Brace yourself: A budget blizzard is headed straight for the city, yet Mayor Bloomberg sees mostly Bermuda-like skies.
“This place not only survives, it thrives,” he said Wednesday in his State of the City speech. The next day he launched the NYC Urban Technology Innovation Center, which will promote “green building technologies.”
Hello? The city’s broke — and will be even broker once Albany finishes slicing and dicing. It’s already $2.4 billion in the hole, and the Post’s Fredric U. Dicker reports today that Gov. Cuomo is eyeing another $1 billion cut in aid to the city.
Yet Bloomberg’s actions show little sense of urgency. He doesn’t seem committed to taking the tough steps needed to weather the coming fiscal storm and set a proper course for the city’s future. And he certainly isn’t preparing New Yorkers for the sacrifices they’ll have to make.
Mike knows he’s got scant wiggle room: “The days of kicking the can down the road, I think, really are over,” he says. Yet what does he propose? “We will grow our way out of these tough times by shrinking the costs of government,” he says. His challenge: “Forcing government to live within its means.”
Uh, he’s been mayor for the last nine years. If city government has been living beyond its means, whose fault is it?
Anyway, this is no time for vague bromides. Bloomberg needs to level with New Yorkers: We’re going to have to shrink the costs of government by, well, shrinking government.
And the only way to limit the pain is to have municipal workers join in the sacrifices.
His rhetoric aside, Bloomberg seems hesitant to insist on that. Instead, he’s called for a number of piddling reforms to let the city manage its own affairs — overseeing its own tax collection, for example, or buying supplies, free of state rules. All fine, but not close to closing the mammoth gaps.
Likewise regarding his self-described No. 1 priority: pension reform. Of course, changes are vital here, and Bloomberg’s right that, for example, upping the retirement age to 65 for future non-uniformed city staffers could save billions over the long term.
Trouble is, a retirement-age shift won’t raise a dime for the city until they retire — decades from now.
(Nor, as the Empire Center’s E.J. McMahon has noted on these pages, is the mayor calling for the one pension shift that would make the most difference: 401k-style plans for public employees.)
Bloomberg’s boldest line? “I will not sign a contract with salary increases unless they are accompanied by reforms in benefit packages.”
What? Bloomberg is seriously considering “salary increases” in new union contracts? Even as he prepares to lay off thousands?
And remember, government employees get pay hikes even if the mayor doesn’t sign a contract, under the Triborough Amendment. That odious 1982 law requires that built-in yearly increases continue even after contracts expire.
Hizzoner didn’t even mention the fundamental corrosiveness of that arrangement. By contrast, Cuomo reportedly may push to repeal it; Bloomberg at least could have backed him.
The city has other options, too — like trims in health-care for retired city employees (which, unlike pensions, are not constitutionally guaranteed). But Mike’s been mute.
Maybe he’ll announce truly tough medicine at his next budget presentation. And give him credit for rejecting the usual feckless “solutions” of labor-owned New York pols: borrowing, one-time revenue schemes — and, most destructive, tax hikes.
But sticking to that course (as he well should) will only make budget-balancing harder.
If Bloomberg is ready, truly ready, to do what it takes, he could leave the city far better off fiscally — not only this year, but for years to come.
But so far, alas, there’s scant evidence that he is.abrodsky@nypost.com