New York City/state
As cash rolls in, they cut services
By G. Dunkel
New York
The city and state of New York are flush. The
boom on Wall Street has leaked so much money into government
tax receipts that they ran a budget surplus in 1998 and expect
another in 1999.
The state's budget surplus in its last fiscal
year was $1.7 billion; the city's surplus was $1.6 billion.
Yet Mayor Rudolph Giuliani announced budget
cuts of $561 million--that's over half a billion--out of a
budget of $34.5 billion. Gov. George Pataki, whose budget is
$73 billion, announced that educational aid to the city would
be significantly sliced. Pataki will pay only $17 million out
of $700 million of state aid that is past due. The projected
increase in state aid to education will go to the suburbs and
rural upstate areas.
The cuts are all in social services--child
care, after-school youth programs, libraries, AIDS prevention
and education, Medicaid reimbursement. They are all programs
aimed at helping people solve their practical problems, enjoy
themselves, learn or enrich their lives.
The major new spending program in the city will
be for a new West Side stadium on the Manhattan waterfront and
improvements to New York's transportation required for the
stadium.
This will be a huge, multi-billion-dollar gift
to sports billionaires and entertainment moguls--George
Steinbrenner's ilk--who dominate New York's second-largest
industry. Entertainment and culture here come in second only to
finance, symbolized by Wall Street.
Why are social services cut in boom times as
well as bad? Giuliani and Pataki have a glib answer. They say,
"We have to save for a rainy day."
In reality, an attack on workers
At the same time Giuliani was announcing next
year's budget, a suit against his Human Resources
Administration was being settled. The city government admitted
it had broken federal laws in the new "job centers" that have
replaced welfare offices.
So-called financial advisers--a new name for
people who used to be called caseworkers--have cut back on the
city's welfare load by refusing to give out applications. If an
applicant came in after 11 a.m., didn't bring her husband, or
didn't have all the necessary papers, they advised her to
either go to a food pantry or go hungry.
They also deliberately misled people into
withdrawing food stamp applications, which should be made
available even if welfare is denied.
This deliberate denial of benefits violates a
federal law that says applications must be given out
promptly.
These admittedly illegal acts were a planned,
deliberate program put into place after Giuliani hired Jason
Turner from Wisconsin to head the HRA. Turner is responsible
for Wisconsin's plan to eradicate welfare by dumping people off
the rolls.
On Feb. 6, Giuliani boasted to the Daily News,
"The City of New York has reduced its welfare rolls more than
any [city] in the country." He is really saying that attacking
workers, cutting back on programs that help them, or cutting
them out completely, is a national policy. And he is doing it
better than anybody else.
This article is copyright under a Creative
Commons License.
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