The Streets Were Paved with Gold - Ken Auletta [24]
Larger, older cities are uneconomical in still another way: they cost more. Ponder, for a moment, the sheer size of New York City. In 1977, it generated 30,000 tons of garbage and other waste daily—more than the combined total of London, Paris and Tokyo. Each day, its public transportation system, which accounts for 29 percent of all mass transit trips in the U.S., carries 3.4 million passengers. The replacement of this equipment alone would cost $27 billion. The city maintains 25,000 acres of parks; 1,956 miles of reservoirs provide 1.4 million gallons of water a day. There are 6,000 miles of sewers, 6,200 miles of streets, 950 public schools, 223 firehouses.
It costs more to feed an elephant. New York City’s population is the size of Sweden’s; its budget is almost equal to India’s. According to the Bureau of the Census, cities of 100,000 to 200,000 people spent an average of $280 per person for local government in 1972–73. Cities of 1 million or more were two and a half times as expensive, costing $681 per person. Thomas Muller of the Urban Institute has calculated the cost of providing basic services to be three times greater in cities of more than 1 million residents than those with fewer than 50,000. This is not just a function of size. The entrenched politics and mismanagement of older cities also contributes to steeper costs.
Mayors lost control of their government. As state and federal aid grew, their control of city budgets diminished. In 1961, state and federal aid accounted for 23.9 percent of New York City’s budget. Ten years later, the figure was up to 44.1 percent. Usually, these aid programs mandated costs on the city; often, they required matching city funds. Since the federal government usually provided 75 percent “free money,” there was a natural inclination to seek more—more programs, more grants, more funds. New York got trapped. When the rate of increase in federal and state aid slowed in the early seventies, the city found it difficult to pare its budget because powerful new constituents were loose and because for each dollar the city cut it could usually save only 25–50¢ of its matching local share. Increased state and federal aid also trapped the city into new borrowing. The bulk of this was reimbursable aid, meaning the city had to raise and spend money in order to qualify for reimbursement. To raise the sums, the city issued revenue anticipation notes (RAN’s). When processing and other delays ensued, however, the notes were rolled over, backing up from year to year. By 1975, according to Mayor Koch’s first budget message, the city had $2.6 billion in RAN’s outstanding against federal and state aid—only part of it the result of fabricated city claims.
Mayors also lost political control. It was politically popular to remove education from “politics,” to set up independent agencies and authorities outside of direct mayoral control. Ironically, mayors gained too much power over their budgets (particularly the art of revenue estimating) as they lost control of their governments. By the early 1970’s, mayors were held responsible for but did not control public and higher education, health care, and transportation; the books of the powerful Port Authority were closed to City Hall review. Social progress led to aroused public expectations and a proliferation of government, community and neighborhood organizations—city, state and federal agencies, local planning boards, community action agencies, neighborhood health councils, PTA’s, church groups, civil rights groups, police precinct councils, senior citizens’ centers, ethnic societies. The growth of government spending and citizen involvement, as well as the influence of television and mass communications, liberated New