Today is Mike Bloomberg’s final day as mayor. So we make this confession: He surprised us.
We had our doubts when Mike was elected. Bloomberg, we noted, was a “life-long liberal Democrat” who was “lefty to the core” and lacked political experience. The question was whether the Rudy Giuliani gains — especially against crime — would stick.
The record is now before us. Recall that Rudy had already reduced murders and other violence to levels no one had thought possible. Yet with Ray Kelly at the helm of the NYPD, crime rates plunged even further: Murders, for example, dropped to fewer than 340 this year (a record) from 649 in 2001.
The statistics confirm that most of the lives saved by Bloomberg’s policing policies were Latino or African-American. In any other place, this would rightly be heralded as a progressive achievement. In New York, it earned Bloomberg the enmity of Democratic candidates who cheaply portrayed the mayor and his police chief as enemies of minorities.
The cops deserve full credit, of course. But New York’s Finest could not have suceeded without a mayor who had their backs. Mike stood up for cops — and let them do their jobs.
Mike also took on the sacred cows of education. True, our schools still have a long way to go, given that two out of three city kids graduate unprepared for either college or a job. But Mike’s policies chipped away at the education cartel that has made our public schools more of a jobs program for the teachers unions than a program of learning for city schoolchildren.
He did this by introducing the then-novel notion that schools would be held accountable for performance. That accountability, he insisted, extended to himself. In one of his biggest triumphs, Bloomberg won mayoral control of the schools — and then told voters to blame any failures on him.
The push for accountability took the form of tougher evaluations for teachers and grades for school performance. In the long run, however, we believe people will recognize that his most revolutionary education reform was to make room for a whole new model of public schools, founded on accountability to moms and dads instead of to the education blob: charters.
In 2002, charters were still untested here. Mike gave them their chance, and they have produced some of the city’s highest-performing schools. In the process, charters have embarrassed the Excuse-O-Crats who have long explained away school failures by saying certain children just can’t be taught. Again, we would hail the slaying of that myth as a progressive achievement.
At the same time Mayor Mike helped New York do what any city needs to do to prosper: Grow. From the Barclays Center and Atlantic Yards project to Hudson Yards and its new No. 7 subway line extension; from the Long Island City waterfront to the planned Staten Island Ferris Wheel and the new pedestrian plaza that is Times Square, Mike changed the city landscape, mostly for the better.
We would have preferred more transparency and a more market-oriented approach, but the city did grow. Nearly 40 percent of Gotham has been rezoned. Some 40,000 structures were built. Both housing and parkland have expanded.
The same goes for his oversight over the public purse. Though taxes remain much too high — property taxes are higher than when he took office — and spending has almost doubled, even in the hardest times Bloomberg kept the city out of financial crisis. Hizzoner rightly focused attention on the city’s overly generous union contracts (e.g., out-of-control pensions and health care benefits) even if he never won much reform. And his successor would be wise to contemplate Bloomberg’s warnings about the threat the labor-electoral complex poses, not just to this city’s economic health and future but to his own mayoralty.
Not that Mike was perfect. He was arrogant. He turned fetishes into policy, e.g., clogging streets with his ridiculous pedicabs. He was impatient with due process and transparency when it came to some good habit he wanted enforced, whether it involved soda or circumcision. And he rammed through a third term against the wishes of New Yorkers, who had backed term limits in two separate referenda.
At the stroke of midnight on New Year’s Eve, Bloomberg’s final term as mayor expires. And so the old question returns: Will the new mayor preserve the progress that has been made?
That may be difficult, given how the mayor-elect seems guided by an urge to make policy simply by choosing the opposite of Bloomberg. Certainly that is his right. But the onus is on him to prove he can fundamentally change Bloomberg policies while maintaining Bloomberg’s successes.
As for Mike, not to worry: He’ll hardly fade into the sunset. Bloomberg vows to be as active as ever, both politically and with his charity. With his limitless energy and hefty cash reserves, there’s every reason to believe he’ll keep those vows.
So on this, Bloomberg’s last day in office, The Post says simply: Thank you, Mr. Mayor. You did New York proud.