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In the spring of 2020, as New York City faced a massive drop in revenues and a $ 10 billion deficit, Mayor Bill de Blasio began warning that budget cuts were imminent and that city workers could face layoffs unless he can get help from the federal government. .
For months he demanded a bailout from Washington that would “cure us”.
In April, at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic in New York City, de Blasio said, “The one thing I have asked the president for lately that should be the simpler part of the equation, it’s helping New York City. through this crisis – give us the financial support to heal ourselves, to actually balance our budget, pay our first responders and our officials who do this work.
In August, in the run-up to the election, he said: “I think the election could lead to a very different reality in Washington and a very different investment in New York in the country as early as January or February.”
But, the mayor warned, if “that doesn’t work, we will proceed with layoffs on October 1. I don’t want – it’s 22,000 employees. I don’t want to do this.
“It would be horrible for them and their families, but that’s what we’ll do to move on if it’s our only choice.”
As October 1 approached, de Blasio continued to worry about removing the ax if the federal money did not flow.
“What would really solve this problem,” he said, would be “a federal stimulus, and it’s shocking that this still hasn’t happened.
Five weeks after the deadline, no federal bailout has materialized and, given the apparent results of the national election, there is no reason to expect one either.
Instead of layoffs, de Blasio briefly left his own office, which has more than 1,000 employees, many of whom are considered “special assistants” and earn six-figure salaries.
He touts nearly $ 1 billion in “labor savings,” but these are really just deferred payments to municipal unions in exchange for promises not to impose layoffs.
Gotham’s financial crisis is massive. This fiscal year and the next could see a combined shortfall of $ 20 billion.
This money will have to come from somewhere, and budget cuts are inevitable.
The city’s private economy is in tatters, with an unemployment rate of 13.9% – more than double the rate of economic basket cases in the upstate like Watertown, Utica or Buffalo.
More than 800,000 New Yorkers, nearly three times the total number of municipal workers, are looking for work.
And it’s not like the city is running a lean and mean operation. De Blasio has increased the municipal workforce by around 12% since taking office in 2014.
It added over 1,000 new administrators to schools and dramatically increased the number of people working for homeless services. Have we seen big improvements in education or homelessness?
Most cities are just returning to their pre-2009 staffing levels; New York has long exceeded these numbers. There is a lot of fat to be cut from the workforce before anyone even notices a drop in service – if they ever did.
Given these realities, it’s odd that de Blasio systematically frames the emergency around the possibility of city workers facing layoffs – as if a job in the city needs to be guaranteed for life, no matter what.
The mayor’s constant focus on impending layoffs of city workers reflects his blindness to New York’s private economy, which generates the revenue that pays the salaries of government workers in the first place.
Listening to Blasio, one can almost imagine that the 330,000 employees of New York City are his real constituency.
His myopia on the larger picture of the city’s economy and employment shows how much local politics has been captured by public sector unions.
Seth Barron is associate editor of the City Journal, from which this column has been adapted. His book, “The Last Days of New York”, will be published in May 2021.
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