You would think after sacrificing $1B from the NYPD annual budget at the BLM altar in June, NYC Mayor Bill De Blasio would have plenty of cash to keep paying his municipal workers all year.
However, even they aren't safe.
De Blasio is blackmailing the Federal government with laying off their jobs if the Feds don't open their wallets.
From The NY Daily News:
This year’s city budget will have something for nearly everyone to hate.
After weeks of demands that City Hall make significant cuts to the NYPD’s budget, Mayor de Blasio on Monday touted a range of cuts to the NYPD but said New York could still be forced to lay off municipal workers as early as October.
He committed to $1 billion in cuts to the NYPD’s operating budget and promised another $500 million in capital funding would be reallocated from police projects to youth and public housing programs.
The changes come on top of $8 billion de Blasio had already slashed from his proposed budget — which now stands around $86 billion — and in the wake of huge tax revenue shortfalls due to the coronavirus outbreak. City Hall’s executive office and the City Council remained embroiled in budget negotiations Monday, one day before the legally-mandated deadline to hammer out an agreement.
The mayor said the cuts to the NYPD were not intended to punish the department in the wake of criticism over its use of force during anti-police brutality protests.
“We want to shift resources more and more into young people in particular, into youth centers. We want to shift resources more and more into public housing,” de Blasio said at a Monday morning press conference. “We’re going to take that capital money and shift it into creating youth recreation centers.”
The city is also poised to cancel next month’s Police Academy class — bringing an estimated savings of about $80 million — and transfer school safety officers from the police to education departments, a move trimming about $422.1 million from the NYPD budget. That’s according to sources who requested anonymity due to the sensitivity of the talks.
They said the change in who oversees school safety officers may seem superficial, but could transform how students are policed.
The move could entail “stronger guidelines and checks and balances on what school safety can do,” one person noted.
The school safety officer program, initiated in the Giuliani administration, has long been accused of disproportionately targeting students of color.
The new NYPD cuts also include transferring homeless outreach programs to the Department of Homeless Services, in an attempt to address criticism that cops are the wrong city workers to get the homeless off of streets. Details of the change were not immediately known.
Also on the table was an attempt to curb NYPD overtime pay by a whopping $352.2 million — though similar efforts have faltered in the past — and smaller measures such as canceling $5 million in spending on new vehicles for the department.
Including the measure on overtime pay, estimated cuts come to about $512.1 million. The rest of the roughly $1 billion sum comes from shifting funding from the NYPD to DOE and DHS.
The home stretch of budget talks comes after de Blasio proposed cutting the city’s popular Summer Youth Employment Program, drawing outrage from pols and activists who said kids need the extra income more than ever.
The Council drew concessions from the mayor over the weekend, according to sources who say summer jobs programs will come back, albeit in reduced form. Details were not immediately known.
.Both the mayor and Council Speaker Corey Johnson are likely to tout the NYPD changes and revival of summer youth employment as major wins — but the budget seems sure to leave activists angry.
“It tinkers here and tinkers there, but it does not represent the sea change that people had been demanding and camping out for,” a source familiar with the budget talks said of the NYPD changes.
“You’re going to get a number of nos on the left and you’re going to get a number of nos on the right, but they’ll have the votes to pass the budget,” the person added."
And from The NY Times:
The alarms from New York officials reflect a broader political strategy — threatening deep cuts as part of their effort to pressure Washington to provide more assistance. And New York City’s predicament speaks to the dire fiscal situation of states and localities across the nation.
With the coronavirus siphoning as much as $9 billion in tax revenue from New York City, Mr. de Blasio said on Wednesday that the city might have to lay off or furlough 22,000 municipal workers this fall.
“We are running out of options here,” the mayor said. “That is the blunt truth.”
The same morning, the state-run transit agency announced that it would suspend its much-heralded $54 billion plan to modernize the city’s antiquated transportation system.
The move came as the Metropolitan Transportation Authority, which oversees the city’s subway and buses, pushed for $3.9 billion in federal emergency funds to help the agency survive the crisis.
“To be clear, this is a four-alarm fire,” said Patrick J. Foye, chairman of the M.T.A., on Wednesday. “We are facing the most acute financial crisis in the history of the M.T.A.”
Mr. de Blasio described the layoffs and furloughs as a potentially necessary move in light of substantial budgetary shortfalls brought about by the pandemic’s steep reduction in business activity.
As the pandemic has continued to paralyze New York’s economy, the administration’s estimates of its own budget shortfalls have continued to rise, forcing the city to plan for spending cuts in numerous areas. The mayor said the administration was now looking for another $1 billion in savings.
Mr. de Blasio said he was talking with municipal labor unions in the hope of finding savings that would forestall layoffs from a city work force that numbered 326,000 by the end of 2019, according to the Citizens Budget Commission.
Mr. Rein noted that Mr. de Blasio will have to grapple with even more significant budget shortfalls in future years, even if he does find $1 billion in labor savings. He also argued that the city could find labor savings in ways that do not entail layoffs, including by operating more efficiently and consolidating union welfare funds.
The city hasn’t seen layoffs since 2012, when City Hall laid off fewer than 1,000 employees, the commission said.
When the city was on the brink of insolvency in the 1970s, its work force declined by 20 percent, or 45,000 full-time employees, over three years, according to the commission.
Harry Nespoli was laid off from his job at the Sanitation Department in 1975. Now he leads the Municipal Labor Committee, a coalition of about 110 city unions.
He has been in talks with City Hall for more than a month to find savings and said the timing of Mr. de Blasio’s announcement on Wednesday was unhelpful.
“What performance does the mayor expect to get from his work force now?” Mr. Nespoli said.
While criminal justice advocates have called for a $1 billion cut to the New York Police Department’s budget, they would like to see that funding distributed elsewhere, not eliminated from the budget entirely.
“We’re often told we can only get jobs or justice,” said Anthonine Pierre, deputy director of the Brooklyn Movement Center, via text. “The hard work of the mayor is to figure out how to provide both.”
Mr. de Blasio has sought authority from Albany to take on debt for operating costs, though state legislators have seemed reluctant to grant it. Some interpreted his announcement as a means by which to exert leverage on Albany legislators to take action.
On Wednesday, the mayor suggested that it would be foolish to hold out for further relief from Washington lawmakers.
“For weeks and weeks, we all had the hope that there would be a federal stimulus plan by now,” Mr. de Blasio said. “It’s quite clear that’s not happening.”
Perhaps if De Blasio put as much time and effort into reopening his city for business as he has surrendering it to crazed Leftists, he would have enough tax revenue to make ends meet for his citizens and employees.
Instead, he keeps regular New Yorkers locked out of their own businesses while he joins crowds on the street to paint BLM murals on 5th Avenue, Queens, The Bronx, wherever he can stage his next political stunt.
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