Democrats on Tuesday will vote in a runoff race for city comptroller, New York’s top financial officer. And with no viable Republican foe, this will be the vote that counts.
The choice: a lifelong liberal with good fiscal sense — or the hand-picked agent of Big Labor. The Post today endorses the first of those two: Brooklyn Councilman David Yassky.
True, New Yorkers often know little about the job — and care even less. But this time, there are good reasons to care — and vote.
For starters, the comptroller oversees $83 billion in public-employee pension money — a potential source of great mischief in the wrong hands. He also registers (or delays) contracts, monitors the city’s $60 billion budget, audits agencies, helps issue city debt and performs numerous other roles so vital as City Hall faces a daunting cash squeeze.
Yassky is up to the task. Before joining the council, for instance, he worked in private finance and as an analyst for the Office of Management and Budget.
No, we won’t agree with Yassky on everything. Yassky — like his rival, Queens Councilman John Liu — would use pension funds to push subsidized housing, a clear dereliction of the comptroller’s duty to the taxpayer.
But Yassky is by far the more sensible of the two: As Nicole Gelinas notes on the opposite page, he supports a new, less lavish pension tier for new city employees — a must to ease the city’s unsustainable pension burden. And he’s committed to finding budget cuts, rather than reflexively embracing tax hikes.
Most important, Yassky’s not beholden to Big Labor and other special interests.
Not like Liu, anyway. For sure.
Liu’s campaign is backed by nearly every union in the city — marshaled, as always, by the financially shady Working Families Party. His record of coddling labor puts him well to the left of most city Dems; he won’t even consider reining in pension perks.
As comptroller, Liu would present a genuine danger to the city. Not only would he embolden Labor’s far-left WFP by having one of their own in the job; he’d also likely use the power of the office, to the extent possible, to pad unions’ pockets — at everyone else’s expense.
New Yorkers can’t afford to hand so radical and compromised a pol such vast power. Which is why it’s critical they vote for David Yassky on Tuesday.