Public Employee Press

POLITICAL ACTION 2012
Locals blast Bloomberg budget

By ALFREDO ALVARADO

The city must adopt a new budget by the beginning of Fiscal Year 2013 on July 1, and several DC 37 local leaders aim to speak out June 6 at a public hearing to blast the mayor's $68.7 billion executive budget proposal and urge the City Council to provide adequate funds.

Some of them explained to PEP what they plan to tell the City Council.

"People who need food stamps sometimes wait up to six hours to be interviewed," said Local 1549 2nd Vice President Ralph Palladino. While the number of New Yorkers applying for food stamps and Medicaid has skyrocketed, staff at the Human Resources Administration has not increased. "The city needs to hire more Eligibility Specialists and reopen the three centers that have been closed."

Local 1549 will also be pressing to replace uniformed employees doing clerical work with civilians at the Police, Fire, Corrections and Sanitation departments and fighting for funds to fill 100 Call Center Representative positions that have been lost through attrition.

Most of the cuts in the budget will hit the Parks Dept., cultural institutions and the Administration for Children's Services and the majority of job losses will be through attrition, although layoffs have been announced at public libraries (see below).

"We're doing more with less, just like everyone," said Brooklyn Library Guild Local 1482 President Eileen Muller, who will be at the hearing. The Brooklyn Public Library could lose $26 million from its budget.

Political leaders joined the union in criticizing the Bloomberg budget. Manhattan Borough President Scott Stringer said the plan is "out of touch with working families" and called on Bloomberg to "stop treating workers as pawns."

"New York will pay the price for these shortsighted budget decisions long after the mayor leaves office," said Public Advocate Bill de Blasio.

Under Bloomberg's budget, up to 47,000 children could lose services in child-care and after-school programs at the Dept. of Youth and Community Development and the Housing Authority, say child advocates.

"In these tough economic times, the last thing we should slash is early education and after-school services that children and hard-working families need to survive," said Queens Borough President Helen Marshall.

"One of the best ways to maintain critical services like day-care, fire protection and libraries is to stop wasting taxpayer funds through subsides to large corporations," said City Comptroller John C. Liu.