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Friday, October 18, 2002
Michael Bloomberg continues to warn of potential budget cuts, but does this seem like the ingenious-businessman way of doing things? The city is looking at certain short-term budget gaps brought about by some very specific problems: bad fiscal management by the Giuliani administration, which caused much of the budget gap to begin with, and all of the various 9/11-related extra expenditures and loss of revenue. Interest rates are now about as low as they can conceivably get, barring deflation, so we should be hearing story after story about refinancing city debt; why don't we? Even more, at near-to-nothing rates, the city can keep programs in place that build for the future -- like education -- banking on the results 10 years down the line. There may well be a lot of fat to trim in all of the city agencies, and that's worth doing anyway if it is really there -- and Bloomberg's target of 7.5% seems a reasonable estimation of how much waste a city agency could build up. But in the meantime, cutting vital services to close a budget gap when money now is about as free as it will ever get just doesn't make sense. By not ensuring that vital programs continue to make headway now, Bloomberg is sacrificing future revenue down the line.
Of course, the semi-stated undertone here is that Bloomberg continues to ponder exactly what cuts he may be planning, while everybody on the City Council can safely bet that he knows both exactly what they will be and exactly when they will have to be announced: as soon as Pataki's election is over, and their's begins.
Steven I. Weiss 8:34:00 AM
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