Gop mayoral candidate Joe Lhota warned last night that New York City could move “one step closer” to bankruptcy if a Democrat is elected to City Hall.
Lhota issued the broadside during a GOP debate sponsored by Queens Public Television.
It wasn’t much of a face-off, however. John Catsimatidis was a no-show and George McDonald mostly agreed with Lhota, who criticized Dems as union-coddling, soft-on-crime tax-and-spenders.
“Retroactive pay [for municipal workers] can put us one step closer to Detroit,” Lhota said.
“Handcuffing the Police Department — like the City Council wants to do — will put us one step closer,” said the former Rudy Giuliani deputy.
“Raising taxes in the city — where they are so high right now — will also put us one step closer to Detroit.”
Lhota’s comments were aimed at Democrat Bill de Blasio, who has proposed higher taxes on the rich to finance pre-K programs, and council Speaker Christine Quinn, who has pushed legislation for an inspector general to oversee the NYPD.
For his part, McDonald, the head of the Doe Fund, piled on just days after a federal judge struck down the NYPD’s stop-and-frisk policy as unconstitutional.
“The demagoguery on stop-question-and-frisk by our Democratic opponents is dividing us,” he said.
Catsimatidis cited scheduling conflicts for his no-show.