XPost: misc.immigration.usa, talk.politics.guns, alt.fan.rush-limbaugh   
   XPost: sac.politics   
   From: yourdime@outlook.com   
      
   New York City doesn’t have a budget crisis. It has a crisis of a mayor who   
   has no idea how to budget, and who thinks that everything – including what   
   should be a routine, dry, midyear budget update – is yet another   
   opportunity to try to wring money from Washington for migrants.   
      
   It’s reaching the point that no one should take anything he says seriously   
   – except the risk that his mismanagement poses for New York City is   
   serious stuff.   
      
   This week, Adams scored the headlines he wanted with his November update   
   to the current fiscal year, which began July 1. The mayor projects a $8.9   
   billion budget deficit for next summer, up from a $5.1 billion estimate in   
   June.   
      
   “Eric Adams slashes budgets for police, libraries, and schools,” the Times   
   wrote.   
      
   With agencies having to cut $1.8 billion, the number of police officers   
   will fall to below 30,000, from above 34,000 now, a low not seen since   
   1993. The streets will be dirtier, as sanitation workers will empty   
   litterboxes less frequently. Kids won’t be able to visit libraries on   
   Sundays.   
      
   And even after these cuts, the budget deficit still stands at $7.1   
   billion.   
      
   Wealthier New Yorkers will have to donate more to charity, on top of the   
   high taxes they already pay for basic public services. “I’m going to need   
   you more than ever to support … organizations like [the Police Athletic   
   League], Robin Hood Foundation, and others, the Boys and Girl Scouts. This   
   is a moment where it’s an all-hands-on-deck moment,” Adams implored.   
      
   And all because of mean old Joe Biden, who won’t give us money to house   
   65,000 migrants.   
      
   “The national government must do their share,” the mayor also said Friday.   
   “This is a national problem. It’s not a New York City problem …. The   
   national government should be picking up this tab and it should not be   
   coming out of the backs of everyday New Yorkers.”   
      
   The only new crisis, though, is the one the mayor is ginning up.   
      
   Before this week, in all of modern New York City history since our   
   recovery from our 1975 near-bankruptcy, the only budget crises that   
   emerged mid-year were the result of external shocks that had happened   
   between the June budget agreement and the fall November update –   
   unforeseen shocks that cratered tax revenues.   
      
   Those shocks included: the stock-market crash of 1987. 9/11. The financial   
   crisis of 2008.   
      
   This time, tax revenues – for the moment, at least – are just fine. For   
   the current fiscal year, they’re coming in $800 million higher than   
   predicted. Next fiscal year, they’re coming in $600 million higher than   
   projected.   
      
   The only thing that has changed in four and a half months, between June   
   and now, to make this budget such a disaster is Adams’ projection of   
   migrant spending.   
      
   In June, the city projected $2.9 billion in “asylum-seeker” costs for the   
   current fiscal year, and another $1 billion for the fiscal year that   
   starts next summer.   
      
   Shortly after enacted the budget, the mayor informally warned New Yorkers   
   that migrants could cost up to $4 billion a year for three years.   
      
   Now, the mayor is blowing up these projections. Migrants will cost an   
   extra $1.3 billion this year – for a total of $4.2 billion, 44% over the   
   June budget. Migrants will cost an extra $4.8 billion(!) for the following   
   fiscal year – a whopping near five-fold increase, relative to the June   
   projection, for a total of $5.8 billion in new spending that year.   
      
   All told, that’s $10 billion on migrants over just two fiscal years, not   
   three, more than double the mayor’s $3.9 billion official estimate for   
   these two years in the June budget.   
      
   The mayor should have known all this in June – and put it in his June   
   budget.   
      
   Nothing has changed, migrant-wise, since June. Back then, 50,000 migrants   
   were in city shelter, and it was going up, up, up. Today, the number has   
   reached 65,000.   
      
   This is not a surprise – and the mayor should have dealt with it fairly in   
   June.   
      
   Absent some credible explanation from city hall why the numbers have   
   changed so much in mere months, when no fact on the ground has changed,   
   the only conclusion is: Either the June budget he sent to the city council   
   and, later, to the state-run Financial Control Board for approval was   
   essentially a fantasy, or this budget update is a fantasy. Take your pick.   
      
   The mayor thinks his apocalyptic doom warnings will rouse Biden to send us   
   billions. They won’t; Biden doesn’t care.   
      
   One measure of how Adams doesn’t even take himself seriously is his   
   proposal to slash police to Dinkins-era levels and to slash library hours   
   and litter pick-ups. The mayor well knows that New York’s taxpaying   
   population base is more fragile than it’s been in three decades, and that   
   any further decline in public safety and public services will send more   
   middle-class and upper-income people fleeing.   
      
   To save mere pennies, in the short term: his cancellation of new police-   
   academy classes would save less than three hundred million dollars next   
   year. Reducing litter pickup will save … five million dollars. Reductions   
   to library hours barely hit $20 million annually.   
      
   The mayor wants to scare Biden, but he’s only scaring the people he needs   
   to stay here and pay their taxes.   
      
   He can solve his entire new budget crisis himself, right now: put a firm   
   cap on the amount of money that New York will spend on migrants – keep it   
   at the levels he set in the June budget, although that was already too   
   high – and do it now. Crisis over.   
      
   Nicole Gelinas is a contributing editor to the Manhattan Institute’s City   
   Journal.   
      
   https://nypost.com/2023/11/17/opinion/want-to-solve-the-budget-crisis-   
   mayor-adams-stop-out-of-control-migrant-spending/   
      
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