So Far, We Get Bupkis
By Henry J. Stern
January 9, 2003

 
      It won't take 1776 words to tell you what the city is likely to receive from the state this year.  It will take one word: Bupkis. The word is Yiddish.  Its literal meaning is: goat droppings.  Figuratively it means: nothing of value.
 
      Governor Pataki's reversion (or regression) to his conservative antecedents should have been expected.  What was surprising was the extent of his pirouette to the left during his campaign for re-election.   He could not be overly generous because of the impending $8 billion state deficit, created in good part by his campaign trade-offs of state funds for political endorsements.  But surely some crumbs remain in the cupboard. 
 
      The State of the State message, delivered yesterday (January 8), did not provide hard numbers; they are due January 29, when the state budget is to be presented to the Legislature. Although the state fiscal year begins April 1, the budget has not been adopted by that date for many years.  The city's fiscal year starts July 1; the city charter requires the budget to be adopted in June.  The Federal fiscal year begins October 1, so each level of government has its own fiscal year, different from the calendar year, which, as we discussed last week, begins January 1 (although two thousand fifty years ago the year began on March 1).  Where is Julius Caesar, who in 46 B.C. added 90 days to the Roman calendar on the sound advice of the astronomer Sosigenes.
 
      We predict an unusually contentious legislative session in 2003.   Neither (sic) of the ruling triumvirs has much use for the others.   In the end, the city will receive some help, painfully bargained for, and far below the mayor's requests and hopeful predictions.
 
      So far, Mayor Bloomberg has relied on a major real estate tax increase (18.49%), already in effect, to help close the city’s $5 billion gap.  Governor Pataki's rediscovery of frugality will make the mayor's task substantially more difficult.   If the city decides to increase, or impose a surcharge on, the personal income tax (called PIT), that raise, in addition to the real estate tax, would be a modest disincentive for people with money to move in, or to stay and pay more. The city has made its own efforts to reduce its budget, including actual layoffs in Sanitation, Education and the School Construction Authority and major reductions in the capital program.  It has eliminated unfilled positions, and imposed successive budget cuts on the agencies.  But without state and federal help, what we have seen so far are warm-up exercises for the Spring encounter with fiscal reality.
 
      This is, of course, not a thorough analysis of Fiscal Crisis III and its causes.  Two previous spastic municipal contractions took place in 1975 (Beame) and 1991 (Dinkins).   They tend to bubble over in the middle of a mayor’s sophomore year.  Today’s news is that the Governor appears unable or unwilling to provide significant financial assistance.  He may, however, give us the authority to tax ourselves even more heavily.  That is some reward for the mayor not crying wolf until Pataki’s re-election was assured.  On the other hand, we all know what happened to the boy who did cry wolf.
 
      Moral:  Get your commitments, in public, before the election.

Henry J. Stern is the director of NYCivic.