The Streets Were Paved with Gold - Ken Auletta [151]
Mayor Wagner wasn’t being a leader when he muddled his way out of crises and commenced deficit financing; neither was John Lindsay when he surrendered huge labor settlements and accelerated local spending while the economy declined; or Abe Beame when he ballooned short-term debt and treated the gathering fiscal storm as if it were a public relations crisis; or Nelson Rockefeller when he crafted “moral obligation” bonds and approved or winked at city budget gimmicks; nor a generation of city and state politicians who spent, borrowed and taxed more than the city could afford.
After a two-year study of the city, the Temporary Commission on City Finances concluded its 17th and “Final Report” with this observation:
Each of the policy areas … evidences a common trend, the proclivity of the City to engage in policies and practices that were inconsistent with rather obvious long-term needs. Taxes were raised beyond the point of economic rationality and helped drive out mobile businesses and individuals; debt was issued beyond the capacity of the market to absorb it at competitive rates and ultimately, to absorb it at all; salaries and benefits were negotiated beyond the capacity of the local government to finance the increases except by reducing the work force, cutting essential public services, and worsening the quality of life in New York City. In each instance, it clearly was in the short-run interest of City officials (and City employees and creditors as well) to pursue policies that were destructive to the future. If the fiscal crisis proves anything, it is that short-term and long-term needs are not always consistent.
To excuse these leaders is to accept the assumption that no one is responsible for their acts, that we are all victims. On this point, at least, two opposing devil theories of the fiscal crisis merge. One—advanced by Beame and others—argues that the fiscal crisis proves the city is ungovernable, the victim of social and historical forces beyond its control; the other—advanced by the left—argues that the city is the victim of Washington or the banks. Both implicitly assume there is little New York could do for itself. Both accept what might be called the trapped insect theory—offering moral support to public officials who spend careers avoiding blame.
Long after he had left City Hall and after spending a tranquil summer in England reading Anthony Trollope, former Deputy Mayor John Zuccotti shared a drink with me and reflected on his time in City Hall. Did politics explain many of the bad decisions made by New York over the years? He thought a while, looking rested but older than his forty years.
“It’s hard to generalize,” he said. “I suppose you could say New York tried to do too much, and possibly for the wrong reasons. It’s fair to say New York tried to solve its social problems. On the other hand, officials tried to help their own political position. It wasn’t all for uplifting moral reasons. They were trying to get votes.… There’s nothing surprising about it. If you read Trollope, you know it’s the oldest game in the world.”
Chapter Nine
Liberalism’s Vietnam
IF politics IS THE MELODY of the fiscal crisis, liberalism provides the chorus. New York City is liberalism’s Vietnam. Their traditional weapons—more money, more programs, more taxes, more borrowing—didn’t work here; just as more troops, more bombs, more interdiction, more pacification programs didn’t work there. And as that miserable war should have instructed military adventurists on the limits of American power, New York’s fiscal war, unavoidably, teaches the limits of government intervention.
The domino theory did work in New York. Goaded by liberalism’s compassion and ideological commitment to the redistribution of wealth, New York officials helped redistribute much of the tax base and thousands of jobs out of New York.
Yes, the city was, to some extent, the victim of federal policies, of historical and migratory