Bloomberg to call for more spending cuts, layoffs

Friday will detail more than $300 million in additional spending cuts and hundreds of layoffs as he presents his final executive budget proposal for the upcoming fiscal year.

The job reductions and millions in budget cuts to city agencies across the board has been expected for months.

In January, Bloomberg's preliminary budget presentation showed a bleak financial forecast that city officials predicted would worsen in the wake of a national fiscal crisis.

Bloomberg is expected to propose $324 million in additional cuts in spending to balance the fiscal 2010 budget, which begins July 1, an administrative official said. The cut is on top of more than $3 billion already slashed to help fill the widening gulf in the 2010 spending plan.


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Bloomberg is also shrinking the city's workforce by more than 3,700, the official said.

Teachers, police officers, firefighters and other uniformed service members will be spared from the proposed layoffs.

"The latest round of cuts are going to be difficult for every agency to make," Bloomberg said Thursday after an unrelated news conference at police headquarters in lower Manhattan. "There's no easy choices here. What we have to do is come up with the cuts that don't jeopardize the quality of life but we certainly can't continue to do everything we've done in the past."

Bloomberg, who is seeking a third term, is presenting his final executive budget noon Friday at City Hall.

The mayor's preliminary budget plan for fiscal 2010 in January showed a $4-billion-deficit - nearly three times the $1.3-billion gap earlier projected in November. At the time, Bloomberg pointed out Wall Street's projected losses of nearly $50 billion for 2008 and at least $10.4 billion this year had a deep fiscal impact on New York City jobs.

The city projected nearly 300,000 jobs will be lost through 2010 with 46,000 coming from the financial sector alone. Those job losses will be felt in households in Nassau and Suffolk counties.

About 20 percent of Long Islanders travel to the city to work and they provide at least 30 percent of the income among Long Island households, according to the Long Island Association, a trade group for local businesses.

Bloomberg is also expected to tweak his original city sales tax proposal to help with budget shortages. In January, he proposed it be increased to 8.625 from 8.375.

Weeks of negotiations between the Bloomberg administration and the City Council are expected before the 51-member council approves his budget. link...