Robert Ledeman here:
NYC is close to being bankrupt, but Rudy Giuliani still has his priorities
foremost in mind - benefit the wealthy and those who are his personal
friends like the owners of the Yankees and Mets. Cut libraries, schools,
children's services and other "non-essentials" but we must still build new
baseball stadiums for billionaires. And by the way, he'll take over the
charity fund for survivors of the uniformed services who died on 9/11, the
very families that for eight years he cheated out of promised raises. Read
these three articles for details. Then, if you want to know the real story
of Giuliani see http://baltech.org/lederman/
Daily News
Stadium Deals Alive & Well
Rudy is eying muni bond plan with Mets, Yanks
By T.J. QUINN, LISA L. COLANGELO
and MICHAEL R. BLOOD
Daily News Staff Writers
Mayor Giuliani will try to close deals with the Yankees and Mets for new
stadiums that could cost nearly $2 billion, even though a
multibillion-dollar deficit looms over the city, officials said yesterday.
Giuliani confirmed a Daily News story that long-stalled talks with the
baseball teams had resumed, and sources said a tentative agreement called
for the teams to pay more than half the debt service on municipal bonds that
would bankroll construction.
Plans call for two retractable-dome stadiums with a price tag of roughly
$700 million to $800 million each. The state would pay for transportation
improvements around both stadiums.
Giuliani defended the plan, in which taxpayers would shoulder a share of the
burden.
"The Yankees and the Mets ... are making enormous contributions to it," the
mayor said in Queens. "It's a very, very, good economic deal."
Giuliani said that a key issue will be winning Mayor-elect Michael
Bloomberg's support, adding that he would not make a "last-minute decision
and remove any options he may have."
Numbers Game
Bill Cunningham, a top Bloomberg aide, said last night that the mayor-elect
is open to making a deal.
"Mike just needs to get a handle on all the numbers and how they work out.
... He's still collecting information and making sure this does not
exacerbate what the city faces a year or two years down the road,"
Cunningham said.
Before the Sept. 11 attacks, deals with the teams were close to completion,
officials said. One source said talks to replace Shea were essentially
finished.
After the attacks, the city sidelined stadium plans to focus on the Trade
Center cleanup, and team officials knew it would be inappropriate to push
the issue.
In opening the public wallet for the benefit of profitable sports teams,
Giuliani faces a difficult task. The city is shouldering long-term debt of
$40 billion the highest figure in its history.
But Giuliani has insisted that he has set aside money for stadiums, once
telling reporters, "The money is there."
The mayor repeated the theme yesterday: "The room is there in the budget
already."
Teams Dig Deep
As a result of the city's weakened finances, sources said, teams now will
have to pay a greater share of the construction costs which would be paid
for through the sale of municipal bonds. The teams would pay more than 50%
of the resulting debt service.
Sources said the deals will be presented to the public as economic engines
that would not require new taxes, would provide jobs and energize the city's
ailing finances.
"It's going to be a project that is heavily funded by private sources but
owned by the city," one official said.
Giuliani defended the financial strength of the plans, arguing that taxes
and other economic benefits would in time "more than pay for the two
baseball stadiums."
Owners for the Mets and Yankees refused to comment.
Giuliani also said deals with the Yankees and Mets would boost the city's
chances of landing the 2012 Olympics.
There is no timetable for construction, team officials said.
"It's better to wait until downtown is cleaned up," a source said, "but this
will be a good thing for the city."
Original Publication Date: 12/6/01
NY Times
December 6, 2001
CHARITY
Giuliani Seeks to Lead Fund for Uniformed After Jan. 1
By SARAH KERSHAW
Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani said yesterday that after leaving office he would
like to continue to run the city's charity for uniformed victims of the
Sept. 11 terrorist attack and to convert the fund into a private charity.
The Twin Towers Fund has raised $113 million so far for the relatives of the
nearly 400 firefighters and police officers killed in the World Trade Center
attack, the mayor said yesterday. About $46 million of that money is
currently being distributed to families.
Mr. Giuliani said that his intention since the fund was created was to stay
closely involved until all the money was distributed. But yesterday was the
first time he publicly discussed making the fund a private charity. To do
so, he would have to convert the Twin Towers Fund, now being operated by the
city's Public- Private Initiatives which is overseen by a board of mayoral
appointees into a nonprofit organization, a process that requires the
approval of the state attorney general and a State Supreme Court judge.
An official in the attorney general's office said yesterday that no one from
the mayor's office had contacted the office or requested an application for
converting the fund to a private charity.
A spokesman for Mayor-elect Michael R. Bloomberg said he would have no
comment.
Speaking to reporters yesterday afternoon, Mr. Giuliani said, "Many of the
people who donated money made me promise them that I would not abandon the
fund and that I would make sure that the money got to the people for whom it
was intended."
If the fund is converted, Mr. Giuliani said, the board of directors will
ultimately decide whether he should continue running it. He added that
discussions were under way with board members about how to distribute the
remaining $67 million and whether to invest it for the victims' families in
annuity accounts.
NY TIMES
December 5, 2001
Mayor's List of Budget Cuts Sends Agencies Scrambling
By SARAH KERSHAW
Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani handed his plan for cutting $766 million from the
current year's budget to the City Council last night, detailing millions of
dollars in reductions to city agencies, schools, libraries and programs for
the elderly and children.
The thick document, called a budget modification, was publicly released at
6:15 last night after City Council members, including members of the finance
staff, had left for the day. The proposal, part of a plan to close a $1.2
billion budget gap that resulted from the World Trade Center attack and the
weakening economy, must be approved by the 51- member Council.
Directors of city-financed programs for children, the elderly and immigrants
said the proposed cuts as high as 15 percent for most city agencies left
them wondering if their services would survive and scrambling to figure out
how to pay for programs already under way.
The Council must vote the proposal up or down as a package. Some Council
officials were taken aback that the package was submitted without any
negotiations, and said a preliminary look at the proposed cuts indicated
that the package would eliminate several Council-financed programs,
sometimes referred to as pet programs.
"We had hoped they would negotiate," a Council official said.
City budget officials, after distributing budget documents to reporters last
night, did not return telephone calls seeking comment.
Earlier in the day, Mr. Giuliani said, "The impact on our budget is a
dramatic one, it's a heavy one, but it's one that we can sustain, if we
reduce expenditures." He also said that while some of the cuts he was
proposing were deep, the city could rebound from its financial woes and wind
up restoring some of the funds. "There's plenty of time for the city to
straighten this out," he said. On Monday, Mr. Giuliani outlined his plan for
shaving $766 million off the budget.
The document released last night spelled out in more detail how those cuts
would be achieved in each agency, from small reductions in heat and
electricity use to substantial program cutbacks that would eliminate or
sharply reduce services. Included in a proposed $119 million budget cut to
the Administration for Children's Services is $71 million that was to be
used to expand subsidized child care programs.
Gail Nayowith, executive director of the Citizens Committee for Children, an
advocacy group, said the $71 million would have paid for child care for
10,000 of the estimated 30,000 children waiting for a slot in a subsidized
program. There is also an $11 million reduction in after-school care
contained in the child welfare agency's proposed budget reduction.
The Board of Education, which is facing a cut of about 1 percent in its $11
billion budget, would scale back by $1 million a program that has placed two
teachers in crowded classrooms to reduce the student- teacher ratio as well
as a host of other programs, including a $2 million reduction in the school
safety budget and a $20 million reduction in maintenance for school
buildings.
The Department for the Aging would face a $16 million cut, including the
elimination of a $3.5 million program to place social workers in centers for
the elderly, and cuts in transportation and other services.
The cuts are meant only to help the city end the current fiscal year in the
black. This week the mayor projected that his successor, Michael R.
Bloomberg, would face a $3.5 billion budget gap in the 2003 fiscal year,
which will begin in July, and a $3.9 billion gap the following year.
And they come as some fiscal watchdogs are expressing growing concern about
the amount of debt the city has. City Comptroller Alan G. Hevesi this week
released a report finding that the city's debt grew to $40 billion in July,
up from $26.6 billion in July 1996. The comptroller warned that the city's
planned spending on new capital projects could drive its debt up even
higher, to the point where in fiscal year 2005 the city would be spending 21
cents of every tax dollar it spends paying debt service.
On Monday, Mayor Giuliani said such projections did not take into account
the city's tendency to go back and make cuts in its capital budget. "This is
about the fourth year in a row the comptroller has issued this report, and
the last three were wrong," he said. "It always turns out that we spend
considerably less than he anticipates."
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