New York City Budget

New York City's budget function is a split calendar year process (Birger, 1996, p. 11). Thus, the budget developed in the first-half of 1996 will finances the functioning of city departments for the last-half of 1996 and the first-half of 1997. Thus, the budget enacted in early-1996 is the 1997 budget. For the 1997 budget, the Giuliani administration is considering reducing the city's police force by 1,000 officers in order to help close a $2 billion budget gap. Considered also were funding reductions in the budgets for transit and education (Birger, 1996, p. 11).

Although New York city has had larger budget deficits in the past, the problems appear to be more intractable in the contemporary period because of the severe budget reductions effected by city administrations since the mid-1980s. New York City, however, it not permitted legally to incur a budgetary deficit. Therefore, cuts will be made to assure that the city's budget remains imbalance. The city's annual budget problems also cause investors in municipal bonds to become nervous, which in turn, can intensify the city's budget problems (Birger, 1996, p. 11).

The city administration does not have a great deal of flexibility in how the budget can be pared. On the labor side, the city has already reached agreements with the unions to protect jobs, including teachers and other school employees. Thus, budget cuts must come from maintenance, constr

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electrical systems that can support the sophisticated thermal conditions required by computers" (Goode, 1995, p. 14). New York taxpayers, however, tend to take a jaundiced view of such pleadings, believing that the board of education tends to look to the interests of teachers' unions more so than to the interests of either students or taxpayers. Defenders of the education establishment contend that: "Boards of education are doing a fairly difficult job. The bottom line is, the cost of education is expensive" (Moynahan, 1995a, p. 1). New York taxpayers also tend to be disgusted with the products of the school system. While public education costs continue to escalate, many high school graduates end up in college remedial programs because they are unable to work at the college-level. And with the recent re-calibration of Scholastic Aptitude Test (SAT) scores, boosting them 100 points, observers wonder if public schools are making the grade" (Moynahan, 1995b, p. 1). According to the New York State Education Department, "from July 1991 to June 1992, 24%, or 246,070 students enrolled in colleges and universities, were in remedial classes" (Moynahan, 1995b, p. 1). Although the New York State Education Department found that 199
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Approximate Pages = 7 (250 words per page)

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