When Mayor de Blasio delivers his State of the City Address today, city dwellers should remember Bronx Borough President Ruben Diaz Jr. And hope de Blasio’s vision fares better than Diaz’s did.
The Bronx beep, recall, became famous for having helped kill a planned shopping mall at the Kingsbridge Armory in 2009. Diaz had insisted on an above-market-rate “living wage” for mall workers. When the builder balked, the deal died — along with its 1,200 jobs. Now there are plans for an ice-skating center that would create a mere 260 jobs and not be completed until 2017. It’s beyond tragic.
None of this mattered to Diaz.
“The notion that any job is better than no job no longer applies,” he said then. At the time, the unemployment rate for The Bronx was highest in the state. Today, at 10.6 percent, it still is.
Alas, de Blasio’s progressivism seems to have much in common with the Diaz Doctrine. For example, his office says his SOTC speech will focus on “new policies to raise the wage floor for workers.” We can also expect calls for new “living wage” laws, broader paid-sick-leave mandates, etc.
All of this, de Blasio will say, is necessary to address the plague of “inequality.”
Does anyone doubt investors planning new projects will react the way the Kingsbridge shopping-mall developer did — that is, by looking elsewhere to invest? Which will leave job-seekers high and dry. Rest assured: Average New Yorkers will pay a hefty price — in more ways than one.
Bill de Blasio may not state things quite the way Ruben Diaz did in his now-infamous statement about jobs. But when all the mayor’s policies are moving in the same direction — making workers more expensive to hire — let no one be surprised when they yield the same results.