Joe Lhota raised a good question when he stopped by our offices the other day: What does $70 billion buy you these days?
Gothamites have a special stake in the answer, because $70 billion is what your city spends each year in money it takes mostly from you. Lhota’s point is this: Can anyone say with a straight face that New Yorkers are getting a $70 billion-class government in exchange for their tax dollars?
It’s crucial to remember that the $70 billion the city will spend this year is double what it was when Michael Bloomberg became mayor — and nearly 56 percent higher in real dollars. In other words, there’s no revenue problem here. Instead, at a time when the economy has been sluggish and most families and businesses have had to cut back, the city has been punching more holes in its belt to accommodate an ever-expanding fiscal waistline.
Worse still, much of this is done by stealth. Straight tax hikes are bad enough. But New York is becoming like China, where government departments profit from their authority. Look at the numbers: For fiscal 2012, the city brought in $858.6 million under “fines and forfeiture revenue” — up from $485.3 million in 2002. The Manhattan Institute’s Nicole Gelinas notes that this is a 77 percent increase, nearly triple the 28 percent inflation over the same time.
The problem today is that when the Department of Health socks a restaurant with a fine or the Department of Finance raises the assessment on a building, it’s not so much to enforce the law as to squeeze more money out of the private sector to feed a government that has an insatiable appetite for spending.
Lhota would do all New Yorkers a favor if he forced this question into the mayor’s race. We suspect few New Yorkers think they’re getting their $70 billion worth.
In so many areas — finance, the arts, publishing, media, entertainment and so on — New York is second to none. But government is another story. It would be good to start asking the mayoral candidates why.