Bill de Blasio’s easy victory in the New York municipal election should not be misled: the task that awaits the elected Democrat is immense. Bill de Blasio has promised a lot, yet the room for maneuver left to him by the record of his predecessor, Michael Bloomberg, remains narrow. From January, when Mr. de Blasio took office, a real obstacle course will arise in front of him.
The new mayor has built much of his campaign on the theme of inequalities. Out of 8.3 million inhabitants, New York City has over 400,000 millionaires. But at the same time, 46% of the population lives below or just above the poverty line.
To reduce these inequalities, the Democratic candidate has said he will tackle improving education. Mr. de Blasio thus promised the creation of 68,000 kindergarten places for over 4s and the establishment of a support program for college.
Read the analysis: In New York, rich and poor further apart than ever
INCREASE IN MUNICIPAL INCOME TAX
To finance this measure, he intends to increase the taxation of the wealthiest. Municipal income tax for those earning more than $ 500,000 would drop from 3.8% today to 4.41%. This measure, supposed to bring in 530 million dollars a year, has started to provoke an outcry from the conservative electorate, which emphasizes that the levies weighing on this category of the population, when we add local taxes and federal, already exceeds 50%. One of the highest rates in the United States.
> Read the portrait: Bill de Blasio, the New York agitator
But the main difficulty will be to have this measure approved at the level of the State of New York, a necessary step to touch the local taxation. “We still have a long way to go”, admitted Bill de Blasio during his campaign. One could object that David Dinkins, Rudolph Giuliani and Michael Bloomberg, the three predecessors of Mr. de Blasio, have found a way to overcome the reluctance of the state to increase taxes. But that is precisely the problem: is there still grain to grind, as the midterm federal election looms in fall 2014.
The new mayor will have to show a lot of persuasion with Republicans, but also within his own camp, with the Representative of New York, Andrew Cuomo, who has said he is hostile to raising taxes. Bill de Blasio is convinced that his big win is likely to shake the lines in Albany, the capital of New York State.
SOCIAL BLOCKING AT THE TOWN HALL
Second problem for the new mayor: the question of employment contracts for 300,000 municipal employees. These expired six years ago now, without Michael Bloomberg managing to find a compromise with the unions.
This social blockage is a real time bomb for Bill de Blasio. The arrears of revaluation of salaries represent 7 billion dollars, according to the Municipal Finance Commission. It’s more than the budget deficit, the funding of police and fire departments combined.
If Mr. Bloomberg has stood firm in the face of the demands, his successor finds himself in an even less comfortable position as the unions were among the first supporters of his campaign. Here again, expectations are high. The disappointment may be inversely proportional if M. de Blasio does not give up a little ballast.
A 2 BILLION HOLE IN THE BUDGET
But with what money ? Under Michael Bloomberg’s tenure, the city’s budget soared by more than 33%, excluding inflation, to reach $ 70 billion. Today, New York spends $ 8,700 per capita, double a city like Chicago, and 50% more than Los Angeles. The outgoing mayor thus leaves a hole of 2 billion dollars.
The question which arises is to know how his successor will close the next budgets while his electoral program suggests an increase in spending. This is the case for the construction of 200,000 social housing units. Admittedly, it is at the same time a question of reducing tax exemptions, from which property developers benefited under the previous mandate to build luxury buildings. But this is unlikely to be enough.
Bill de Blasio will therefore have to make choices quickly. Some, like Republicans, but also a sizeable portion of New Yorkers, fear the new mayor will cut corners on police spending. He promised he would change his director, Ray Kelly, for pursuing a discriminatory security policy against ethnic minorities. How deep will the change be in this area? Nobody knows.
But Bill de Blasio will have to act very carefully so as not to call into question the results achieved in crime by Rudolph Giuliani and pursued by Mr Bloomberg. Thanks to them, the number of murders fell to its lowest level in fifty years, making New York the safest of major American cities.
THE RETURN OF THE DEMOCRATS
It has been almost twenty years since a Democrat ruled New York. The last, David Dinkins, left rather bad memories: the city was dirty, run in a calamitous way and the crime was rampant. A catastrophic record that had earned him the front page of New York Post titled: “Dave, do something !”.
Bill de Blasio has promised his constituents to do a lot. He was very good at capturing the frustrations of a part of the population who felt excluded from the gentrification that the city experienced under Bloomberg. If the diagnosis was the correct one to win the election, changing New York now requires the new mayor to find the right treatment, compatible with the city’s finances.
Read the column: Help, the Democrats are back!
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