Those depending on a cash one-shot to balance a budget should make sure the one-shot is, well, actually in hand.
Mayor Bloomberg didn’t, and so the city faces a three-year, $1.4 billion shortfall from taxi medallion sales that may never occur.
A federal court last week declared that a Bloomberg-backed law permitting medallion sales and outer-borough street hails by livery cabs violated the state constitution.
As a result, the city budget has a $635 million hole in the current fiscal year — and a projected overall $3.5 billion deficit in 2014.
Now Bloomberg moans that he must “start cutting and economizing.”
This includes layoffs, he says.
But many — including this page — long warned of the risk of presenting a budget that included revenue from the sale of 2,000 taxi medallions.
The taxi lobby is one of the city’s most entrenched; the Bloomberg plan would have eroded its medallion monopoly — a goal requiring political and legislative skills far more sophisticated than anything the administration has exhibited to date.
Bloomberg never made a serious attempt to get a taxi bill through the City Council — thus provoking the constitutional conflict that ultimately sank it.
In a nutshell, the council was required to inform the Legislature — in the form of a “home-rule” message — that it favored the bill before Albany could lawfully pass it.
That never happened. Nor was it ever likely to, given the industry’s substantial, umm, influence with the council.
Now Bloomberg has no taxi bill — but he does have an embarrassingly unbalanced budget. Your move, Mr. Mayor.