Budget Passes City Council Vote

NEW YORK—City Council on Wednesday voted 49–1 in favor of the mayor's city budget proposal, which included adjustments suggested by City Council Speaker Christine C. Quinn. Councilman Charles Barron, a known adversary of both Mayor Michael Bloomberg and Quinn, was the only councilor to vote against the proposal.

Barron called it a “budget for the rich” and decried cuts to summer youth jobs and day care, according to Bloomberg News.

“What we did in this budget was identify the areas where the pain that was proposed was simply too deep, where the cuts would have gone in and made damage that was unfixable,” said Quinn.

With the start of a new fiscal year on Friday, the final budget came through with little time to spare. It includes an agreement hammered out last week by Quinn, Bloomberg, and United Federation of Teachers President Michael Mulgrew, which saved more than 4,000 teacher positions from the chopping block.

Approximately 2,600 teaching positions will still be lost through attrition, which critics say will lead to larger class sizes. Mulgrew made $60 million in concessions to strike the deal, including decreasing pay for teachers on study sabbaticals and moving 1,600 teachers from receiving full pay in the Absent Teacher Reserve into substitute teacher positions.

Fire companies slated for closure were also saved in the negotiations. Remaining among the casualties of budget cuts, approximately 1,000 city workers will soon get their pink slips. These employees will be struck from the payroll of the Department of Transportation, the Administration for Children’s Services, and the Department of Parks and Recreation.

The city will spend $2.9 billion more in fiscal year 2012 than it has in fiscal year 2011, with a budget of $66 billion. The deeper cuts originally proposed by the mayor have been filled in with the $3.6 billion surplus from fiscal year 2011 and $700 million from a Retiree Health Benefit Trust. Approximately $1 billion was also shaved off citywide operations.

The city still sits at a $5 billion deficit, said the mayor, mainly due to a decrease in state aid.

Protesters have called for the renewal of the Millionaire's Tax—tax on those making $200,000 or more—to pay for budget shortfalls. The call did not go unheeded, but it remains far from being realized. Councilors Margaret Chin, Jumaane Williams, and Brad Lander at the budget hearing co-sponsored a resolution that calls on Gov. Andrew Cuomo to renew the tax, which expires at the end of the year. Cuomo strongly opposes the tax, however, saying it drives the rich and their capital out of the state.