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Preliminary Budget Seeks to Avoid Spending Cuts


Last November, Mayor Michael Bloomberg waited until the last minute and after the general election to announce a blockbuster 18.5 percent property tax increase. The property-tax hike solved almost half of the then-$6.4 billion gap, but there was no City Council or public debate about the inequitable effect of increased dependence on the property tax.

This year, it seems the mayor will wait until the last minute again.

On January 28, the mayor released his preliminary $44 billion budget for fiscal year 2004 and left the city's billion dollar questions unanswered — at least until the executive budget is released in April.

The good news for most New Yorkers is that the preliminary 2004 budget proposal focuses almost exclusively on revenues, not spending.

The mayor rejected the conventional weapons of his predecessors, such as Rudy Giuliani, and did not offered contingency plans that threaten the poor, the ill and the elderly. The plan has less than $500 million in agency actions for 2004, and most of those are revenue shifts and productivity savings, not service cuts. It also includes nearly $1 billion in proposed new tax revenues, nearly $700 million more in airport rents, $600 million in savings from labor, nearly $500 million from new state and federal aid, and $200 million from transportation revenues, including bridge tolls.

On the down side, not one of these proposals is a sure thing. Given the slumping city economy and the unfriendly budget signals from Albany and Washington, the preliminary plan to fill the $3.4 billion budget gap for 2004, is mostly dead on arrival.

The next draft the executive budget will not come out until April.

Revenues

The mayor's nearly $3 billion revenue plan proposed for next year is, at one level, absurd.

Its key component, a billion-dollar commuter tax, has been rejected by Governor Pataki and State Senator Majority Leader Joseph Bruno.

The plan expects to find $600 million in labor savings next year -- but acknowledges the city will not even get $223 million in labor savings expected this year. Airport revenues are tied up in complex legal and political tangles, and the Bush and Pataki regimes seem more likely to cut than increase aid to the city.

But the mayor has generated some serious discussions about alternative revenue sources. His proposal for "personal income tax reform" would raise nearly $1 billion by taxing commuters at the same rate as city residents and lower the rate by nearly 40 percent by 2007. Not only would this decrease revenues over time, but it would force a 2.75 percent tax rate on commuters who now pay nothing to New York City.

The proposal spurred others to offer their ideas for raising $1 billion, including reinstatement of the 0.45 percent commuter tax.

The Independent Budget Office published a new "Budget Options" booklet that says that going back to that commuter tax would produce $459 million in 2004. The office says that an alternative, more progressive commuter tax with rates one-third that paid by residents would produce nearly $1 billion. Another option is a temporary increase in personal income tax rates. A 10 percent across-the-board surcharge would raise $533 million. Alternatively, hiking the tax rate by 1 percentage point for people earning over $250,000 would generate $595 million.

As in years past, the debate over revenue assumptions about labor savings and federal and state aid will go on for months.

The mayor has said that if he gets no concessions, he will lay off 12,000 employees. Further complicating things this year is the uncertainty about if and when the city will get federal funds from the World Trade Center. The New York Times reported on February 7 that a tentative agreement would give the city $630 million in federal funds to fill its budget gap. This would be a one-time payment only.

An increase in airport rents is a more realistic target only because the interests of Governor George Pataki and Bloomberg may coincide this year. For years the city has complained that the Port Authority shortchanges the city on the annual rent it pays on city-owned LaGuardia and Kennedy airports. Rents that reached $100 million a year a decade ago sank to $3 million a year in the 1990s, and more recently have ranged from $25 million to $31 million. The city has been trying to re-capture the higher rents. But with many questions on the table about long-term control of the airports and the World Trade Center site, and with the governor already offering a $500 million settlement for the city’s airport claim, this just might be the year for a substantial payment.

In general, the mayor deserves praise for having rejected non-recurring, one-shot revenues in his plans for next year. This represents something of a turnaround from 2003, when, according to the State Financial Control Board, the city budget included $3.2 billion in one-shot revenue sources. Aside from federal aid, next year's budget seems to have no significant one-shots. Yet even the very conservative Financial Control Board has said a few hundred million dollars of one-shots are acceptable in a budget the size of New York's. So some may be on the way help cushion the blow if any of the mayor's other revenue ideas fail to come to fruition.

Expenditures

In his January budget, Bloomberg mostly lived up to his December statement at a Citizens Budget Commission's conference: "The fact of the matter is we have cut as much as I believe we can. More cuts risk adversely affecting New York City's quality of life and reducing the ability to grow our way out of this problem." And so there are very few of the ritualized cuts in youth, senior, legal, health, and other services that Giuliani (and Bloomberg last year) threw out in winter for the council to mostly restore in the late spring.

In his $3.4 billion gap-filling package, savings in agency spending -- technically called PEGs (Program to Eliminate the Gap) -- total only $357 million, little more than t10 percent of the total budget actions. The Department of Education will produce by far the biggest savings -- $130 million. The mayor says these will not affect classroom services, but it is hard to determine the real impact on students.

Two other big cuts are in libraries and cultural affairs - areas where the mayor seems to think the private sector can pick up the slack. The libraries are cut another 3 percent for next year, a total of nearly $7 million. With the November cuts, this adds up to a 12 percent cut in less than a year. The Department of Cultural Affairs takes another 6.2 percent cut for 2004, about $6.5 million. With the November cuts, the department will have taken a 15.6 percent cut for 2004.

Cuts in a fourth agency -- the Department of Youth and Community Development -- are reminiscent of the old days -- large cuts in council-sponsored after school programs. These cuts would no doubt cause significant damage to existing programs. As in previous years, the intent here seems to keep the council busy fighting for restorations - a curiously small target for a mayor who mostly thinks big.

The most positive detail in the plan may be the restorations in the Department of Aging. By transferring some federal funds into the agency to replace city funds, the mayor was able to restore seven contracts for senior retirement communities, keep senior centers open five days a week, cancel center consolidations and rescind plans to charge seniors more for meals.

Otherwise, the service cuts are nominal. That does not mean that the loss of staff in many agencies through attrition, early retirements and severance packages -- will not indirectly affect services, but it is good to see contracted human services apparently held harmless for the near future, in spite of the city's hard times.

Politics and Equity

The mayor's commitment to revenues and maintaining basic services is bold and optimistic. But how his reluctant partners -- George Pataki and George W. Bush -- will respond is the big political unknown. In a good cop/bad cop pairing, the mayor and Council Speaker Gifford Miller are playing different political games with the governor and the legislature – the mayor more conciliatory, the speaker tough. Who can predict how such an act will play out?

The mayor and the speaker need the commuter tax. They need Pataki to pull back from nearly $500 million in education cuts and to enhance, not cut Medicaid funding. They need authority from the state to increase city taxes. But with that authority, they also need to take a more progressive approach in structuring those inevitable new taxes. While the focus on revenues is wise for the long term, what is really missing in the January preliminary budget is any definition of sacrifice, any sense that tax burdens will be distributed fairly among renters and owners, among high-income and middle-income New Yorkers.

Glenn Pasanen, former associate director of City Project, teaches political science at Lehman College of the City University.

Billion Dollar Questions About Next Year's Budget


One year into his mayoralty, Michael Bloomberg has resolved his first major budget crisis. But his success so far raises as many questions as it answers about how he will handle the next budget crisis. The next one is in late January, when he releases his preliminary budget for the next fiscal year. On the one hand, Mayor Bloomberg has proved to be bold and pragmatic. The 18.5 percent increase in the city's property tax rate and approximately a billion dollars in other budget savings has reduced a previously projected $6.4 billion deficit for next year by more than half. On the other hand, the details of his November budget modification, now examined by several fiscal monitors, raise billion dollar questions about next year.

There are questions about revenue – about the mayor's tax revenue estimates for next year, and the source of new tax revenues. The Independent Budget Office projects tax revenues for 2004 that are about $1.2 billion higher than the mayor's November estimate, suggesting a smaller deficit problem for next year than the mayor projects. And several monitors are dubious about the political prospects of the mayor's plan to raise about $1.1 billion in new personal income tax revenues next year by expanding that tax to commuters who work in the city.

On the expenditure side, the mayor's dramatic service cuts proposed for next year raise big questions about his priorities in two broad areas: uniformed and human services. In the police department, for instance, postponement of a new police class of 1,900 member and attrition will lower the number of police officers to the 1993 level. And in contrast to the mayor's brave rhetoric recently about the need to maintain services for economic as well as social reasons, proposed cuts in education, libraries, cultural affairs, health, and social services are considerable.

Another big question is one the mayor has sidestepped for a year: How broadly will budget burdens be shared, on both the revenue and expenditure sides? In terms of new taxes, Bloomberg promised that the huge increase in property taxes would be off-set by a reduction in personal income taxes. That argument has been widely attacked both as inaccurate and politically naĂŻve. The best information available at the moment suggests that the mayor's preliminary plans for next year disproportionately burden lower- and middle-income New Yorkers through higher taxes and lower services.

Revenue Questions

At this point there is over a billion-dollar difference between the most optimistic and most pessimistic projections of next year´s deficit, primarily because of different tax revenue projections. For example, in its fiscal outlook report, "Despite Property Tax Increase, Large 2004 Budget Gap Remains," the Independent Budget Office now projects next year's deficit at $2.3 billion, about $800 million less than the mayor's projection. Yet the State Financial Control Board, in its December report, projects next year´s deficit at $3.5 billion, about $400 million more than the mayor.

Such a disparity in tax revenue projections is unusual at this stage of the budget process.

The other billion-dollar question is about the single biggest element in the mayor's budget-gap plan for 2004, raising $1.1 billion in additional personal income tax revenues by broadening its tax base through taxing commuters at the same rates as residents. This proposal is odd in at least three ways. First, no one thinks it has any chance of gaining support from the state legislature nor the governor. Second, as a revenue producer, it is a nonrecurring, one-shot -- or, more specifically, the first of a series of declining one-shots, since the proposal lowers rates over time. By 2006, according to the Independent Budget Office, the city would actually lose $232 million. Lastly, the budget office points out in its December report that the proposal "would shift the combined burden of the two taxes from higher income households towards those with lower incomes….[M]ost households with incomes over $200,000 would see net savings…."

Expenditure Questions

One year into his mayoralty, Bloomberg has yet to express a budget vision. Budget decisions have been bold and pragmatic, but they also look ad hoc. There have been many contradictions. Education has ostensibly been a top priority, yet the new Department of Education took a $200 million cut in November, a cut which recurs in subsequent years. Libraries and cultural affairs took major cuts, while senior, youth, and homeless services took relatively minor cuts. Next year may determine what the mayor's priorities really are.

The November modification has some clues. The uniformed services, often protected and expanded during the Giuliani terms, are now projected to be significantly reduced. According to the December 2002 report of the Office of the State Deputy Comptroller for NYC, uniformed staffing levels will be reduced by 4,443 employees during Fiscal Years 2003 and 2004. Police officers would number 34,774 by the end of 2004, nearly 6,000 fewer than the peak force in October 2000. Given the fact that crime numbers continue to fall almost across the board, the mayor's timing here could be very effective. (Some may quibble that a full commitment to police productivity savings requires more initiatives in overtime savings and more civilianization in the department -- not less as the State Deputy Comptroller reports is now projecting.)

If projected uniformed savings are ambitious and justified, the projected savings in a variety of human services are another story. Savings here will come after huge cuts in several agencies during the Giuliani years. The State Deputy Comptroller's report adds historical perspective: Between Fiscal Years 1991 and 2002, staff in parks, health and welfare agencies were reduced by 16,350 employees, or 43 percent. Put another way, these agencies, which represented 17 percent of the City workforce in 1991, were only 10 percent of the workforce by 2002. Yet parks staffing will be reduced by another 213 -- more than 12 percent -- in Fiscal Year 2003, to 1,509. And health and welfare agencies will lose nearly 1,800 employees -- or nine percent -- more by the end of 2003. The impacts of the cuts in these agencies need to be measured quickly, to ensure these moves do not compound the human-service failures of the Giuliani administration.

Beyond these projected workforce reductions is the not so subtle threat implicit in the mayor's plan to get $600 million in unspecified "productivity" savings from the same workforce. The implied alternative is the reduction -- through further attrition and layoffs -- of an additional 12,000 employees. Since the mayor has more than once suggested that further cuts in services are not smart economically, there is another contradiction here, especially if such cuts emerge without sufficient debate at the last moments of the budget process in May and June.

The Vision Question

Bloomberg bought time with his November modification. The monitors are comfortable that the budget problems that developed for this fiscal year are solved. In fact, the Independent Budget Office points out that the property tax increase generated an estimated $500 million surplus for this year, that will help prepay some of next year's expenses. But the outlook for Fiscal Year 2004 remains full of uncertainties about billion dollar decisions, particularly about what priorities are driving the decision-making.

Because the mayor has been slow and contradictory in defining priorities, and because he has been disingenuous in defining who carries the current and future burdens of his budget decisions, the most important question may be whether a comprehensive vision emerges in the January preliminary budget for next year. Given the high stakes surrounding the big budget deficit, it is a good time for a powerful vision. It is also a good time to identify those who will need to sacrifice -- in higher taxes and/or lower services -- in order to realize any bold vision.

Glenn Pasanen, former associate director of City Project, teaches political science at Lehman College of the City University.

2003 Economic Stimulus Plan


 

Remarks made at the Economic Club of Chicago on January 8, 2003.

The Bucks Start Where?
Who is going to solve New York's fiscal crisis ­ Washington, Albany, or the city itself?
Transcript of President George W. Bush's Economic Proposal
Governor George Pataki's State of the State Address
Mayor Michael Bloomberg's remarks at the Citizens Budget Commission
City Council Speaker Gifford Miller's Reaction to the Bush Proposal

Too many Americans today are wondering about our economy; they're asking, how is the economy really doing? Well, the American economy is the strongest and most resilient economy in the world. In spite of the terrible shocks that our nation has received, our economy is growing, and the entrepreneurial spirit in America is strong.

We've made great progress these past two years, remembering the summer of 2000, during the presidential campaign, the market had started on a steady decline. Job growth started to dwindle. The economy had begun to slow. When I took office, the signs of recession were real. So, I worked with the United States Congress to reduce income taxes for everyone who pays them. More than 100 million individuals, families and sole proprietorships received tax relief.

This tax relief was the largest in a generation, and it gave the economy a boost just at the right time, ensuring that the recession was one of the shortest and shallowest in modern American history.

Americans should be able to count on those tax cuts as they plan their financial futures. So I will continue to press the Congress to make these tax cuts, including the end of the death tax, permanent. We know that the tax cuts work, and Americans deserve to know their tax cuts will not be taken away.

We faced a second test with the attacks of September the 11th, 2001. These attacks caused terrible suffering and a massive disruption of the economy. Flights were cancelled. Many hotels and stores were empty. Stock trading was halted for nearly a week. So we acted. We reopened the markets. We helped the people of New York City recover. We assisted the airlines. We provided tax incentives for business investment. And we passed terrorism insurance so building and real estate projects could go forward.

And then our economy was tested a third time when Americans discovered serious abuses of trust by some corporate leaders. So we passed historic reforms to assure corporate integrity; to punish wrongdoers, and defend the interests of workers and investors. Corporate greed and malfeasance caused innocent people to lose their jobs, their savings, and, often, their confidence in the American system. For the sake of justice, and for the sake of every honest business in America, I have made this commitment: Corporate misdeeds will be investigated, they will be prosecuted, and they will be punished.

We have met the tests before us because the American people have worked hard through difficult times. And now our country has entered its second year of economic growth. Our trade with other nations is expanding, bringing lower prices that come from imports, and better jobs that come from exports.

More Americans are buying and building houses -- a central part of the American dream. The homeownership rate is now 68 percent -- close to the highest ever. Low interest rates have allowed Americans to tap the rising value of their homes.

And those obstacles are clear: Many jobs are lost in America because government imposes unreasonable regulations and many jobs are lost because the law suit culture of this country imposes unreasonable costs.

I will continue to press for legal and regulatory reform, but today -- today I want to talk about these concerns: Americans carry a heavy burden of taxes and debt that could slow consumer spending. I'm troubled by that. I'm also troubled by the fact that our tax system unfairly penalizes some productive investments. And I worry about people who are out of work; they need our help, both in short-term benefits and long-term opportunity. By directly confronting each of these challenges, we can preserve the hard-won gains our economy has made and advance toward greater prosperity.

Our first challenge is to allow Americans to keep more of their money so they can spend, and save and invest. The millions of individual decisions that support the market, support business and help create jobs. Consumer spending accounts for about 70 percent of our economy; it has been the driving force of our recovery. Yet, there are warning signs I won't ignore, and I hope the Congress doesn't ignore either.

Many Americans live in constant and increasing personal debt, with credit card bills so heavy they often cannot pay much more than the monthly minimum. Millions of citizens spend their entire adult lives living paycheck to paycheck, never getting a chance to save for their children's education or their own retirement. Americans today are paying about a third of their income in taxes. All of this puts pressure on family budget, and therefore clouds our economic future.

Americans facing these struggles are due to receive additional tax relief in 2004, and again in 2006. Republicans and Democrats in Congress already approved these tax rate reductions, and the time to deliver the tax rate reductions is now, when they can do the most good for the American people. For the sake of economic vitality, I'm asking Congress to make all the tax rate reductions effective this year.

And the tax cuts should be retroactive to January 1st. Upon passage, I'll order the Treasury Department to immediately adjust the amount of money withheld for income taxes so that Americans will keep more of their paychecks right away.

By speeding up the income tax cuts, we will speed up economic recovery and the pace of job creation. If tax relief is good enough for Americans three years from now, it is good enough for Americans today.

An additional beneficiary of this tax cut will be small businesses. About 30 million Americans include small-business income when they file their individual tax returns with the IRS. Faster tax relief will help these businesses to expand sooner, to hire new people faster, and to build a stronger foundation for the recovery.

We also know that middle-income families need additional relief. So today I'm asking Congress to speed up three other tax reductions promised in 2001, tax reductions that will help our middle-income families. Instead of slowly reducing the marriage penalty until 2009, we should do it now, to help 35 million married couples. Instead of waiting until 2008 to move more taxpayers from the 15 percent bracket to the lowest bracket of 10 percent, we should make that change now and help 2 million working Americans.

And instead of gradually raising the child tax credit from $600 to a thousand dollars per child by the year of 2010, for the benefit of 26 million families, we should raise it now.

These tax reductions will bring real and immediate benefits to middle-income Americans. Ninety-two million Americans will keep an average of $1,083 more of their own money. A family of four, with two earners and $39,000 in income, will receive more than $1,100 in tax relief. Real money to help pay the bills and push the economy forward. And the sooner Congress acts, the sooner the help will come.

Taken together, these income tax cuts will put an additional $70 billion to work in the private economy over the next 18 months. And there's no better way to help our economy to grow than to leave more money in the hands of the men and women who earned it.

Our second challenge is to encourage greater investment by individuals and small businesses, the kind of investing that builds personal wealth and helps a company expand and creates new jobs.

We are increasingly a nation of owners who invest for retirement and the other financial challenges of life. One-half of American households own stock, either directly or through pension funds. And we have an obligation to make sure, now more than ever, that American investors are treated fairly. We can begin by treating investors fairly and equally in our tax laws. As it is now, many investments are taxed not once, but twice. First the IRS taxes a company on its profit, then it taxes the investors who receive the profits as dividends. The result of this double taxation is that for all the profit a company earns, shareholders who receive dividends keep as little as 40 cents on the dollar.

Double taxation is bad for our economy. Double taxation is wrong. Double taxation falls especially hard on retired people. About half of all dividend income goes to America's seniors, and they often rely on those checks for a steady source of income in their retirement. It's fair to tax a company's profits. It's not fair to double tax by taxing the shareholder on the same profits.

So today, for the good of our senior citizens, and to support capital formation across the land, I'm asking the United States Congress to abolish the double taxation of dividends.

The benefits of this tax relief will be felt throughout the economy. Abolishing double taxation dividends will leave nearly 35 million Americans with more of their own money to spend and invest. This will promote savings, and return as much as $20 billion this year to the private economy.

By ending this investment penalty, we will strengthen investor confidence. See, by ending double taxation of dividends, we will increase the return on investing, which will draw more money into the markets to provide capital to build factories, to buy equipment, hire more people.

We must also encourage the investments that help turn small businesses into larger ones. Small businesses create the majority of new jobs in America, and they account for half the output of the economy. Currently, tax law permits small firms to write off as expenses up to $25,000 worth of equipment, might -- computers or machinery that they need. I'm asking the Congress to raise that limit to $75,000 and index that number for inflation. This change, together with the faster rate reductions, will benefit more than 23 million small-business owners. My view is this economy can thrive only if our small businesses thrive, and we will provide them every incentive to grow and create more jobs.

A third challenge facing our country is the need to help unemployed workers and prepare them for the new jobs of a growing economy. The unemployment rate today is 6 percent. It's low for an economy coming out of a recession. It's higher than it should be. And the unemployment rate is projected to rise even further in the short run.

This hardship is concentrated in certain regions and in certain industries. Manufacturing jobs have declined for 28 months in a row. You know what I'm talking about here in the Midwest. You're showing signs of recovery here, yet many people here and across this country are still looking for work.

A woman in Arkansas tells a typical story. She talked about the fact that her husband was laid off from his job at a local steel mill, and both she and her husband have been looking for a job for quite a while. Here's what she said: ``There's just nothing for me to find. We're trying to save up what little money we have and move to another community and look for jobs there.''

You've got to be worried about those kinds of stories here in America. As we encourage long-term growth, we will not forget the men and women who are struggling today. Close to 70,000 workers each week exhaust their unemployment benefits, and we have an obligation to help our fellow citizens. So I'm asking this new Congress to extend unemployment benefits that expired on December the 28th. And the benefits Congress approves should be retroactive, like the Fitzgerald bill, so that people who lost their benefits last month can receive their benefits in full. Helping America's unemployed workers should be a first order of business in this new Congress, and it looks like it's going to be.

We must be more creative when we help those who have the hardest time finding work. To encourage innovation and more choices and to help those who are out of work find the dignity of a new job, today I'm unveiling a new approach to helping unemployed Americans through personal re-employment accounts. Under this new program, Americans will face -- who face the greatest difficulties in finding work will receive up to $3,000 to use in their job search. They will have great flexibility in how they use that money. A person with a reemployment account will be able to decide whether to use the funds for job training, or child care, or transportation or even to cover the costs of relocating to another city for a new job. If a job is obtained quickly, within 13 weeks, the worker will be able to keep the cash balance as a reemployment bonus.

As we seek new economic growth, we will need well-trained workers to fill new jobs. So I'm going to ask the Congress to provide $3.6 billion to the states to pay for the reemployment accounts, enough money to help more than a million unemployed men and women across America.

In order to strengthen this economy in the future we must help these Americans today. The job and growth proposals I've outlined today are a focused plan to encourage consumer spending, to promote small business growth, to boost confidence in our markets and to give critical help to unemployed citizens. Overall, this growth package will reduce the tax burden of Americans by $98 billion this year, and $670 billion over the next decade. I proposed a bold plan because the need for this plan is urgent. And I urge the Congress to act swiftly and pass this bill.

Our nation has seen two years of serious and steady challenges. The recession and the decline in the stock market slowed earnings and cut into tax revenues and created a budget deficit. And in this time of war, I can assure you, this government is spending what is necessary to win the war.

But the Congress must also understand this. The American people deserve and expect spending discipline in Washington, D.C. (Applause.) With spending and discipline and with pro-growth policies, we will expand the economy and help bring down this deficit.

This growth and jobs package is essential in the short run. It's an immediate boost to the economy. And these proposals will help stimulate investment and put more people back to work -- is what we want to have happen. They're essential for the long run as well, to lay the groundwork for future growth and future prosperity. That growth will bring the added benefit of higher revenues for the government, revenues that will keep tax rates low while fulfilling key obligations and protecting programs such as Medicare and Social Security.

We're meeting the challenges to America. We're strengthening our economy, and we're taking a battle to our enemies. And we're not going to leave our work half-finished. In the months ahead, we will confront every threat to the safety and security of the American people. We'll press on. We'll turn our recovery into lasting growth and opportunity that reaches every corner of America. By the courage and by the enterprise of the American people, this great nation will prosper, and there's no doubt in my mind this great nation will prevail.

 




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