For a study in fiscal contrasts, take a peek at the spending plan Mayor Bloomberg offered yesterday for New York City in the coming year – and compare it to the dog’s breakfast of a budget put forward by Gov. Spitzer on Tuesday.
For starters, the Bloomberg budget’s bottom-line figure is actually lower than that for the current year – down to $58.5 billion from $60.4 billion (thanks mostly to the mayor’s insistence that revenue surpluses from this year be used to pre-pay next year’s expenses).
The guy understands that there’s a lot of economic uncertainty in the air these days – and that city revenues are apt to dip. Which means, as he put it yesterday, it’s time for belt-tightening.
To that end, overall growth in city-funded spending goes up just 3.7 percent, only a shade over inflation.
Gov. Spitzer, however, proposes jacking up spending by 5.1 percent – knowing that an election-year-obsessed Legislature will boost it far higher than that.
What, Eliot worry?
Now, it’s true that Mayor Mike is a big-government liberal who has no problem with the vast level of services the city now provides.
Indeed, he’d spend more money in a heartbeat if he could.
He’s also been unwilling to tackle the city’s structural imbalance: Actual operating expenses in the coming year will exceed what the city collects in revenues by almost $4 billion. (Again, Mike used one-time windfalls to plug the hole.)
Unhappily, the imbalance won’t go away when the surpluses disappear in a weakening economy – and billions in added deficits are projected for coming years.
That’s why it’s regrettable that Bloomberg has expended so little political capital to curb big-ticket costs – like the crushingly expensive pension and health benefits the city pays its employees. (Spitzer, who faces out-year deficits of his own, has been equally silent on such matters.)
All this notwithstanding, Bloomberg’s budget is still a heckuva lot better than most other city pols might do – including most of those seeking to replace him next year.
To most city politicians, after all, a surplus is found money – to be spent on new programs and pork, not used to pre-pay future-year costs. Gotham would already be in the deep weeds had someone else been in charge over the past couple of years.
That may not be the highest of compliments. But it’s cause for New Yorkers to be glad for what they’ve got.