"P.S. New York City had a sizeable budget deficit when Rudy Giuliani left office."
That was because of 9/11. In the late 1990s they had a surplus after having a deficit for many many years.
Total and complete bullsh!t (I'll explain this below). The Federal government dumped a massive pile of cash on the City of New York after 9/11, which means 9/11 probably had a positive effect on the city's economy from a purely financial standpoint.
In the late 1990s they had a surplus after having a deficit for many many years.
That's exactly right. Because New York City has a municipal income tax, the deficits and surpluses track almost perfectly with the performance of the economic sector in which most of the city's high-income taxpayers work: financial services. New York City typically has surpluses when tax collections are high (i.e., when the U.S. stock market is doing well, and when merger/acquisition activity among major U.S. corporations is high), and has deficits when the stock market is doing poorly and when M&A activity is low. New York City didn't have a steep deficit at the end of 2001 because of 9/11 . . . it had a steep deficit because the stock market had declined in 2000 and 2001. And NYC didn't have a huge surplus in the late 1990s because of any kind of exceptional fiscal management by Rudy Giuliani -- but because the U.S. stock market was climbing on a near-constant basis from 1995-2000.