Even before the migrant crisis, New York City was headed for fiscal disaster. The question now is: What to do to keep the city afloat without hurting Gotham long-term?
As we’ve noted, cutting cops — as Mayor Adams’ November financial plan calls for — would only drive up crime and fuel the exodus of people whose taxes are vital to fiscal solvency.
Adams knows this: City Hall’s memo ordering a January round of 5% cuts exempts the NYPD, FDNY and Sanitation, out of “concern for public safety, health and cleanliness.”
Yet at $107 billion, the budget is teeming with fat that can be cut without driving away Gotham’s tax base:
- Start by rolling back the vast sums being spent on migrants (five to 10 times per-capita than in other US cities), much of it thanks to the city’s impractical right-to-shelter consent decree.
Good news: Adams wants his team to slash at least $2.1 billion in outlays for migrant housing and services. It’s a start.
- Schools: There’s no reason why New Yorkers must spend twice as much per student as the rest of America, especially given the mediocre results.
Adams can fight the teachers unions and cut school spending — or set the city on a course for ’70s-style bankruptcy risks.
(Gov. Hochul says she’ll look for state funds to help the city. But the state’s broke, too. Why not demand lawmakers rescind their mandate — passed at the teacher union’s behest — to cap class size, thus forcing the city to hire more teachers, even though enrollment has fallen?)
- Work concessions from city unions. City Hall wrapped up deals that call for generous wage hikes but got no productivity increases, or relief from costly work rules, in return.
Union members, after all, also live and work in the city; they can make their fair share of sacrifices by agreeing to work-rule changes to avoid Armageddon.
- The city could save billions by trimming retiree health benefits.
- Kill the plan to tear down Rikers jails and build a new one in each of four boroughs, as Nicole Gelinas suggests.
- The Citizens Budget Commission has pointed to hundreds of millions more in savings opportunities: consolidate union welfare-benefit funds, capitalize on the glut of office space, increase job flexibility and more.
- Millions in City Council pork spending is begging to be slashed.
Progressives will instead push for yet another tax hike (a “Biden Migrant Tax”?). Yet the city can only raise property taxes, and those are still higher than before Mayor Michael Bloomberg hiked them after the 9/11 “emergency.”
Cutting waste sooner would’ve left the city in far better shape to handle unexpected budget busters, like the migrant wave.
Now Adams has no choice; he must start undoing the damage — but by making the right cuts, not ones that will hurt the city more.