Read My Lips

In the NY Sun's story this morning on the mayoral debate, the featured theme is the mayor's pledge not to raise taxes in the upcoming fiscal year. He bases this on the belief that the rising economy will raise revenue and on his intention to "do more with less."

This should be a feature of the last days of the campaign. The media needs to push the mayor to specify just how, since he has shown relatively little inclination in this area in his first four years, he plans to restructure municipal government to do more with less (aside from closing more firehouses).

Our take here is that the mayor will find this to be a great deal more difficult than he is letting on today. His basic philosophy of government has been to expand service delivery without offering any innovative ideas on how to restructure or, better yet, reinvent government to make it more competitive and efficient.