(
)
New York City could face the same dire fiscal situation as Detroit unless the next mayor gets realistic with municipal unions and reins in soaring pension and health-care costs, Mayor Bloomberg warned yesterday.
“Avoiding the hard choices is how Detroit went bankrupt,” the mayor declared in a speech in Brooklyn.
With less than five months left in his term, Bloomberg hailed the city’s diverse revenue base while cautioning that the contracts the next mayor signs with municipal unions could determine the city’s fate for the near future.
The mayor reminded his audience that Chicago laid off 2,100 teachers and school employees last month, in large part because of soaring pension costs.
“Chicago is far from alone. Cities across the country all face the prospect of pension costs swallowing more and more of their budget, and New York is no exception,” the mayor said.
“Anyone who thinks it can’t happen here needs only to look at the late 1970s when the city laid off more than 10,000 teachers and thousands of police officers, firefighters, sanitation workers, hospital workers and other city employees.”
Bloomberg went on to slam the health-care freebies city workers enjoy and even praised his sometimes-foe, Gov. Cuomo, for demanding and winning concessions from state workers.
“About 95 percent of our employees and retirees contribute nothing — not even a dollar — to their basic health-care premiums. Compare that to state government, where more than 90 percent of workers contribute to their premiums,” the mayor said.
Teachers-union President Michael Mulgrew quickly shrugged off Bloomberg’s remarks, pointing out he’ll be packing up in just a few months.
“I always enjoy listening to the mayor talk about what a great job he has done, and I’m looking forward to five more months of his self-congratulatory speech-making,” Mulgrew said.
During Bloomberg’s three terms, pension costs have ballooned from $1.4 billion to $8.3 billion. The mayor argued that his successor will have a unique opportunity to extract concessions because all municipal unions are all operating under expired agreements.
“They will not be willing to wait another four years for new contracts,” he said. “In fact, there may never be an opportunity quite like this again.”
Three leading Democratic mayoral candidates — Christine Quinn, Bill Thompson and Bill de Blasio — refused to say whether they would offer retroactive pay raises or demand workers pay more toward their health care.
Anthony Weiner has previously said he would require that city workers pay more toward medical benefits.
John Liu excoriated Bloomberg for allowing all the contracts to end.
“Outstanding contracts for a 300,000-member workforce and failing to deliver on promised retroactive pay raises — which Mayor Bloomberg himself set a precedent of delivering on during his first two terms — . . . is simply negligent,” Liu said.
Republicans Joe Lhota and John Catsimatidis took a hard stance on the unions.
“The city cannot continue to pay for all of the health-care costs for employees. The city’s employees must share in the cost just like everyone else,” Lhota said.
Catsimatidis said, “My concern is the career politicians in this race will give away the store by promising the unions what they want in order to win their endorsement for the election.”