When Mayor Bloomberg steps down in January, the city will be halfway through the $70 billion spending plan for 2013-14 he unveiled yesterday. Were he to stay on, it’s a fair bet City Hall would end the year in balance. With a new CEO in charge? It’s anyone’s guess. (And don’t even try to speculate about future years.)
Bloomberg’s budget for the 2014 fiscal year, which starts July 1, holds spending flat and envisions no new taxes. So far, so good.
It also calls for an apparently necessary trim of 2,500 in the teacher count, about 3 percent of the total — and 1.25 percent future pay hikes for city employees.
The plan has soft spots. It relies on $600 million from the sale of taxi medallions, though that cash may not materialize, thanks to litigation. And the city might lose hundreds of millions more in state aid that, by law, can be shipped from Albany only if the teachers union agrees on a teacher-rating plan, which seems unlikely.
There’s more: Unions might extract heftier raises from the next mayor, perhaps in return for their electoral support. And the plan contains $2 billion holes in each of the following three budgets. All worrisome.
Which is why this November’s contest is so critical. Alas, all the leading Democratic hopefuls are promising the moon in return for union support.
Yes, Bloomberg could have reined in spending far more than he has over the past 11 years — as Nicole Gelinas rightly notes on the opposite page. But at least he ended each year in the black, with minimal borrowing and gimmickry.
The next mayor could do better.
Question is: Will he or she do worse?