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Outgoing NYC Mayor Bloomberg Warns De Blasio of Skyrocketing Costs and Labor Contracts

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Mayor Bloomberg and his successor Bill de Blasio in a friendlier moment.
Mayor Bloomberg and his successor Bill de Blasio in a friendlier moment.
While giving his last major speech on Wednesday December 18, before leaving office, Mayor Michael Bloomberg took the opportunity to give Mayor-elect Bill De Blasio some unsolicited, and alarming advice. He told his successor that he has a “once in a generation” opportunity to cut the city’s swelling employee pension and health care costs. He also advised de Blasio to take a tough stance city workers unions, according to the New York Daily News and Crain’s New York.

The increasing costs, he reportedly said, are a crisis waiting to happen that threaten New York and cities across the country.

“Our country appears to be in the early stages of a growing fiscal crisis that – if nothing is done – will extract a terrible toll on the next generation,” he reportedly said. following this statement he explained that “the city has spent $68 billion on pensions during his administration – 13 times what it spent on affordable housing,” according to the Daily News.

The speech was given at the Economic Club of New York in Manhattan as part of a five-borough farewell tour last week. According to Crain’s, Bloomberg said that budgetary pressures made it difficult to offer municipal employees competitive salaries, which is putting the city in a “fiscal straight jacket” by limiting the money the city can spend for vital services.

Bloomberg also pointed to city unions, saying they “have resisted moving away from defined benefit pensions or requiring city workers to contribute to their health care premiums,” according to the News.

Bloomberg blamed a “labor-electoral complex” for blocking changes – and said de Blasio must not succumb to it.

“We cannot afford for our elected officials to put their own futures ahead of the next generation’s, and to continue perpetuating a labor-electoral complex that is undermining our collective future,” he reportedly said.

Bloomberg said that de Blasio must tackle the benefit reform that he has been unable to pull off.

All city worker contracts are currently expired. Bloomberg vowed not to sign any contracts with pay raises unless they also included cost savings on benefits – and ended up signing no contracts at all.

But Bloomberg said de Blasio will be in a stronger negotiating position than he was.

According to Crain’s, the administration has said retroactive pay raises would cost $7 billion. Pension costs already take up a hefty portion of the city’s budget. The city’s pension costs increased last year to $8.4 billion from $1.5 billion in 2002.

The city’s major public sector unions did not endorse de Blasio’s candidacy, which some view as granting him greater independence to drive a hard bargain.

In response to the speech, the Daily News Reported de Blasio’s response:

“I think he’s just cementing his legacy,” de Blasio went on. “He can give speeches and that’s his right. We’re the ones that will have to resolve them.”

Harry Nespoli, chair of the Municipal Labor Committee, said it was “unfortunate that Mayor Bloomberg would use his last few days in office to blame unions yet again for the failure of his own Administration.

“Unlike the private sector where workers jump from job to job and have higher pay, our municipal workers spend their entire professional lives working for the city knowing that they will be able to have a secure retirement. Pensions are at the heart of that commitment. Does he really believe there is something wrong with a City employee having adequate healthcare and a reasonable pension after 25-30 years of serving the public?” he said. “As Mayor Bloomberg goes off into his retirement, he should realize that others who have worked just as hard deserve it as well.”

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