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By Root 1048 0

1974 and early 1975 undermined confidence in his—and, therefore, the city’s—credibility. He appeared more interested in avoiding blame than solving problems. When a huge budget gap loomed, he acted as if he were a stranger to city government, blaming the $1.5 billion deficit he “inherited” from Lindsay—“If it weren’t for that, we would be in good shape now.” When City Comptroller Harrison Goldin said his budget deficit figure was too low, on December 2, 1974, Beame blamed Goldin for the city’s 9.5 percent interest rate. To reduce the gap, over the next two months Beame separately announced Phase One, Phase Two, and Phase Three of city layoffs. Yet on February 1, he proudly announced that the layoffs had been averted. It almost appeared as if the crisis was over. Two weeks later, Beame projected a $1.7 billion budget gap for the following year. The financial community warned of the need for cuts. In March, Beame said, “Very frankly, I think I’ve done all that can be done without crippling services.” Pressure mounted to cut the budget. Beame responded by blaming callous Republicans in Washington. Then he blamed Albany. Then the banks. Finally, on May 29, before live-TV cameras in the City Council Chamber, he denounced the “conspiracy” fostered by the banks and “editorial columns” to create “an atmosphere of doubt and uncertainty about New York’s securities.” The answer, he declared, was “an immediate Congressional inquiry” into “who started the whispering campaign to denigrate our fiscal integrity.…” His speech was greeted by thunderous applause. Congressman Ben Rosenthal said he would proceed immediately. “Anyone who doesn’t stand by the Mayor in his struggle to avoid these massive layoffs,” intoned Council Majority Leader Thomas Cuite, “I would consider a traitor, in the classical sense.”

Beame and his city cohorts treated the crisis as a public relations problem, as they had always done. On July 7, 1975, after the city had been shut out of the credit market, after the state Municipal Assistance Corporation (MAC) was formed to police city finances, as the city teetered near bankruptcy, Abe Beame sat calmly behind his City Hall desk and told a roomful of reporters that the fiscal crisis was “behind us.” Over the summer, Governor Carey briefly pondered removing Beame from office; by September, the state legislature formed the Emergency Financial Control Board to declare fiscal martial law and advertise to investors that Abe Beame reigned but no longer ruled New York.

The Mayor retained iron control of his emotions, courageously resisting the wounded importunings of his son Buddy that bankruptcy was preferable to humiliation. But the personal pain rankled. The new state overseers sniped at him, disdained him, thought he was in the way. Even after the events of the past year, Beame didn’t understand. He saw himself as working hard, holding late-night meetings at Gracie Mansion, trying his best. He still rose early, made his lists of things to do. He followed through on phone calls and correspondence. He didn’t understand what those people, as he called them, expected of him. Didn’t they know he was working hard? Wasn’t he sacrificing? Didn’t he cut more employees from the city’s payroll than any other mayor in history—and without strikes? Didn’t he sacrifice his old friend Jim Cavanagh when the state and the banks insisted that he be fired? Didn’t he bring in Deputy Mayor John Zuccotti and other capable executives? He was too controlled to say so, but it drove him crazy. The city’s new fiscal rulers expected him to be something he was not. They expected him to be a leader when all his life he had been a survivor, a match for Ambrose Bierce’s definition of perseverance: “A lowly virtue whereby mediocrity achieves an inglorious success.”

“Abe Beame could have done much more much earlier and paid much less,” state Budget Director Peter Goldmark told me in 1975. “In fact, if the city were willing to get honest with its figures last winter and presented a two- or three-year fiscal plan and agreed to limit its borrowing, there