RUDY'S REAL RECORD
Fighting Crime
Under Rudy Giuliani’s leadership as Mayor of the nation’s largest city, murders were cut from 1,946 in 1993 to 649 in 2001, while overall crime – including rapes, assaults, burglary and auto-thefts – fell by an average of 57%. According to the FBI, New York was transformed from the crime capital of the country into the Safest Large City in America, while becoming the global model for excellence in law enforcement. Rudy Giuliani believes that “Public safety is a fundamental civil right…when you reduce crime, you restore people’s freedom.”
Cutting Taxes
Rudy Giuliani cut more taxes than any Mayor in New York City history, reducing or eliminating 23 city taxes, saving individuals and businesses a cumulative $8 billion, while reducing New Yorkers’ tax burden by nearly 20%. By the end of Giuliani’s term in office, New Yorkers enjoyed their lowest tax burden in three decades, along with the creation of approximately 425,000 new private sector jobs.
Fiscal Responsibility
Rudy Giuliani inherited a $2.3 billion dollar budget deficit and turned it into a multi-billion dollar surplus, while cutting taxes and delivering balanced budgets. He cut the number of full-time city workers by more than 20,000 – excluding teachers, firefighters, and police officers – while slowing the growth of government spending to below the rate of inflation.
Welfare Reform
When Rudy Giuliani took office, more than one out of every seven New Yorkers was on welfare, reflecting intergenerational dependency and a weakening of the work ethic. Under his leadership, the City cut welfare rolls by more than 640,000 – to the lowest number since 1966 – eliminating fraud and abuse while turning welfare offices into Job Centers. Rudy Giuliani believes: “At the core of our approach to welfare reform is the basic concept of a social contract—that for every right there is a duty, for every benefit an obligation.”
Improving Education
Rudy Giuliani worked to reform the nation’s largest public school system, with 1.1 million schoolchildren. Under his watch, school funding increased from $8 billion to $12 billion, more than 13,000 new teachers were hired, computers were brought into classrooms and libraries, arts education was permanently restored, and targeted programs were offered to improve literacy and student proficiency in science. At the same time, he insisted on reforms such as an end to social promotion, abolished principal tenure, and created the nation’s first and most generous Charter School Fund. Rudy Giuliani believes that every parent should have “the ability to send their child to the school of their choice, be it public, private, or parochial.”
Quality of Life
When Rudy Giuliani took office, 59% of New Yorkers said they would leave the city the next day if they could, according to a CNN/Time poll. Drawing upon the “Broken Windows” theory of policing, the City cracked down on quality of life crimes such as aggressive panhandling, graffiti, and drug dealing, transforming places like Times Square into safe destinations for theatergoers and sightseers. The City launched an aggressive initiative against drunk drivers, and implemented a ban on sex shops within 500 feet of residential neighborhoods, churches, and schools. In addition, Mayor Giuliani acquired 2,038 acres of new parkland – the most in more than 50 years.
From the Manhattan Institute for Policy Research:
"Even with the tax cuts of the last several years, New York remains by far the most heavily taxed big city in the country."
TAXES: Giuliani did cut the marginal city income tax rates, reducing taxes by some $2.0-billion from 1996-2001, but those cuts only offset the $1.8-billion increase in city income tax rates put in place by Mayor Dinkins a few years earlier. In the end, income taxes were actually cut by a modest $200-million. Freezing the 12.5% surcharge on high wage earners was good, but Giuliani didn't attempt to abolish that surcharge. Nor did Giuliani attempt to make serious permanent changes to the city income tax code. The primary reason Rudy and the City Council agreed to cut taxes, was to make NYCity more appealing to new businesses thinking about locating/relocating to the Big Apple. A smart move, however, Rudy left office with NYCity the highest taxed big city in America, with some of the highest income taxes, property taxes and utility rates in the entire nation.
GOVT SPENDING: From 1997 to 2001, spending under Giuliani went up 32%. More then double the rate of inflation. Rudy left NYCity with a $2.0 billion deficit and a $42-billion debt. Second largest debt after the federal government. Giuliani also added 15,000 new teachers to the city employment rolls. Increasing the membership of two major liberal organizations, the National Education Association (NEA) and the American Federation of Teachers (AFT).
"The scope of government was not reduced at all. The mayor abandoned his most visible initiative in this sphere—the proposed sale of the city hospital system—after a struggle with the unions and defeats in the courts. He did cut costs in social services; even before the new federal welfare reforms took effect in 1997, the city had begun to significantly reduce caseloads. But money saved on social services has only helped to subsidize big increases in other categories. Today the array of social services sponsored and partially funded by the city—from day care to virtually guaranteed housing—is as wide as ever.
"In the final analysis, Mayor Giuliani sought to make the city deliver services more efficiently—not to make the city deliver fewer services. Gains in efficiency were offset, however, by a spike in the costs of outsourced contracts (see point 2 below). Thus, in two areas where inroads might have been made, the city instead failed to reduce spending."
"1. Personnel Increases. In 1995–96, the city entered into a series of collective bargaining agreements with its public-employee unions. In addition to granting pay increases that ended up roughly equaling inflation, the city promised not to lay off any workers for the life of the contracts. These agreements were expected to add $2.2 billion to the budget by fiscal 2001. But that estimate didn’t reckon with renewed growth in the number of city employees. After dipping in Giuliani’s first two years, the full-time headcount rose from 235,069, in June 1996 to over 253,000 by November 2000. Thanks largely to this growth in the workforce, the total increase in personnel service costs since 1995 has been $4 billion.
2. "Outsourced Services. The failure to shrink the scope of city government made it all the more imperative that Mayor Giuliani vastly increase its efficiency. In the attempt to increase productivity, the mayor farmed out some city services to private contractors. But as the number of outsourced contracts doubled under Giuliani, contractual expenses also nearly doubled—from $3 billion to $5.8 billion. While it may be argued that the city saved money by outsourcing these services, the net savings turned out to be marginal at best. In practice, outsourcing proved to be more of a bargaining chip in negotiations with unions than a serious means of pruning expenses."
Hard evidence that Rudy Giuliani was NO fiscal conservative. Another run-of-the-mill NYCity liberal.
What about the massive increase in NYC's debt load?