RUTHFULLY YOURS

On January 1, 2021, our progressive true-believer mayor, Bill de Blasio, began his eighth year in office. Since he is limited to two terms under current law, this will be his last year, unless something changes. Now that another crowd of progressive true-believers has just swept to power in Washington, it seems like an appropriate time to look at how the seven years of super-progressive government have served us in New York.

Recall that when de Blasio became Mayor in January 2014, he followed 20 years of at least nominally Republican mayors, Rudy Giuliani (1994-2001) and Mike Bloomberg (2002-2013). Those 20 years saw dramatic improvements in New York City’s fortunes, including reductions in crime (the murder rate, for example, fell by over 80%), and resumption of a healthy rate of population increase after previous declines. Would the progressive de Blasio instead bring about some kind of immediate disaster and collapse?

For better or worse, that’s not really how it works with bad progressive public policy. Instead of immediate disaster and collapse, what we see is gradual but steady decline, particularly when compared to other jurisdictions that follow policies of, for example, lower taxing and spending and disciplined law enforcement. Thus, in a post on November 4, 2013 — the day before the Election Day on which de Blasio was elected — I made this prediction:

The good news is that even the worst left-wing policies do not lead to immediate economic collapse, but rather to slow gradual decline. It took decades of Rockefeller/Wagner/Lindsay overtaxing and overspending before New York City lost 10% of its population in the 1970s. . . .

So on to an overview of de Blasio’s “accomplishments.”

Policy Summary

The short version is that it has been somewhat less bad than it could have been. On the other hand, the last year has seen some serious doubling down, the results of which have not yet become visible in the data.

• Taxes. The City income tax is controlled by the state legislature and the governor. Despite repeated requests by de Blasio for rate increases, there have been none, mostly due to opposition of the governor. Meanwhile, property tax revenues have greatly increased, from under $19 billion in 2014 to almost $31 billion in the current fiscal year, almost entirely due to increase in property values rather than rate increases. The biggest issue on the tax front is that New York City and State have refused to recognize the problem brought about by the federal limits on deductibility of state and local taxes, which took effect in 2018. At both City and State levels, New York has demanded federal bailouts and repeal of the SALT deduction limits, of which the first has only partly occurred, and the second not at all. The SALT limit has put New York at a much enhanced disadvantage relative to lower tax jurisdictions, but there has been no move at all to lower taxes to compensate. Current bills in the state legislature seek large increases in income taxes on high earners.

• Spending. City government expenditures went from about $73 billion in 2014 to $94 billion in 2020. In a time of little to no inflation, these were blowout increases, supported by relatively strong economic growth until the pandemic hit.

• Policing and crime. After the crime rate remained low for the first five years of the de Blasio mayoralty, the Mayor and allies in the state legislature took the opportunity in 2019 and 2020 to enact major criminal justice “reforms” — most notably, the 2019 elimination of ability of judges to impose bail for all but a small number of the most violent crimes — and a cut of about $1 billion (16%) to the budget of the NYC Police Department.

• Schools. PreK-12 education in New York City is fully under the control of the Mayor. Mayor de Blasio and his schools chancellor (Carranza) have used their power to fully impose a curriculum of supposedly fighting “racism” and “white supremacy” (in a system where only about 15% of the students are white). The Mayor has has also fought school choice and charter schools tooth and nail, and has completely caved to the teachers union in keeping schools almost entirely closed for in-person learning during the pandemic.

• Pandemic. New York — mostly at the behest of the governor, but to some degree at the behest of the mayor — has had one of the stricter lockdown regimes among all states and cities. Currently, all restaurants are closed for indoor dining (go ahead and dine outdoors in February with two feet of snow on the ground if you dare!), and all cultural events and sporting events are similarly shuttered.

• Rent regulation and eviction moratoriums. In 2019, the state legislature — at de Blasio’s request — made the rent regulation regime permanent, and also made it far more difficult to remove apartments from the system after vacancies or upgrades. 2020 has seen pandemic-related eviction moratoriums instituted and then repeatedly extended.

Results

In summary, this is what gradual relative decline looks like. Since several of the worst policies — for example, restrictions on policing, tightening of rent increase restrictions, and eviction moratoriums — only went into effect recently, expect the pace of decline to quicken.

• Population. Per Census data, New York City’s population grew substantially from 7.332 million in 1990, to 8.008 million in 2000, and then to 8.175 million in 2010. Then, after de Blasio became Mayor, the City’s population hit a peak of 8.469 million in 2016, and has declined since. The most recent figure is 8.337 million for 2019, and there is word of another substantial decline soon to be announced for 2020. New York State also has lost population at an accelerating rate in the last several years, including a loss of some 126,000, or 0.65%, in just the one year from 2019 to 2020. New York City’s website attributes the loss of population to declining immigration from abroad, but meanwhile, low tax Florida, which only passed New York State in population in 2014, has seen its population increase by almost 10% just since then. It’s clear that being uncompetitive in taxes and costs is a rapidly increasing problem for New York, both City and State, completely unrecognized by the politicians.

• Crime. For the first several years of de Blasio’s mayoralty, crime remained relatively stable. But with the policing “reforms” of 2019, along with rounds of protests and rioting, plus attacks on the police and a reduced police budget, crime has suddenly soared in the past two years. Essentially, the fruits of decades of hard work to get crime under control are now being squandered. The number of murders, which hit a low of 290 in 2017, went to 319 in 2019, and then 462 in 2020. Shootings more than doubled from 2019 to 2020, from 923 to 1868.

• Pandemic. As our reward for submitting to strict “lockdowns” from our progressive Mayor and Governor, we have a rate of deaths per million population almost double that of wide-open Florida. For the City, we also have an unemployment rate most recently (December 2020) reported at 11.4%, well above the national average of 6.7%, and even farther above that of Florida and other open states like South Dakota and Nebraska. The extra unemployment consists almost entirely of people intentionally put out of work by government edict, which however has had no discernible effect in improving results against the pandemic.

• Schools. The combination of explicitly racist school instruction plus unionized teachers refusing to show up in the pandemic has caused a sudden acceleration of flight from the regular public schools of anyone who can get out. The New York Post reported today on dramatic increases in charter school enrollment for the current school year, and equally dramatic decreases in enrollment in the regular public schools: “Parent demand for charter school seats has intensified during the COVID-19 pandemic, new data shows. Sector enrollment increased by 10,000 students this year — compared to a 43,000 drop at traditional public schools, according to the New York City Charter School Center. Overall, the number of charter kids went from 128,951 last year to 138,613 this year — a 7 percent hike, according to the numbers. By contrast, Department of Education enrollment has dropped by 4 percent this year.” Other reports have noted a similar surge in home schooling. It’s either that or have your five year old instructed by remote learning that he is a “white supremacist.”

• Real estate. Crain’s New York Business reports in its current issue (behind pay wall) as to the results of the new rent regulation and eviction restrictions, plus the pandemic, on residential real estate in the City: “New York’s apartment investors are suddenly waist-deep in distress. By December, they were behind on $395 million in debt backed by mortgage bonds, almost 150 times the level a year earlier, according to Trepp data on commercial mortgage-backed securities. Tenants in rent-stabilized units owe at least $1 billion in rent, and wealthier ones are fleeing the city, leaving behind vacancies and pushing newly-built luxury towers into foreclosure.” Oh well, it will probably be many years before these trends show up in the form of entire neighborhoods of run-down and abandoned buildings like we had back in the seventies.

Can they make things any worse? Well, there’s this: In his annual “State of the City” speech on January 31, de Blasio apparently announced that New York City will ban all new natural gas hookups for homes and office buildings starting in 2030. FixThisNation quotes the mayor as follows: “We need to make clear that New York City will renounce fossil fuels fully. Therefore, we need to ban fossil fuel connections in the city by the end of this decade, literally ensuring that our only choice is renewable energy.” I guess we’re really going to show China and their hundreds of new coal plants by making New Yorkers freeze in their beds on calm winter nights. But the effects will only show up gradually, and starting in 10 years. By that time de Blasio will be long gone. Only his legacy of decline will live on.