Metro

Lhota wants to cut municipal workforce

GOP mayoral candidate Joe Lhota wants to cut the municipal workforce by as much as 20 percent if he takes over City Hall.

“I’m not talking about firing anybody. I don’t want to lay anybody off. But every two that retire, can we get by with one? That is real savings,” Lhota said on WNYC radio Monday.

There are about 300,000 city employees currently on the payroll. A 20 percent cut would eliminate about 60,000 jobs.

Lhota ripped into the Bloomberg administration for vastly expanding the city budget, saying there had been “no concept of keeping the government efficient” during the mayor’s three terms.

“The current mayor loves to bring in all the consultants . . . pays them a fortune and then nothing happens,” he charged.

But Lhota took Bloomberg’s side on appealing a judge’s order naming a federal monitor to oversee the NYPD’s stop-and-frisk policy.

“We should do everything we can . . . then send it up to the Supreme Court if necessary,” he said.

On the national front, Lhota denounced his own Republican Party for shutting down the federal government over ObamaCare.

But he said he agrees with Republicans that the new health-care program should be delayed a year.

“I think there’s so much confusion about the individual mandate right now both within the administration and outside of the administration,” he said.

“You should not be implementing policy unless you know exactly how it’s going to be implemented.”

Democratic rival Bill de Blasio immediately branded Lhota a Tea Party sympathizer, claiming he’s in league with “the GOP fringe.”

Lhota has repeatedly distanced himself from what he calls “Tea Party crap,” saying that while he believes in small government, he is socially progressive on issues from abortion to gay marriage.

Lhota is trailing de Blasio by as much as 50 points in public polls, but his old boss, former Mayor Rudy Giuliani said polls are fickle.

“Polls change. Numbers change,” said Giuliani, who closed a 29-point gap in two weeks and nearly upset David Dinkins for mayor in 1989.

Giuliani defeated Dinkins in a rematch four years later.