Uptown Radio

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Even before the budget was officially announced to the public, city council members expressed disappointment.

“This is a lot of pain that’s been inflicted by Albany and Washington,” said Lewis Fidler, Brooklyn (D). “It’s really not our doing.  We’re going to have to back peddle and fill a lot of holes they inflicted on us.”

A few minutes later, Mayor Bloomberg began his presentation ready for the criticism.

He says the city’s already used two-thirds of its reserve to fill in gaps and will spend the rest next year.

The hot button issue was teachers.

“I’m not trying to lay off teachers,” Bloomberg told the audience.

But he says that’s what will happen.  Some will leave through retirement.  But about 4,100 teachers will leave through the “last in, first out” policy which Bloomberg has said he doesn’t like.

After teachers, the Police department faces the largest cuts, nearly 200 million dollars.

Next comes the fire department, which stands to lose 94 million dollars in funding.

The mayor says he knows fire fighters will find it very tough.

“Two commissioners jobs are to keep bringing down crime and deaths by fire and response rates and to do it with less,” he said.

Bloomberg does stress his total confidence in the two departments.

But Fire Commissioner Salvatore Cassano is concerned.

There’s never a good time to close a fire co, never.” Cassano said after the announcement.  “If it’s twenty and we have to do that by July 1, those notices have to go out next week.”

Fire companies are different from stations.  Several companies can work out of the same station, but cutting twenty companies means 600 fire fighters.

Al Hagan is represents fire department lieutenants, captains and chiefs through the Uniformed Fire Officers Association.

He says the cuts could really hurt the public.

“Fire protection in the city of New York is like a cloth,” Hagan said in a phone interview. “And every company represents a thread in that cloth. When the thread count goes down, the entire fabric becomes weaker.”

Hagan has seen the city talk about cuts before.  Cuts have happened in the past. And at times the city councils stepped in to restore the funds.   But he doesn’t think that will happen this time.

He thinks the mayor is taking the wrong approach to balance the budget, as does James Parrot, a city government expert at the Fiscal Policy Institute.

Parrot says Bloomberg should also look at ways to increase the city’s income.

“There’s so much focus on cutting government and reducing the number of public sector workers at a time when unemployment is very high,” Parrot said Friday.

“Cutting government budgets is only going to make the economic situation worse.”

Parrot acknowledges the mayor faces similar problems seen in other cities across the nation.  A recession where funds are scares and cuts are becoming more common.

Bloomberg now has to convince the city council to pass his plan by July First.  The debate has already begun.

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Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner testified before the Senate Finance Committee last Wednesday. Susan Walsh/AP Photo

Representative Todd Akin, a Republican from Missouri, read about it in the paper. So when Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner was sitting before him at a hearing of the House Budget Committee on Wednesday, he thought he would bring it up.

“It appears from a WSJ article that we’re going to increase the IRS budget by 9.4% and hiring 5,000 or 5,100 agents at the cost of 460 billion dollars,” said Akin.

Its actually 460 million dollars. That puts the total boost to the IRS budget at 1.1 billion dollars. But whatever the numbers it doesn’t make sense to Akin.

“Not to mention the fact that it would make us look better if we didn’t have a goon squad 5000 more IRS agents tromping around the country with the economy the way it is,” said Akin.

“I hope we’re not being reckless about talking about the people who work for as being part of a goon squad,” said Earl .

Blumenauer is a Democratic Representative  from Oregon. Where his colleague sees excess, he sees a need.

“I’ve met with accountants and attorneys in my community who wonder why in the heck we’re not auditing anymore,” said Blumenauer.

Treasury Secretary Geithner told the House Committee why such a budget increase makes sense in hard times.

“All the people that look carefully into how the IRS works say that if you put a dollar carefully into enforcement, customer service things like that, you get more than four dollars back,” said Geithner. “Why is that fair? It’s because by helping people meet their obligations you make sure that other people are baring too heavily the cost of being citizens of the country.”

In Obama’s budget plan, the 5,100, new IRS employees would mostly work in customer service and technical jobs. It should make it easier for Americans to file tax returns.

Eric Toder, co-director of think thank, the Tax Policy Center, agrees that we should beef up enforcement.

“Audit rates are not high in historical terms and there’s huge amount of non-compliance particularly among small businesses,” said Toder. “Most wage earners because of withholding pay virtually all the taxes they owe.”

But coming down on small business could stifle growth. That’s according to Jeff Stier, a Senior Fellow at the National Center for Public Policy Research.

“Its really business that brings us out of recession,” said Stier. ”The best thing government can do is get out of the way and allow business to operate. Rather than hiring more agents breathing down everyone’s neck, perhaps they ought to consider simplifying the tax code.”

Eric Toder, of the Tax Policy Center, says that for now, we need to work with what we have.

“The question of what tax laws should be is really a separate question,” said Toder. “The tax laws now are what they are. If there were a simpler tax code maybe we could have a smaller IRS. But we don’t have that.”

In their budget, Republicans would actually cut the IRS by 1 percent.

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Teacher layouts may affect P.S. 65 in East New York. Larry Tung/Columbia Radio News

New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s new budget proposal has some hard news for public school teachers.  He says he needs to cut more than 6000 of them from the city’s payroll.  That’s about 8 percent of the city’s public school educators.  If the cut actually happens, it would be the biggest teacher layoff since the 1970s.

It’s 3pm – And school’s out for kindergarteners at P.S. 65 in East New York, Brooklyn.

One of their teachers, Luz Paternostro is waiting outside with them until they’re picked up.

A product of New York City public schools, the 22-year-old says she knew she wanted to teach when she was a student at Queens College.

“It’s fascinating to see children learn and to be the person who teaches them because it’s something that they will carry on with their life forever,” said Paternostro. “It makes you feel like you are making a real difference.  You are teaching the future.”

But it is Paternostro’s future that’s uncertain right now.

If the budget passes, about 4600 teachers will be laid off.  And the 1500 that will retire or resign next year….will not be replaced.

New York State law mandates that as the last teacher hired at P.S. 65, Paternostro would be the first one out.

She doesn’t think that’s fair.

“There are other factors that should be considered,” said Paternostro. “There are excellent teacher who have been in the system a long time that definitely should have their jobs.  Just as there are also new teachers who deserve that opportunity to gain that experience that have the same qualities who just perform as well.”

Mayor Bloomberg shares her view.

He first threatened to cut 21 thousand teachers … after New York Governor Andrew Cuomo proposed a massive cut in state funding earlier this month.

Many critics say that was the mayor’s push to abolish this “Last in, first out” law. Bloomberg says it should be changed immediately.

“We have great teachers,” said Bloomberg. “And I want to keep the very best if we have to lay off teachers.”

But determining the best teachers is tricky.

Wendy Glash is the union rep at P.S. 65 and a teacher with 25 years of experience.  She says ratings are very subjective.

“It depends on who your supervisor is,” said Glash.”That will guide your rating. I don’t think that, if you want to lay off people based on those ratings, that that’s a fair and equitable way.”

P.S. 65 is one of the top-rated schools in the district and attracts many students.

But almost half of its teachers have less than 5 years of experience.  So they are in danger to be laid off.

PTA President Karina Cevallos says there are barely enough teachers.

“Imagine more kids in the class,” said Cevallos. ”I don’t know how they are going to deal with it.”

That’s left for P.S. 65’s principal, Daysi Garcia, to deal with. She says the mayor and the teachers’ union have been able to works this out in other years.  

“Whatever tools they use to come to the table to try to make those agreements,” said Garcia. “They do it nicely so far year after year. We haven’t had to cut our teachers.”

The mayor doesn’t want to cut teachers, either.

He will negotiate with the city council and most likely come up with another proposal in May.

The council is supposed to vote on the budget by the end of June, right around the end of the school year.

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During the State of the Union address in January, President Obama said that he knew his budget would require some sacrifices:

“This freeze will require painful cuts,” said President Obama. “Already, we’ve frozen the salaries of hardworking federal employees for the next two years. I’ve proposed cuts to things I care deeply about, like community action programs.”

Those programs are funded in large part by Community Service Block Grants or CSBGs. The grants help groups that provide aid to needy and vulnerable Americans. Under the budget the president proposed on Monday, CSBGs would be cut by 350 Million dollars – or 50 percent. That’s drawn concern from programs that receive the grants.

Every Thursday evening, a group of immigrants crowd a small office space in Washington Heights to study American history.

“We provide free civics classes where we help individuals prepare for the citizenship exam,” said Angela Fernandez.

Until last week, Fernandez was the executive director for the Northern Manhattan Coalition for Immigrant Rights. The group gets just under a fifth of its funding in the form of CSBGs. The Department of Health and Human Services gives CSBG money to the state via the Office of Community Service. State governments then decide how to distribute the money to individual groups. Fernandez says the proposed budget would cut funding at a time when groups like hers need it most.

“Not getting funding from the state is something that we’re going to feel,” said Fernandez.

750,000 New Yorkers would feel it, too. According to the New York State Division of Community Services, that’s how many people received support from CSBG-funded programs last year. New York receives the second largest sum of money for CSBGs. Only California gets more.

David Bradley is the executive director of the National Community Action Foundation.

He says CSBGs fund local programs that provide everything from domestic violence protection to weatherization assistance. And so he has one question for the Obama Administration.

“What particular aspect put it over the line to that made it a program to highlight to attempt to make cut to make this cuts in,” said Bradley.

Budget analyst Tad DeHaven from the CATO institute says that the fact that CSBGs do good things isn’t enough to justify them. He says the grants are wasteful and receive too little oversight.  At the end of the day, he says, decisions about CSBSs are made on the basis of politics and not necessarily sound economics.

“That’s where you get into the examples of waste and abuse and funding for wealthy areas the don’t make a lot of sense,” said DeHaven. “So for instance you now have wealthy towns in Connecticut receiving CSBG money to help building upgrades for a wine bar.”

DeHaven also points to a brewery in Michigan that is receiving CSBG funds for expansion. He said he would rather see funding come from the private sector.

For now, class will continue at the Northern Manhattan Coalition for Immigrant Rights.

If the proposed budget cuts to CSBGs are approved by Congress, non-profits could start seeing effects as soon as March of this year.