t complain about overspending then; quite the contrary.
And it’s not just the migrant crisis: The Citizens Budget Commission’s Ana Champeny correctly points out that the city’s woes are largely self-inflicted, as for years it has made “short-sighted choices — choices, not external events — to increase recurring spending without the support of recurring revenues.”
That goes back to the de Blasio years, and the foolish decision to spend temporary federal COVID “relief” to support and expand ongoing programs, such as 3-K; and to expand city services when the tax take came in higher than expected.
But it continued on Adams’ watch, as he gave city workers raises costing $16 billion through 2027 without winning any union agreement to offsetting productivity gains to fund the new labor deals.
Of course the unions are joining in on the the council’s “no cuts now” cries: “We have record reserves,” notes teacher-union boss Mike Mulgrew — as if the reserves aren’t meant for the genuine economic downturn that’s sure to come. He’d rather burn our future for the sake of his members now.
Other fits of fantasy include Brannan’s blaming “federal stimulus funds,” as if it was the feds’ fault that Gotham would use that money so irresponsibly.
He also faults City Hall for “relying on for-profit companies that have milked the city for millions of dollars when they could have been working with our nonprofit partners” to address the migrant crisis — as if the social-services-industrial complex weren’t rife with insider profiteering.
Kicking the battered fiscal can further down the road guarantees a major crisis; starting to find real savings now is the rational choice — starting with asking the municipal unions to figure out how they can help with work-rule changes that can avoid major layoffs.
And also looking at which social services the city can stop providing: It spends billions on services that no other US city tries to offer.
Tax hikes are no answer: New Yorkers already pay through the nose, and the local economic recovery from the pandemic is still dicey.
Admit that current spending levels are unsustainable, and reduce them intelligently — or city government will be headed into receivership.