Mayor de Blasio makes everyone's wishes come true.
Exhibit A, of course, is last spring's lollapalooza of a teachers-union contract — a $9 billion pact so fat that it won't be fully paid off until 2018. It loaded roughly 20% in new raises on top of the 40%-plus boosts extracted by the United Federation of Teachers during the Bloomberg years.
The fact that the deal came shortly after the American Federation of Teachers, the UFT's parent organization, dropped $320,000 on de Blasio's not-for-profit slush fund, the Fund for One New York, is wholly coincidental, of course.
Meanwhile, the Independent Budget Office cautions that negotiations with all the other municipal unions could mandate increased spending in the current fiscal year alone of as much as $7.1 billion — a high-end estimate to be sure, but worrisome anyway given the administration's lack of rigor with its teachers.
And then there are the lawsuits.
Out-of-court settlements — already at a record $732 million going into the current fiscal year — have been accelerating rapidly since de Blasio became mayor.
"It's a dramatic increase that's worrisome because it indicates the new administration may be evaluating cases differently," Carol Kellermann of the nonprofit Citizens Budget Commission told Businessweek. "You walk a fine line between cleaning up backlog and giving New Yorkers the message that you can sue and get a windfall."
At the same time, changes afoot in the city's workfare and homeless-shelter programs — generally involving liberalized entrance standards and less-demanding client-performance requirements — seem likely to swell social spending.
The city's welfare caseload, for example, has held steady in the face of a steadily improving job market — never mind that both state and city budget planners have projected employment-related caseload reductions. Sometimes no change can be a trend in itself.
And then there's the growth in city jobs. Full-time employment in municipal government grew by 3,151 between Jan. 1 and Sept. 30 — a 1.2% increase (not adjusted for the departure of Rachel Noerdlinger).
The growth is driven, for the most part, by hiring to staff up de Blasio's signature pre-K education program — a $300 million undertaking funded with state money this year but with only promises from Albany in place for next year and beyond.
Decades of experience with federal Head Start demonstrates little long-term benefit in early-education initiatives — they've rightly been termed well-intentioned day-care programs — but if one is determined to waste the taxpayers' money, that's probably the place to do it.
The likely outcome, of course, is that the pre-K hoopla will fade with time. But the new teachers, with their highest-in-the-nation average salaries, their constitutionally protected pensions and their lifetime health-care benefits, will endure.
And then New Yorkers, who already help support the nation's most expensive public-education system, per capita, will find their burden to be just a little heavier — but with no discernible corresponding benefit.
Progressives cheer these generous union contracts and settling cases like the Central Park 5. What they ignore is how they're able to pay for it all.
For that, they can thank the people they hate: Mayor Bloomberg and the 1%.
It's true that New York's city-funded spending ballooned by some 65% during the Bloomberg years — from $29 billion to more than $49 billion, measured against inflation of just 29%.
But while Mayor Mike's reign was anything but austere, he also took care to squirrel away rainy-day dough — handing de Blasio more than $1 billion in mad money as a welcome-to-City-Hall present.
Meanwhile, the city's Independent Budget Office last spring predicted Wall Street-driven personal income-tax revenue will come in at $100 million more this year than de Blasio's budgeteers had estimated — and $500 million above that over the next two years.
And state Comptroller Tom DiNapoli had even better news during the summer: He estimated the income-tax surplus will come in closer to $800 million, most of the dough generated by unanticipated financial-sector growth.
That's pretty much what's happening — some estimates put the potential surplus at $1.2 billion. Not surprisingly, City Hall is giddy.
That kind of money lets de Blasio be everything to everybody.
Late last month, he said, "We want [commissioners] to look at their agencies and decide if there are some things that aren't working well enough, if there are some things that should be changed. Over time, if we have to get into more of a numerical exercise, we certainly know what that looks like."
Translation: Let slip the spendaholics.
There's nary a thank you from City Hall for what the rich give back to the city. De Blasio should be grateful that they make his job so easy; it's no trick being mayor when you can write everyone a large check. Instead, he harps that they don't give enough.
Wall Street has delivered, and the mayor is hauling it away — and then slapping them in the face.
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