Mayor de Blasio’s hefty spending hikes are bad enough; worse still is that his budgets rely on accounting gimmicks, hokey promises and, well . . . flat-out lies.
Most glaring: His claim last week — yet again — that the city will see “guaranteed” health-care savings of $3.4 billion through 2018 and $1.3 billion a year thereafter.
Pinocchio was more truthful.
Rewind to 2014, when the new mayor showered labor with $13.4 billion in raises over a seven-year period but said at least $3.4 billion of that would be offset by “savings” from city-employee health-care costs. His goal: to “bend the health-care cost curve.”
Sure enough, in releasing his 2017 budget he said the city has now seen “unprecedented” savings. It met its targets for 2015 and 2016, and is set to hit its $1 billion goal for 2017. All told, the city will meet the $3.4 billion mark on time.
Sounds like he’s getting ready to hand the unions — which give so handsomely to his political campaigns — yet another Christmas present: a $365 million “bonus” promised in 2014 if the targets are met.
The truth? De Blasio’s numbers are all smoke and mirrors. Real savings, after all, mean lowering actual city costs — say, by trimming benefits or asking employees to chip in more.
Yet de Blasio arrives at his figure by cutting cost estimates (a trick his budgeteers also use elsewhere in this year’s spending plan).
The city initially assumed costs would rise 9%, then later put it at just 2%. Voila! Hundreds of millions in “savings.”
Another part of the “savings” ($58 million this year) comes from a raid on a health-care “stabilization” account funded entirely by taxpayers. (That’s on top of an earlier $1 billion raid on the account for the union raises.)
“The savings achieved so far have less to do with controlling health-insurance costs than with budget accounting and one-time actions,” Independent Budget Office Deputy Director George Sweeting said recently.
With tax revenues flush at the moment, de Blasio may be able to skate by — for a while. But if the mayor can’t be honest in his budgeting, the city’s day of reckoning may come sooner than anyone thinks.