By LILLIAN ROBERTS
Executive Director
District Council 37, AFSCME

Falling revenue has torn gaping holes in our city and state budgets, but our mayor and governor are wearing blinkers. They are narrowly focused on the spending side of their fiscal plans and are not looking at the revenue possibilities. Their proposed budgets would slash spending through billions of dollars of cuts in jobs and public services — cuts that are unwise, unjust and unnecessary.

The deep and devastating cuts would chop hospital and school funding, raise subway and commuter rail fares, deprive vulnerable students of drug and alcohol counselors, shut free school dental clinics, cut ambulance service, contract out programs for seniors and youth and eliminate thousands of jobs (see details).

I urge every member of District Council 37 to fight back with me to defend our health care, our schools and our jobs. Join the huge labor and community rally against the cuts and layoffs at City Hall at 4 p.m. on March 5. And participate in the mighty union lobbying effort on March 31 in Albany, where we will press the Legislature to cancel the worst cuts and support public services with fair taxation (see details).

The mayor and the governor are asking for everyone to share the sacrifice except the ones who can best afford to pay, the richest New Yorkers.

I cannot see depriving the growing numbers of uninsured people of health care or letting teenagers fall into drug dependence, when modest tax increases for those who can afford it could replace these cuts. I cannot see throwing dedicated public servants out of work instead of asking for a reasonable contribution from the extremely wealthy New Yorkers who can well afford to shoulder their fair share of the burden.

After eight years of tax giveaways to the rich, the American people voted for change. They voted to get rid of those who said “government is the problem, not the solution,” and left us with millions of families thrown out of their homes and millions of breadwinners thrown out of work.

As Obama tries to save jobs, NY pols would wipe them out
Did our city and state leaders learn nothing? Their spending cuts would slow economic activity at a time when we need a speedup. Their budgetary attacks on the working class, the middle class and the poor are the exact opposite of what President Obama is trying to do. He is going all out to save jobs while they are wiping out jobs. I agree with the president that we must invest in one another and build up services like hospitals and schools that only government can provide.

I ask the mayor and governor to take a serious look at the modest tax increases I am talking of The Fair Share Tax Bill proposed by progressive legislators in Albany would raise rates by less than 1½ percent on those with incomes over $250,000. It would cost someone making $300,000 per year — who brings home almost $6,000 a week — just $88 a week more (see details). Yet it would bring in $6 billion.
The fair tax plan would simply ask the people who got all the tax breaks under Bush and Pataki to pay their share to reduce the misery their broken “bubble” economy has dumped on the rest of us.

And I am reminding the mayor that the city is still squandering an outrageous $9 billion a year on contracting out public work to the private sector. We have shown the city how to save money by reducing some of this waste. No responsible government can in good conscience cut vital services and lay off hard working public employees while real savings are within reach.