Tax and Spent

As Liz reported on Friday, the mayor (on his radio show) cast doubt about the ability of city government to pony up this year's tax cut: "And this is starting to get to the point where I’m not sure that we can maintain the 7% cut," Bloomberg said. "I’ve said in our current budget, which has a $2 (billion) or $3 billion deficit for 2010, we assume that property tax cut is coming back..."We may very well have to put it back right now for this year, because without that, we can’t balance this year’s budget, or we can balance this budget but we’d make next year so onerous that nobody wants to have that kind of precipitous tax raise. So a smaller one now, maybe."

Which is, as we have been saying, all a result of Mayor Mike's failure to tackle issues of government waste, inefficiency, and the need to innovate by reinventing the way in which the public sector operates. He has to be the most pro-government billionaire since Rocky ruled the state house in the 1960s.


Liz also relates the following funny: "Bloomberg said his first instinct is to cut expenses, but he has already done that. Unless the City Council agrees to go along with a tax increase (unlikely), the only other option is to cut programs, the mayor said." Mike Bloomberg is philosophically challenged, and his idea of cutting is so much on the margins that the entire exercise is inevitably de minimis?

So, because of his nonfeasance we're looking at a possible tax increase. As NY1 reported: "A small property tax increase this year, he says, may be needed to avoid what he believes would be serious cuts to city services next year. The mayor says a state arbitrator's decision to give officers higher raises than other city employees blew a billion-dollar hole into the city's budget."


Having failed to do what was needed in the first place, Bloomberg is forced to resort to the tired blame Albany rap: "He blamed Albany for failing to "help us," adding: "They’re starting this warfare between some schools and another, with giving us money but only for some schools. That’s not fair. We want every school to get funded exactly the same. That’s what we’re doing with our money, but they’re not doing it with theirs. And then I don’t know how you deal with them when they go home.” Just pathetic!