An all-out war erupted yesterday between Mayor Bloomberg and Albany, with the mayor charging that Gov. Paterson was trying to balance the state’s budget “by starving New York City.”
“Make no mistake about it — unless the Legislature acts, New York City residents will pay the price for Albany’s bad decisions,” Bloomberg declared as he released a $63 billion budget for next year filled with unpalatable cuts, including 6,026 layoffs.
He seemed almost as angry about how long it was taking to negotiate a state budget, which had been due April 1, as he was about the threatened loss of $1.3 billion in state aid.
“My hope is every day that Albany will announce that all night long, unbeknownst to everybody, they negotiated a budget that everybody that voted on it had never read and the governor had never read it, signed it,” Bloomberg said.
“That would at least take out the uncertainty.”
He added, “They don’t seem to have the stomach to cut upstate. They cut in New York City.”
State Budget Director Robert Megna angrily accused the city of trying to make Albany the fall guy.
“The mayor’s budget uses the state as a scapegoat to shirk responsibility for their [city officials’] own budget choices,” Megna said. He claimed that city officials used “selective accounting” to overstate the impact of the state cuts while understating how much it was reaping in federal Medicaid funds to prop up the municipal hospital system.
The biggest fight centered on the city’s school system, where Bloomberg was looking to cut 6,414 teachers to deal with a proposed $493 million cut in state education aid.
If the funds come through too close to the start of the school year in September, the mayor said, he might not recall laid-off teachers because the disruptions would be too great. The city’s budget has to be adopted by June 30 following negotiations with the City Council, which in past years has restored cuts.