What a fibber, that Mike Bloomberg.
The mayor yesterday introduced his budget for the 2012 fiscal year by asserting that it totals “less than last year’s budget.
“Not just less after inflation or less than the projected growth, but less money, total. Period!”
But the truth is that Bloomberg plans to spend $68.9 billion — up $2.5 billion, or 3.8 percent, from this year’s $66.4 billion.
Bloomberg actually is pre-paying $3.2 billion of next year’s bills with surplus money from this year. Think of it as three-card monte, mayoral style.
But why? Only Bloomberg knows for sure, but Gov. Cuomo managed to bring in a budget that really spent “less money, total. Period!” — and maybe the mayor feels diminished. Whatever.
At the same time, it’s hard not to feel for Bloomberg. He is painted into a grim fiscal corner — and while much of it is his own doing, a good deal of it isn’t.
New York City is only one of many municipalities being slowly crushed by mandates from Albany — with pension expenses topping the list.
Other obstacles to budget balance are many, including special interests that use compliant judges to tie the city’s hands.
For example, something as relatively simple as removing 15,000 wholly obsolete fire-alarm call boxes has been tied up in court for almost two decades.
Keeping them up and running costs the city at least $9 million a year — though while no one uses them to report fires anymore, fully 85 percent of all false alarms originate from them.
Mayor Rudy Giuliani first sought to eliminate them in 1994 (!), but a federal judge nixed that after ruling that removing them would violate the Americans with Disabilities Act. (Go figure.)
In the last six months, one judge blocked the city from laying off deputy sheriffs; another blocked the dismissals of carpenters and a third ordered the city to continue paying health-insurance premiums for OTB retirees.
The budget is full of such landmines, little and large, and they conspire against fiscal responsibility.
But now the debate has begun in earnest. It will be shrill, the sad stories will seem compelling (until one examines the actual facts) and the usual suspects will be pulling the standard stunts.
Too bad Bloomberg had to start out with a tall tale of his own, but if he sticks to his guns, he should prevail in the end.