As Bill de Blasio Prepares To Leave Office

December 26, 2021 Francis Menton @ Manhattan Contrarian 

Here in New York City, political offices change hands on New Year’s Day. That means that, come Saturday, we will finally be rid of Mayor Bill de Blasio.

De Blasio got a full eight years in office to implement his uber-progressive agenda and finally bring perfect fairness and justice to New York City. He was handed by his predecessor (Mike Bloomberg) a government that did have an unreasonably high level of spending, but still was in relatively good fiscal condition, with crime under control and strong economic growth. With the momentum of the economic growth and a supportive State Legislature and City Council, de Blasio was able to have dramatic increases in revenues, and therefore spending, to achieve his goals. The budget bequeathed to de Blasio by Bloomberg for the fiscal year that ran from July 1, 2013 to June 30, 2014 was $72.9 billion. The current budgeted spending level, running to June 30, 2022, that de Blasio is bequeathing to his successor, is $102.8 billion.

Surely, you will say, for those huge spending increases, de Blasio must have been able to achieve his goals and more. Let’s check in on a couple of de Blasio’s signature issues to see what results he has been able to achieve for the money.

Income inequality

If there was one issue more than any other that defined de Blasio’s run for Mayor back in 2013, it was income inequality. His signature campaign line was that New York was a “tale of two cities,” one rich and the other poor, and that that dichotomy must be ended by his progressive policies. In his first inaugural address, de Blasio called income inequality “the defining challenge of our time.” Surely, then, with all the additional government spending, de Blasio at least made a substantial dent in the City’s income inequality.

Actually, there is no evidence that de Blasio’s progressive policies and blowout spending made any measurable difference at all in income inequality. Granted, the government statistics on this issue come out with substantial lags, so that the most recent figures are a couple of years old. But I can’t think of any reason to believe that the last couple of years of data, when they emerge, will be anything different. The simple fact is that the only thing the government can do to move the income inequality statistics in a meaningful way is to drive away high income earners.

With regard to available data on New York City’s level of income inequality:

• A Manhattan Institute study released in September 2019 found that income inequality in New York City, as measured by Census data and the Gini coefficient, had actually increased slightly since de Blasio took office. “Household income inequality, as measured by the Gini coefficient, was essentially flat, at 0.5504 in 2017 (the latest year for which data are available). Inequality is up slightly since Mayor de Blasio took office in 2014—but not by much. The key point is that income inequality has not declined.”

• From a study by the Citizen’s Committee for Children, October 2020: “New data from the Census Bureau reinforce a disturbing trend: over the last decade, New York City’s income inequality has worsened. The growth of incomes at the top continued to outpace growth at the bottom, expanding the gap between. . . . The pandemic has entrenched extreme inequalities in New York City. Insecurities surrounding employment, health, education and basic safety are affecting many New Yorkers today, but they are disproportionately experienced in communities with the lowest incomes.”

K-12 education

If the increase in overall City spending under de Blasio seems high, the portion of the increase going to public education is completely absurd. In simple terms, under de Blasio the teachers’ union has gotten whatever it wants, from limits on charters, to toxic Critical Race Theory starting in kindergarten, to higher and ever higher spending. From today’s New York Post cover story, headline “Fat Educats”:

In the last seven years under Mayor de Blasio, the DOE’s annual budget has ballooned from $20 billion to a whopping $31.6 billion – the size of Peru’s government spending, according to the city’s Independent Budget Office. That is not counting another $5 billion in pension costs.

I can’t think of any reason why the $5 billion of teacher pension costs is not part of the cost of educating the kids. So the total cost is $36.6 billion. For how many kids? That’s a number that a lot of people have been trying to get out of the Department of Education, as they shuck and jive to avoid disclosing big enrollment drops during the pandemic. Back in May the DOE released what it called an “audited” figure of some 1.094 million kids for school attendance in November 2020. But the Post reported on May 29, 2021:

Enrollment in city public schools has fallen below 890,000 students — down from more than a million kids a decade ago, according to internal Department of Education records viewed by The Post. In late January, DOE officials pegged this year’s enrollment at “approximately 960,000 students” — a 4 percent drop over last year after 43,000 kids exited the system. The latest school registers indicate an additional loss of 70,000 students. 

$36.6 million for 890,000 students would be over $41,000 per student. Educationdata.org gives the national average spending for 2021 as $12,624 per student. In Florida — the state most comparable to New York in population and demographics — the per student spending is $9,616.

But surely for all that spending New York City achieves stellar and sparkling educational outcomes for its students? Get real. In fact, despite all the spending, New York City achieves overall results well below the national average, and particularly poor results for students who are members of minority groups. The best available data come from the NAEP tests, administered by the federal government every two years. Oh, of course the 2021 tests have been postponed to 2022, supposedly due to the pandemic; so the most recent results come from 2019.

Here are the 2019 New York City results for 8th grade students for reading and for math. NYC’s average scores were well below the national average in both categories (for math, NYC students scored an average of 226, versus national average of 240; for reading, NYC average score was 252, versus national average of 262). Particularly embarrassing were the “proficiency” levels achieved in the two subjects by New York City black and Hispanic students. In math, 15% of black students, and 18% of Hispanic students scored “proficient” or better; in reading, it was 14% for blacks and 20% for Hispanics. Both tests are set so that about 50% of students nationwide score “proficient” or above.

According to today’s Post, the new Mayor and his incoming education Chancellor intend to cut at least some of the bloated DOE budget. It’s about time. But the cuts will be far less than the 50% or more that should be on the table.

In upcoming posts I’ll take a look at some other of de Blasio’s big issues, like housing and homelessness. But none of this will surprise anyone who is paying attention. Everywhere you look, it’s more and more spending and no positive results of any kind.