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By Root 1087 0

enjoys its own vast City University and provided its students with free tuition. No other city offered the same poor and middle-income housing subsidies. No other city has such an extensive municipal hospital system. No other city so richly supplements its welfare and Medicaid benefits. According to the Temporary Commission, New York’s per-person spending for higher education was $64—three times the $21 average of the twenty-five major cities. San Francisco, in second place, averaged half what New York spent per person for health and hospitals. New York’s perperson welfare costs were $338—five times the $67 averaged by local governments in major metropolitan areas.

Many of these costs were not imposed on the city. Rather, the city elected to make them. Some, admittedly, result from the failure of New York State to assume costs that other states or counties do. Cook County assumes much of Chicago’s health costs. Many states pay for local court and welfare costs. The Temporary Commission found, for example, that New York City’s 25 percent share of Aid to Families with Dependent Children was unique. Ten of twelve cities surveyed paid nothing (New York City paid $270 million in 1975). The only city approaching New York’s burden was Newark, which paid just 12 percent of the cost. Only six other states require any local contribution for public assistance; only 13 require a local contribution for Medicaid. If just these two costs were assumed by the state government, the city would have saved $1 billion in 1978—almost enough to truly balance that year’s budget.

New York’s welfare costs stand out, though not to the extent they used to. Between 1964 and 1974, New York’s welfare costs multiplied seven times, more rapidly than those of any other city. Through 1975, the city provided the most generous welfare payments in the U.S. Since July 1, 1974, the state has frozen benefits and cracked down on ineligibility. Still, in 1977, New York remained at or near the top in both the level of payments and the percentage of ineligibles, though its ranking would drop if its 8 percent higher cost of living for poor people were taken into account. New York ranked 1st in the nation in June 1977 in Aid to Families with Dependent Children, according to Florence Aitchison, Acting Assistant HEW Regional Commissioner. The state spent an average of $113 per person per month, followed closely by Alaska ($111) and Hawaii ($110). After these three states, the gap widened. The number four state was California ($97). Illinois averaged $78; New Jersey; $81; Texas, $32. The national average per person was $75—60 percent below New York’s.

New York’s Medicaid payments are also uniquely high. In fiscal 1976, according to Seymour Budoff of HEW’s Bureau of Medicaid Assistance, New York’s average payment per low-income person was $1,780—more than twice the national average ($730). The second-ranking state was Massachusetts ($1,310), which spent 36 percent less than New York. In the third major welfare category—the Supplementary Security Income (SSI) program for the aged, blind and disabled—New York ranked second. California granted the fattest benefits ($179.89 per person in February 1978). New York’s $146.89 exceeded by 70 percent the national average of $87.48. But only four states require their local governments to pick up part of these costs, and in fiscal 1978 New York City expended $81.4 million for SSI. (New York State agreed in 1978 to assume the city’s share if the federal government continued countercyclical aid, but the Congress terminated the program in 1978.)

For the same functions performed by other city governments—called common functions—New York ranks high, but not as consistently high as for variable functions. For the delivery of basic housekeeping services, the Temporary Commission found that in fiscal 1974 New York ranked 4th, spending $232 per person. First was Washington, D.C. ($369), followed by Baltimore ($290) and Seattle ($245). But the Commission warned that these Census figures omitted pension costs, which are high in New York. They