Mayor de Blasio Delivers Executive Budget

Mayor de Blasio unveiled his first executive budget Thursday, a $73.9 billion proposal in line with his liberal vision of greater government involvement for the less fortunate.. 

The budget — which now will be subject to negotiations with the City Council and must be approved by July 1 — backs up the campaign promises that ushered him into office in January, when he became the city's first Democratic mayor in a generation.

"Budgets are not just a collection of numbers," the mayor said during a presentation at City Hall. "They are not just a collection of documents. They reflect a statement of values."

His signature campaign pledge was to fund universal prekindergarten and expanded after-school programs for middle-schoolers with a tax hike on the city's wealthy. When that idea died in Albany, the state government stepped in with $300 million for pre-K but little for the after-school programs, prompting the mayor to proposing spending $145 million in the next fiscal year to expand programs for nearly 100,000 children.

Reflecting the city's improving fiscal outlook, the budget is full of new expenditures with little in the way of new savings or revenue. Other areas where de Blasio is increasing spending also dovetail with his goal of fighting income inequality by helping those who felt left behind by 12 years of what they viewed as Mayor Bloomberg's business-centric policies. De Blasio is adding $70 million to the housing authority's repair budget and increasing services for the homeless, whose numbers expanded under Bloomberg.

De Blasio repeatedly peppered his remarks with the need to do more for the poor and working class but vowed to be fiscally prudent in preparing a budget larger than those used by the majority of U.S. states.

"There are some that have trouble equating fiscal responsibility with progressive values," he said. "If you believe in the positive role of government, as I do, then you need a strong and stable foundation."

The budget, which updates a preliminary version released in February, also contains spending increases for infrastructure and road repair, in the wake of a brutal winter that wreaked havoc on city roadways. The mayor also wants to spend more on a series of steps, from speed cameras to speed bumps, aimed at reducing pedestrian deaths in the city.

De Blasio also plans to ease some fines for small business, another campaign promise of his, which will mean an 8 percent drop in that source of revenue, from $859 million to $789 million.

Looming over the city's fiscal picture are the expired contracts of more than 150 unions. But de Blasio believes that the $5.5 billion tentative agreement with teachers reached last week sets a pattern for negotiations with other unions that the city can afford, particularly if the $3.4 billion expected savings on health care can be reached.

But some unions — notably the one representing rank-and-file police officers — have already demanded larger raises than the ones the teachers received. Moreover, the budget's relatively rosy budget projects for the next few years do not account for the bulk of the $4.3 billion in retroactive pay due the teachers, which won't begin being paid out until 2019.

De Blasio warned that the city's fiscal outlook still faces challenges. His team projects New York will face a $2 billion structural deficit for the fiscal year that begins in July 2015.

"We are sober about what we need to address," he said.

Council hearings on the budget begin next week.

Copyright AP - Associated Press
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