Giuliani takes liberties on his NYC record (Certain boasts of fiscal gains exaggerate role)

Boston Globe ^ | November 16, 2007 | Brian C. Mooney

[calcowgirl]

As a presidential candidate, Rudy Giuliani recounts his eight-year stint as mayor of New York City as an era of tax-cutting and welfare-slashing, one long fight to tame the city's bureaucratic behemoth. That's basically true, but Giuliani and his campaign exaggerate some facts and ignore many others to hone the point.

Giuliani often suggests that he alone was responsible for cutting 23 taxes, but seven of those moves were state initiatives, according to the city's Independent Budget Office. Of the remaining 16 tax reductions, Giuliani actually opposed the largest cut, which was due to come with the expiration of a 12 1/2-percent surcharge on the city's personal income tax. Giuliani proposed extending the levy, generator of several hundred million tax dollars a year, but backed down in a clash with the City Council and the tax relief took effect.

Moreover, Giuliani had a large blind spot in his Republican tax-cutting orthodoxy - publicly subsidized stadiums for professional sports teams.

In 1998, he did an about-face on his plan to phase out the nation's only tax on commercial rent and proposed an extension of it to provide almost $600 million to subsidize construction of new stadiums for New York's Major League Baseball teams, the Yankees and Mets. A year later he proposed building a publicly assisted $1 billion domed stadium on Manhattan's West Side to lure back the Jets football team from New Jersey, but did not spell out the amount or source of the city's contribution.

Under Giuliani, the city built ballparks in Staten Island and Coney Island for minor-league affiliates of the Yankees and Mets - at a total cost of about $110 million, the Independent Budget Office calculated.

[CaptainK]

He does not love freedom, only authority

An yet I never felt freer, or safer, to walk the streets of NYC then when he was Mayor.