By LILLIAN ROBERTS
Executive Director
District Council 37, AFSCME

We live in bleak times. More than 15 million Americans are still out of work, watching their unemployment benefits run out, facing foreclosure and homelessness, going hungry or depending on Food Stamps for their next meal. Unemployed workers and shuttered businesses can’t pay taxes, and this terrible recession is crushing states and cities nationwide with ever widening budget gaps.

State and local governments have wiped out about 200,000 jobs since January 2009, and 44 of the 50 states have cut health care, education and services for the elderly and disabled. Many states, including New York, are considering new rounds of cuts in vital services and additional layoffs that would undermine President Obama’s efforts toward economic recovery.

Obama’s stimulus program clearly kept us from falling over the brink into a second Great Depression, and it is still reducing the massive job losses inflicted on us by the greed of Wall Street bankers and brokers under the Bush administration. But now we need to turn the corner toward creating more jobs, and right now, we need emergency aid for families, cities and states suffering under the effects of the recession.

We desperately need the U.S. Congress to pass legislation to put America back to work by creating tens of thousands of new jobs, including “green” jobs to make our environment healthier. We need direct aid to cities and states to protect public service jobs, public education, public housing and public health care. For the millions who are out of work through no fault of their own, Congress must continue lower-cost health coverage and extend unemployment benefits and Medicaid assistance to aid the infirm as well as state and hospital budgets.

But to deserve this aid, we need to do our part at home. We need a more balanced approach to closing budget gaps than the destructive plans of Governor Paterson and Mayor Bloomberg, which lay off workers and demolish public services without bringing in any additional revenue. Instead, we are urging the Legislature to close corporate tax loopholes and reinstate the commuter and stock transfer taxes.

Eliminate management fat

We have to make more efficient use of our local resources by eliminating waste, such as the excess layers of management that have multiplied in many city agencies as the frontline civil service workforce has shrunk. And above all, I am telling the mayor and the City Council that no responsible government should even think of laying off dedicated, productive employees without examining the $9 billion a year the city wastes on its 18,000 outside contracts.

I am calling on City Hall to recognize the extraordinary value of our members — from hospital aides to emergency responders, from computer techs to school support workers and clerical staff — who are doing a magnificent job of keeping this city working under difficult conditions. In many agencies, the workforce is down to skeleton crews. For example, even as the recession has driven up the need for Food Stamps, the city has cut the staff.

In good conscience, we cannot lay off these vital workers, and we cannot slash services such as health care and education — not while City Hall continues its massive $9 billion giveaway to private contractors and consultants. The mayor made no effort to reduce this excessive spending as he proposed a budget that would hurt city workers, middle-class communities and the needy. If millions of New Yorkers are to suffer, why shouldn’t his wealthy business friends share the pain?

I am asking the City Council to answer a budget plan that would destroy jobs, careers and services with a careful review of every outside contract. They should block every contract or extension that wastes our taxes or pays consultants more than the city pays similar employees. At a time when the mayor’s plan would hurt their constituents, our elected representatives must take responsibility for eliminating this vast waste and overspending.