NYCivic - This is the Dawning of the Age of Aquarius

Let's start with the good news. President Bush has just returned Governors Island to New York. A joint state-city commission will assume responsibility for 150 acres of the island, with the remaining 22 acres devoted to national monuments, managed by the National Park Service. This is one advantage of having a president, governor and mayor from the same party, even if it's not yours. For the specifics, click Island.

Now to the more mundane subject of our budget travails.

A week ago today, in an article entitled "The Greenhouse Effect", I described Mayor Bloomberg's State of the City address at the Brooklyn Botanic Garden. I wrote:

"The speech was a brave one, evoking in a way the boy who stood on the burning deck, and we were proud to see him plugging away for New York City. The question is, and was, and will be, how will he get anyone else (Albany, Washington, unions, courts, the City Council) to take the steps that must be taken to meet the $3 billion budget gap for fiscal 2004."

    Although the boy on the deck was honest and courageous, his tale did not end well. I am confident that the city will do better, because I know our mayor is smart enough to know when to get off the deck. And it is at that time, when the situation and the weather get really hot, that the hard bargaining will be done. Today is January 31, the City Council, by law, must enact a balanced budget by June. The Council has always done so, although once or twice in my time it was necessary to stop the clock, just for a little while.

    Meanwhile, in Albany, the State Legislature has failed for 18 out of the last 19 years to enact a state budget by the end of the state's fiscal year, which is March 31. The delays have been so protracted and in some cases the members so frustrated that they passed a bill suspending their own salaries until the budget was approved. Unfortunately, that well-intentioned law did not improve the situation. Perhaps a bill banning free rides to Albany and free food and liquor from lobbyists until the budget is adopted would be more effective.

    Facing a record $11.5 billion shortfall, which the Governor said is higher than the total (not combined) annual budgets of 36 states, it is highly unlikely that the New York State budget will be adopted early, or on time, or close to the deadline. It is possible, but by no means certain, that the Assembly will be more favorably disposed to the city (since its Speaker is the only triumvir from the city). On the other hand, it was the Democratic (large D) controlled Assembly, whom we assume protects the city's interests from rapacious upstaters, which repealed the commuter tax on what must be considered its Day of Infamy, May 17, 1999. The City is now losing its second billion dollars because of this perverse action by its own representatives.

    At any rate, nothing decisive will happen while the snow flies, and we will have to be wait past the first robin, crocus and daffodil. It is something like the phony war in 1939-40 between France and Germany, who in 2003 are in each other's fond embrace.   Meanwhile, the mayor is in Washington today, visiting senators and signing the agreement for the Republican convention. (We just learned what else he did there: he picked up a healthy share of a large island, which we lost to the Feds 200 years ago).

    Hopefully, he may even talk about our budget problems; after all, the incumbent Grand Old Party would not want to convene in a dirty, crime ridden, hemorrhaging (spelled correctly, but looks odd) city. They prefer a shining city on a hill, as President Reagan used to say.   They could provide us with a little polish to shine it up.

    During the week, the Mayor presented his advance budget on Tuesday, the morning of the President's State of the Union speech. The Governor's state budget message came on Wednesday. There is an enormous discrepancy between what the Mayor wants and what the Governor, who has his own problems, some self-induced, is offering. David Saltonstall describes it graphically in today's Daily News.

    We have entered the winter of our discontent, along with others similarly impecunious. The winter will last through the spring, and maybe linger into summer.   We know from the movies that when the hero is tied to the railroad tracks, and the train is four months away, he should not expect rescue until the locomotive is almost upon him. In the meanwhile, you twist, not in the wind (cf. Watergate), but in your bonds, hoping you can still sell them.

    But not to worry, our great city will not only survive but prosper.