Public Employee Press

LHOTA: Back to the bad old days

With his plan to slash the municipal workforce by 20 percent - a staggering 60,000 jobs - Republican mayoral candidate Joe Lhota shows that he is as out of touch with working New Yorkers as Michael Bloomberg. Lhota claims he would wipe out the jobs by attrition, but municipal labor experts know that such huge job cuts "couldn't happen without mass layoffs," said DC 37 Assistant Director of Research and Negotiations Ray Santander.

Lhota, a former investment banker, would continue the worst policies of the Bloomberg administration, such as wasteful contracting out and expanding charter schools at the expense of the majority of city schoolchildren. He could bring us all the way back to the dark and divisive days of Rudolph Giuliani, whom he served as budget director and deputy mayor. Giuliani campaigned for Lhota, and Bloomberg supported his ideas - at least until Lhota called him an idiot. Bloomberg refrained from endorsing Lhota only out of fear that this would cost Lhota votes.

As head of the Metropolitan Transportation Authority, Lhota showed little concern for the 99 percent and a strong tilt toward the wealthy by handing out more than a quarter million dollars in raises to four MTA executives as he implemented a sharp increase in the subway and bus fares working people pay.

Lhota wants to stall implementation of President Obama's Affordable Care Act, like the right-wing Republicans who shut down the U.S. government in October, costing taxpayers an estimated $24 billion and destroying jobs. He's being rewarded with huge campaign contributions from billionaire Tea Party funder David Koch.

— Alfredo Alvarado