Since the Biden administration has told City Hall “drop dead,” Mayor Adams is talking of hiking property and other taxes — a major mistake.
It won’t appease the progressives who hate him, and it’ll infuriate average New Yorkers.
Look: The city’s property-tax system unfairly burdens small property owners and lower-income communities, effectively imposing higher rates on the lowest-valued properties.
It’s a system badly in need of reform — not more pain in order to preserve municipal bloat.
And the city’s $110 billion budget spends on programs and services no other major US city even tries to provide, yet those towns do just fine.
As the Citizens Budget Commission’s Ana Champeny thunders, the city’s budget woes are self-inflicted as a result of “short-sighted choices” having little to do with the migrant crisis.
Current outlays are distorted by all the “permanent” spending then-Mayor Bill de Blasio funded with temporary federal COVID relief.
Plus, Adams this year granted a round of municipal union pay hikes without winning much of anything in productivity increases, such as work-rule changes that would save cash without real cost to city employees.
All this is NYC-government-as-usual: Up the spending and figure out how to pay for it later — a recipe for a “necessary” tax hike.
No way: The mayor needs to look for savings that won’t slam average New Yorkers.
Go back to the unions, warning they’ll see big layoffs if they don’t agree to work-rule changes.
Look for entire programs to ax — ones that help few people except the ones they employ.
And, yes, get real about ending the “right to shelter” that supposedly forces the city to give illegal migrants more support than they get anywhere else in the country.
Plus: Find savings in the contracts to feed and house the migrants; if they’re cooking their own meals rather than eat what they’re given, much of the money spent on feeding them is wasted.
Oh, and if the state won’t offer more support, insist it roll back some of the needless spending it requires of the city, starting with the NYC-only class-size mandate.
It’s time to break out of the box of budgeting-as-usual: Use this crisis to start making fundamental reforms.
If Adams goes back on his promise not to raise property taxes, he’ll see his job-approval rating sink even deeper.
And he’ll have no one but himself to blame.
This story originally appeared on NYPost
