Public Employee Press

Mayor orders hiring freeze, budget cuts

Layoffs, budget cuts and cheaper pensions are on the Bloomberg administration's agenda.

Deputy Mayor Howard Wolfson said the administration would push for pension changes in its next contract talks with municipal unions. To do that would require new state legislation, because pensions are legally prohibited as a subject of bargaining.

"New York City's government is in danger of becoming a pension fund that occasionally delivers services," he charged at an Association for a Better New York breakfast. "For the Bloomberg administration to blame city workers and their pensions for its budget deficit and layoffs is misguided," said DC 37 Executive Director Lillian Roberts. "Instead, they should pay greater attention to the loss of middle-class jobs from our city through contracting out and privatization."

The city's pension costs have increased from $1.5 billion in 2002 to an estimated $7.6 billion. Right-wing think tanks like the Manhattan Institute blame the rising costs on supposedly excessive retirement benefits, but Roberts points out that DC 37 members contribute to their pensions, which average less than $20,000 a year.

Losses on Wall Street and employers' failure to properly fund pensions - not bloated retirement pay - caused the nationwide underfunding problems of public pension systems.

In September, Mayor Bloomberg ordered a hiring freeze, Deputy Mayor Stephen Goldsmith said the city would probably lay off employees to deal with a projected $3.3 billion budget gap next year, and Budget Director Mark Page ordered most agencies to slash their budgets. He called for 5.4 percent cuts in the current 2011 fiscal year and 8 percent in f scal year 2012, with smaller cuts in uniformed forces and the Dept. of Education.

"We're already working with bare-bones staffing in most agencies," Roberts said. Rather than threatening layoffs, Bloomberg should "freeze outside contracts that prop up private consultants by squandering taxpayers' dollars on operations with cost overruns in the millions of dollars," she said.

—GNH