The Streets Were Paved with Gold - Ken Auletta [116]
If there is a new middle ground, the Beame administration did not find it. The message implicit in his record $14 billion election-year budget was: Relax, the worst is over. The Koch administration came to office with a different message: the worst was yet to come. Yet, despite Koch’s view that certain contract provisions were “outrageous” and his demand for “give-backs” at the bargaining table, a settlement was tentatively reached with the Transport Workers Union on April 1, 1978, in which the union proudly announced to its members, “We gave nothing back.” This mayor, like others, decided at 3 A.M. that the cost of a devastating transit strike exceeded the approximately 9 percent cost of the new contract. In June, Koch dropped his sixty-one give-back demands and reached a proclaimed 8 percent pay settlement with the citywide Municipal Labor Committee. The Mayor said he felt compelled to settle not so much to avoid a strike as to meet Washington’s demand for a settlement before Congress would take up any city loan legislation. Compared to previous settlements, these were modest. Compared to the city’s proclaimed four-year budget gap, the contracts were extravagant. The city might not be able to afford the overall $1.1 billion extra cost of a two-year labor settlement for all of its workers; yet it felt it couldn’t afford not to settle. At least for a while, Koch’s new administration had achieved “peace in our time.”
*The state legislature, at Mayor Koch’s urging, abolished the 3 commissioners in mid-1978.
*This benefit was won back by the unions in the 1978 contract negotiations.
*The teachers’ bonuses were enlarged in 1978.
Chapter Six
Is New York Unique?
DR. SAMUEL JOHNSON, according to legend, once absconded with a housemaid for a brief holiday. Mrs. Johnson, ever vigilant, followed. As the Doctor and the maid thrashed under a coverlet, Mrs. Johnson burst into the bedroom and exclaimed, “My dear. I am surprised!”
“No, my dear,” corrected her husband. “You are shocked. I am surprised!”
In the jockeying between New York and Washington, each side vies for the role of the shocked wife. Each claims the other is cheating. Most New York officials believe there is a national urban crisis and the city’s afflictions are common and require national solutions. Many in Washington and around the country believe they are unique to New York and require local solutions. New York views itself as a bellwether city; the country views New York as a bastard child. Who is right is as important a question as whether Washington is to blame.
Is New York unique?
Governor Carey thinks not. Addressing the Congress in 1975, Carey capped his plea for seasonal loans by claiming, “I cannot deny that there is a contagion in New York which is about to sweep across the nation. Don’t kill us because we are ill.” A similar thought was expressed by Jack Newfield and Paul Dubrul in their book The Abuse of Power. It was “a myth,” they say, to assume that “New York was different from other cities; it had tried to do too much for its citizens.… New York was the Typhoid Mary of cities.… If New York alone was the victim of this fiscal malady, it must be quarantined.” The polar view is expressed by economist Milton Friedman, who said that “New York is a special case. New York’s lavish spending reflects the most welfare state-oriented electorate in the U.S.”
Who’s right? To unravel this puzzle, let’s isolate seven broad indicators of a city’s life—its social and economic characteristics, government and labor cost, fiscal health, debt and politics.
Social Characteristics
New York’s size is unique. No other American city approaches 7.5 million population (Chicago, the next largest, has about 3.5 million people). And New York’s official