The American Spectator

Live From New York

Bloom off the Rose

By RiShawn Biddle on 5.19.08 @ 12:08AM

(Page 2 of 2)

The high taxes, along with the high cost of housing, makes New York less attractive to middle-class families. Just 30 percent of its neighborhoods are middle-income communities, according to the Brookings Institution. It also means that the city is less attractive to start-ups and small businesses, which thrive in low-tax environments.

So New York's economy is more dependent on the financial services and media outfits that have long made their headquarters along the Hudson River. But such firms are now going through both cyclical and long-term declines.

Wall Street firms such as insurance giant American International Group -- which reported $13 billion in losses over the last half-year -- are likely to reduce their payrolls, draining the city's economy. Bloomberg's budget officials estimate that the city could lose $660 million in taxes from 18 banks and investment firms this coming fiscal year alone.

AFTER SUFFERING FROM middle class flight and a fiscal collapse during the 1970s, mayors such as Ed Koch and Giuliani took a more quality-of-life-oriented approach. They focused intensely on better policing and reducing residential and business tax burdens.

Bloomberg has had a penchant for the kind of high-spending big city policies that nearly drove the Big Apple into bankruptcy in the first place. The city's current budget of $60 billion is 36 percent higher than the first one Bloomberg oversaw six years ago. The 2008-09 fiscal year budget he has proposed merely nibbles at the edges of the city's spending, depending on past surpluses to avoid a deficit.

Citizens and even legislators have tired of the tax-and-spending and Bloomberg's constant publicity-hogging -- including the floating of such trial balloons as an improbable run for the presidency.

One of Bloomberg's most recent proposals, a congestion-pricing plan under which drivers would have paid $8 for a trip into Manhattan, was laughed out of Albany by state legislators last month. The concept, long-embraced by think tanks such as the Reason Foundation, could help reduce traffic on the city's streets. But the high tolls, the ineffectiveness of the plan's approach and its focus on unclogging the streets of just one of New York's five boroughs angered city residents and suburban commuters alike.

Even Bloomberg's greatest success -- the reform of the city's school system, which he took over in 2003 -- isn't unqualified. Bloomberg and his schools chancellor, Joel Klein, have ruthlessly expanded school choice through the creation of charter schools, swept out the system's notoriously corrupt, inept bureaucracy and pushed through new curricula and teacher quality policies that will, in the long run, improve the quality of education students receive.

But in the short run, test scores and graduation rates for the school system remain abysmal. And the rough handling of the teachers union has cost him important political capital. Given that mayoral control expires next year, it isn't certain that Bloomberg or his successors can keep the schools from spiraling back into mediocrity.

Bloomberg will probably not go down with such predecessors as John V. Lindsay or Abraham Beame as a failed mayor. He has been more successful than contemporaries such as former Indianapolis Mayor Bart Peterson and Anthony Williams of Washington D.C. But he leaves a mixed record that doesn't come close to such highly-esteemed city leaders such as L.A.'s Richard Riordan or the legendary Fiorello LaGuardia. And he's definitely no Rudy.

Letter to the Editor

topics:
Taxes, Education, Trade, Business, Environment