Shiloh
Editor, Senior Moderator
Source: https://finance.yahoo.com/news/york-city-day-reckoning-hand-103054768.html
New York City’s Day of Reckoning Is at Hand
Timothy L. O'Brien and Nir Kaissar
BloombergSeptember 14, 2020
New York City’s Day of Reckoning Is at Hand
(Bloomberg Opinion) -- A large group of New York business leaders, all with pedigrees and some of them well-known, sent up a flare over City Hall late last week.
“Despite New York’s success in containing the coronavirus, unprecedented numbers of New Yorkers are unemployed, facing homelessness, or otherwise at risk,” they noted in a letter to Mayor Bill de Blasio. “There is widespread anxiety over public safety, cleanliness and other quality of life issues that are contributing to deteriorating conditions in commercial districts and neighborhoods across the five boroughs.”
“We urge you to take immediate action to restore essential services as a necessary precursor for solving the city’s longer term, complex, economic challenges,” they added. “We look forward to your response and to partnering with you and others who share a commitment to a vibrant recovery and a great future for our city.”
De Blasio, presiding over a city with divergent views among residents about how dire conditions actually are, responded on Twitter: “We’re grateful for our business community and are partnering to rebuild a fairer, better city. Let’s be clear: To restore city services and save jobs, we need long term borrowing and a federal stimulus — we need these leaders to join the fight to move the City forward.”
What’s next? It’s unclear. And that’s dangerous.
If de Blasio is hoping for Washington to ride to his rescue, he may have a very long wait, even if the White House changes hands. Congress has been unable to engineer another round of public funding to fill the void left by the expiration of last spring’s CARES Act, which pumped trillions of dollars into the hands of families, workers, businesses and public institutions.
New York’s $88.1 billion budget for fiscal 2020, approved in July, is $5 billion lighter than last year’s and reflects cuts made to wrestle with a $9 billion revenue shortfall caused by economic fallout from the coronavirus lockdown. If the local economy worsens in coming months, and the downturn drags on well beyond that, the city is going to have escalating challenges keeping its coffers full. A range of services — from public health, sanitation, social services and education to policing, firefighting and public transit — will be hurt.
If the business community’s traditional antipathy toward higher taxes and a more forceful government hand leaves it on the sidelines, it won’t be able to help forge public-private partnerships that could help New York surmount an epic existential crisis that threatens their bottom lines and their employees’ well-being.
The business group that sent the letter to de Blasio, Partnership for New York City, has been at odds with the mayor recently, friction informed by years of mutual distrust...
New York City’s Day of Reckoning Is at Hand
Timothy L. O'Brien and Nir Kaissar
BloombergSeptember 14, 2020
New York City’s Day of Reckoning Is at Hand
(Bloomberg Opinion) -- A large group of New York business leaders, all with pedigrees and some of them well-known, sent up a flare over City Hall late last week.
“Despite New York’s success in containing the coronavirus, unprecedented numbers of New Yorkers are unemployed, facing homelessness, or otherwise at risk,” they noted in a letter to Mayor Bill de Blasio. “There is widespread anxiety over public safety, cleanliness and other quality of life issues that are contributing to deteriorating conditions in commercial districts and neighborhoods across the five boroughs.”
“We urge you to take immediate action to restore essential services as a necessary precursor for solving the city’s longer term, complex, economic challenges,” they added. “We look forward to your response and to partnering with you and others who share a commitment to a vibrant recovery and a great future for our city.”
De Blasio, presiding over a city with divergent views among residents about how dire conditions actually are, responded on Twitter: “We’re grateful for our business community and are partnering to rebuild a fairer, better city. Let’s be clear: To restore city services and save jobs, we need long term borrowing and a federal stimulus — we need these leaders to join the fight to move the City forward.”
What’s next? It’s unclear. And that’s dangerous.
If de Blasio is hoping for Washington to ride to his rescue, he may have a very long wait, even if the White House changes hands. Congress has been unable to engineer another round of public funding to fill the void left by the expiration of last spring’s CARES Act, which pumped trillions of dollars into the hands of families, workers, businesses and public institutions.
New York’s $88.1 billion budget for fiscal 2020, approved in July, is $5 billion lighter than last year’s and reflects cuts made to wrestle with a $9 billion revenue shortfall caused by economic fallout from the coronavirus lockdown. If the local economy worsens in coming months, and the downturn drags on well beyond that, the city is going to have escalating challenges keeping its coffers full. A range of services — from public health, sanitation, social services and education to policing, firefighting and public transit — will be hurt.
If the business community’s traditional antipathy toward higher taxes and a more forceful government hand leaves it on the sidelines, it won’t be able to help forge public-private partnerships that could help New York surmount an epic existential crisis that threatens their bottom lines and their employees’ well-being.
The business group that sent the letter to de Blasio, Partnership for New York City, has been at odds with the mayor recently, friction informed by years of mutual distrust...
