Layoffs of New York City workers "were not in the cards," Mayor Michael Bloomberg said on Wednesday, a day after announcing another round of severe budget cuts to help close next year's $2.3 billion deficit.
The main reasons why the rumors were going round was because of the severe budget cuts that the NYC had. Also, the collapse of New Work based Wall street giants which has seen almot 50,000 lay offs in the first 8-9 months, has sparked the rumors. The profits are on the dip and banks and investment firms have gone bankrupt. This has costed the city and the state loss of billions of dollars in tax revenues. Then comes the sub-prime mortgage has led to a major slide in the roperty tax collections - the mayor has already said that a 7 percent property tax cut put in place last fiscal year and added again this year may be eliminated in January.
Property taxes are the only taxes the city directly controls, without the need for state government approval.
Bloomberg told reporters addressing any other tax hikes will have to wait until after November because the state legislature would have to approve them.
As per the news from Reuters, "It's an election year in Albany; nobody's even going to consider raising taxes up there," Bloomberg said.
Democratic Gov. David Patterson on Wednesday recalled the legislature to make additional cuts in the state budget.
But the city's fiscal problems are not as severe as in 2002 and 2003, when it was coping with the aftermath of the September 11, 2001 air attacks that steepened an existing downturn, Bloomberg said. That is because the city has already made big budget cuts, putting it ahead of the curve. City commissioners are also much more experienced, he added.
The mayor, an independent who took office in January 2002, inherited a multibillion deficit from his Republican predecessor, Rudolph Giuliani.
No comments:
Post a Comment