NYC Council’s ultra-left ignores migrant crisis and budget constraints

An uninitiated observer who walked into the City Council budget last week may have thought he landed on an alien planet, whose inhabitants’ survival depends solely on Sunday library hours and composting.

Apparently, this alien New York City is not facing a budget crisis, and even if it was, it would have absolutely, positively nothing to do with the fact that its taxpayers have been footing the bill to house, feed and provide every service imaginable for more than 150,000 migrants over the past two years.

This hearing was definitely not held in the New York City where most of us live.

Because, in our New York City, we are currently staring down a multi-billion-dollar deficit while our streets are falling into disorder, our infrastructure crumbles, our social safety net is collapsing, and our frontline workers are stretched beyond their limits.

In our New York City, we are spending more taxpayer money to care for foreign nationals than we are on the annual budgets of the NYPD, FDNY and Department of Sanitation, combined.

And in our New York City, that unsustainable cost is the primary reason we are facing steep budget cuts that will affect every essential service, from policing our streets to picking up our garbage.

In the brief time I was allotted to speak at this hearing, I attempted to shake some of my colleagues back to this reality.

But I was shut down.

The chair of the Council Finance Committee, Justin Brannan, did not want to hear anything that countered the “it’s-not-the-migrants” narrative. And he certainly did not want to hear the truth: Our fiscal crisis is entirely self-inflicted, the predictable result of disastrous Democratic policies, like making New York a sanctuary city, expanding the right to shelter to non-citizens, and open borders.

When I tried to reclaim my speaking time, Brannan once again cut me off. This time he condescendingly joked that he would “submit my resume to OMB.”

Funny, but the joke’s on all of us.

With unserious people like Brannan in charge, we will all be dragged over the fiscal cliff. People who claim the Mayor is making this all up, that the city really has plenty of money to spend, or that our budget problems are easily fixable.

That would explain some of the brilliant proposals made at this hearing:

• Raise income and/or property taxes — despite the fact that residents have been fleeing the city for lower tax states for years.
• Beg the state and federal government for more money, even though those pleas have fallen on deaf ears for nearly two years.
• Get migrants to work! Even though the jobs sectors for which they are most likely to find work — food service, hospitality and construction — have yet to recover from the pandemic.
• And, of course, the evergreen demand to defund the police.

These suggestions were coupled with plaintive screeds to the Finance Commissioner to save local pet projects, or performative outrage about how we are spending too much on police overtime or on contracts with companies that (gasp!) make profits and spending too little for non-profits that provide “essential services,” like teaching addicts how to properly shoot-up heroin.

Sure, this city may be going to hell in a hand basket, but the migrants really need better quality meals!

Let’s get serious. We are not going to solve our city’s fiscal problems if we keep telling ourselves fairy tales about the migrant crisis. We must make some tough choices.

The Mayor must end the policy of extending the right to shelter to non-citizens, and the Council must support him.

Yes, even if we removed the estimated $10-$12 billion it will cost to care for migrants from the equation, we would still face future budget deficits.

But with good planning and better-than-expected revenue, those deficits are manageable.

The Council has a choice concerning our city’s financial future: listen to me and many others who are living in the real world.

Or do as Justin Brannan does — cover our ears and just hope everything works out.

Vickie Paladino is a Republican City Council Member representing the 19th District in Northern Queens.