A 20-year era of reasonably responsible city governance may be lurching to an end — and nothing demonstrates that better than last week’s call by Public Advocate Bill de Blasio to hike taxes yet again.
And to hand the boodle right over to the teachers union.
De Blasio, one of a gaggle of liberal pols likely to run for mayor next year, wants to boost already sky-high taxes on incomes over $500,000 by 11 percent (rates would jump to 4.3 percent, from 3.876 percent).
Why? To gin up half a billion dollars for “universal” pre-K seats and after-school programs for middle-schoolers.
More jobs, and cash, for teachers, that is.
De Blasio’s programs may well help students, though they’re hardly a panacea.
But if he truly wants to boost education, there are countless cost-free measures he could push — like charter schools, reforms to help fire ineffective teachers and a serious teacher-rating system.
Yet he’s effectively mute on all these.
Meanwhile, his tax hike is so ill-advised (as E.J. McMahon demonstrates clearly on the preceding page), it’s impossible to miss his real motive: sucking up to the union (and pandering to milk-the-rich, tax-loving Occupy Wall Street types).
Think about it.
The city faces multibillion-dollar cash gaps in coming years. Pension costs for teachers are through the roof.
Yet “Mayor” de Blasio would expand the teacher base, ballooning costs even more.
An even bigger head-scratcher: His surcharge supposedly would vanish in five years — leaving his programs penniless, but with the spending chugging along.
Brilliant plan.
Here’s the scariest news: De Blasio thinks New Yorkers long to pay more taxes.
In announcing his plan, he told a group of high earners — who’d likely be hit by his surcharge — that he was positive they’d see it as “a smart and strategic investment.”
More likely, as Mayor Bloomberg put it, the new levy would “drive everybody out of the city.” Leaving no one to tax.
De Blasio’s thinking is exactly the kind that prevailed for decades, doing untold damage — until Mayor Rudy Giuliani and Bloomberg imposed a modicum of restraint.
And he’s not the only mayor wannabe willing to pander and bribe folks for political backing — even if it means chasing wealthy taxpayers out of town, killing jobs, fueling crime or imperiling city budgets.
As McMahon notes, all of the five likely candidates have backed squeeze-the-rich schemes. And it doesn’t end there:
* Manhattan Borough President Scott Stringer recently made a big stink about NYU’s vital expansion.
* City Council Speaker Chris Quinn threw labor a bone by backing not one but two job-killing minimum-wage bills.
* City Comptroller John Liu, a serial union stooge, sought to inflame racial tensions by calling the NYPD’s stop-frisk program, a key crime-fighting tool, “profiling.”
These, alas, are the sorry choices from which voters will have to pick their next mayor, once Bloomberg leaves next year.
New Yorkers face some scary times ahead indeed.