The American Spectator

Live From New York

Bloom off the Rose

By RiShawn Biddle on 5.19.08 @ 12:08AM

NEW YORK -- Michael Bloomberg isn't getting a lot of help these days in securing his legacy as mayor of New York City.

The state's otherwise dysfunctional legislature and new Gov. David Paterson dealt a blow to Bloomberg's school reform agenda last month when they essentially banned the use of test scores and other student data in evaluating the performance of new teachers. They did this at the behest of the United Federation of Teachers, which has long dueled with Bloomberg over his control over the City's school system.

Another of his school reform efforts -- giving principals the power to hire or remove teachers regardless of seniority -- came under question earlier this month when a report from The New Teacher Project showed that the changes came at a high cost to taxpayers. Thanks to the contracts Bloomberg negotiated with the UFT, some 665 teachers removed from the classroom are still being paid full salaries for not working, at a cost to taxpayers of $81 million in 2006 and 2007.

Bloomberg is demanding that the union come back to the negotiating table to change those terms. That's unlikely to happen until the contract runs out next year, when the mayor is the lamest of lame ducks.

His reputation for running clean government has been shattered thanks to revelations that his chief ally (and possible successor), City Council Speaker Christine Quinn, and her staff siphoned part of budget allotted to the council for its own spending purposes -- some $360 million this fiscal year alone. These funds were given to favored community groups without going through the legal budget process. The spending was covered up by setting up phony outfits.

The scandal has grown to include allegations of theft of student tutoring dollars by city council aides. But Bloomberg has both downplayed the slush fund shenanigans and stoutly defended his own pork barrel spending.

Since succeeding Rudolph Giuliani as mayor of the nation's largest city in 20002, Bloomberg had been highly-lauded by school reformers and others for successfully taking over the city's once-independent school system and for maintaining his predecessor's stellar success in reducing crime.

But the former Wall Street stock trader-turned-media billionaire didn't fully learn the lessons about improving quality of life taught by Giuliani's successful tenure. As mayor he has placed more emphasis on public relations than on strong, steady management that follows up on his successes.

As a result, there has been a slow increase in the kind of urban ills that once made New York the nation's most fearsome eyesore. And his most successful initiatives remain incomplete.

A VISIT TO THE Big Apple by one of its native sons offers examples of how Bloomberg has succeeded -- and failed -- in keeping it a livable city.

On one hand, streets remain as safe as they have during the Giuliani era, with some 494 homicides were reported in the city in 2007, a 16 percent decline over the number of homicides reported five years earlier. Bloomberg has also pleased health nuts -- and rankled smokers, fast-food restaurants, conservatives and libertarians -- by enacting smoking and trans fat bans and requiring calorie and cholesterol information on menus.

On other quality-of-life issues, New York is slipping. Vagrancy, once treated as a scourge under Giuliani, is seen all over the city. Homeless men can be seen coughing and spitting on the E train to Manhattan, crunched over with heads covered on Columbus Circle, even sleeping underneath the marquee of the famed Radio City Music Hall.

Stanching vandalism, once a key part of the city's application of the "broken window" theory of crime prevention, has fallen by the wayside. Graffiti is now splattered upon apartment buildings, covering storefronts and even scratched into the windows of trains.

Meanwhile Gotham's notoriety as one of America's highest-taxing urban communities -- lessened under Giuliani -- has come back under Bloomberg. The average New Yorker pays $9.02 in taxes to the city and state governments for every $100 earned, according to a 2007 study of America's nine largest cities by the city's Independent Budget Office. The average tax burden for the other cities was just $6.16.

City government expenditures account for more than 11.2 percent of the city's personal income in the 2007-08 fiscal year. That's up from less than 9.4 percent at the beginning of Bloomberg's tenure.

Letter to the Editor

topics:
Taxes, Education, Trade, Business, Environment