Heh - with taxes crossed off, the Rudy supporters are truly one-issue folks now: talking a big game about the War on Terror.
During the boom years of the 1990's .... Revenues went up every single year. So the city was able to maintain an increase in spending right through the end of the decade. Essentially, city and state government could cut taxes and improve services during these growth years, both desirable goals and both things that the public demanded and remember we have a democracy.Unfortunately, when the boom ended and the economic cycle turned south, we were left with a tax structure that provided $3 billion less in revenue every fiscal year than it did at the beginning of the '90s, but with an expense burden almost 70 percent greater than existed back then. Let me repeat those numbers. Our annual tax revenues are $3 billion less per year, our expense 70 percent more over the decade. And the attacks of 9/11 just exacerbated that problem.
-- Mayor Michael Bloomberg December 7, 2002 [source]