New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg yesterday called on state lawmakers to protect the city from proposed cuts in the proposed budget. New York Gov. David Paterson on Tuesday proposed cutting $302 million of local aid to the city in his fiscal 2011 executive budget.
The amount represents 100% of the city’s allocation under the state’s Aid and Incentives for Municipalities program, while the allocation to other municipalities in the state would be cut by 2%. The program will provide an estimated $1.05 billion to localities, including New York City, in the current fiscal year.
“We understand the challenges our state leaders face, but it’s critical that the Democrats and Republicans, in both the Senate and the Assembly, protect our city,” Bloomberg said, according to text prepared for his ninth annual state of the city address. “New York City residents deserve to be treated with fairness and foresight. We are the state’s economic engine, and balancing the budget on the backs of the five boroughs will only run the entire state into the ground.”
The mayor said the city should not be penalized for making responsible decisions when the economy was booming.
“The fact is, because we prepared for the national recession by saving for the future and making the hard decisions, we are now an easy target for the state, which faces a much more severe fiscal deficit,” he said in the speech delivered yesterday afternoon.
He is expected to present a preliminary budget on Jan. 28. November estimates from the city’s budget office put fiscal 2011 expenditures at $66.58 billion, $4.14 billion more than projected revenue.
The mayor also called for moving $750 million allocated in the city’s capital program under his affordable housing initiative into a “rescue fund” for distressed apartment buildings. It was unclear at press time whether this initiative would use bond financing, but Bloomberg gave as an example the sale of a Bronx building in default that was purchased by a nonprofit headed by former New York Met Mo Vaughn. Vaughn’s company, Omni New York LLC, has used bond financing through the New York City Housing Development Corp. in the past.
