Mayor Adams has been doing victory laps over landing a final budget deal with the City Council on time, but he did that by surrendering, and sticking the city with another bloated spending plan at a record-setting $112.4 billion — and it’s actually $116.1 billion when you factor in various prepayments and “interfund transfers.”
He gave in on restoring virtually every cut he’d made earlier in the process, for a total more than $1 billion in spending beyond his Executive Budget: from a fiscal hawk in January to a dove by June.
City-funded spending grew 7.5% ($6.1 billion) over last year, as the mayor agreed to replace $5 billion in expiring federal COVID aid with local-taxpayer dollars.
That is: The previous mayor used the federal windfall to goose city spending; now those outlays are a long-term funding obligation for Big Apple taxpayers.
Meanwhile, no more cash went into the Rainy Day fund, which remains at $2 billion, nowhere near enough when the economy turns south (as it always does eventually).
Or, as Citizens Budget Commission chief Andrew Rein puts it, “Choosing not to save when the revenues are strong will mean unnecessarily severe cuts during the next recession.”
Adams has been touting $8 billion in reserves, but that’s counting money in the retiree health-care trust fund, a gimmick no less shoddy because it’s become traditional.
Worse, the city likely faces rising retiree-health-care costs after the teachers union reneged on its support for savings by enrolling retirees in Medicare Advantage plans — savings that supposedly paid for raises that teachers have been collecting for years now.
On a related note: Public-school enrollment hovers around 900,000 students, down from 1.1 million a few years back, and would be shrinking more without the illegal-migrant influx, yet education spending goes up another $700 million, after rising 17% the prior three years.
Meanwhile, as Nicole Gelinas notes, for all of Adams’ talk of public safety being the foundation of the city’s prosperity, he has yet to increase the NYPD’s headcount from its modern low of 34,000.
The force was 40,000 not that long ago; cops’ productivity is being compromised as the City Council’s new paperwork mandates kick in (writing up virtually every officer interaction with a civilian) — and the pace of early retirements isn’t slowing.
In all, city-funded spending is 18.3% above the final budget Adams inherited from Mayor Bill de Blasio, growing markedly faster than inflation despite the iffy state of the local economy.
The Houdinis in the mayor’s budget office can make use all manner of accounting magic to make the recurring deficits disappear on paper, but illusions aren’t real.
When reality bites back, the serious pain begins.
NEWS CREDIT
