The man who stood before a shivering crowd to be sworn in as New York’s mayor last January was the political equivalent of a question mark in an overcoat.
Although Michael Bloomberg had been elected to lead America’s largest city at one of the darkest times in its history, no one knew much about him or what he stood for, apart from the fact that his business news service had netted him a personal fortune estimated at $4 billion and that his election was due in no small part to the endorsement of his predecessor and fellow Republican, Rudolph Giuliani.
In a busy yet stealthy first year in office, Bloomberg has maintained a surprisingly low profile while racking up a remarkable string of victories. He won control of New York public schools, pushed through the largest property tax increase in the city’s history and doggedly pursued a personal campaign to make lighting up a cigarette as difficult and costly as possible.
Now, Bloomberg faces the question that Edward Koch used to ask New Yorkers when he ran the city: How is he doing?
“He has been superb in handling the problems the city faces and has achieved some enormous successes,” said Koch, who has been a tough critic of his successors.
“I thought he would do a good job, but he’s doing an excellent job.”
Koch speaks for many New Yorkers who have been surprised at how effective Bloomberg, a political neophyte, has proven in getting his way in a city where any proposal is usually greeted with a pungent “fugetaboudit.”
But if his unruffled, even boring public demeanor is welcomed by many as a refreshing change from the Sturm und Drang melodrama of the Giuliani years, critics see his response to the city’s fiscal woes as a throwback to the tax-and-spend policies that pushed New York to the brink of bankruptcy in the 1970s.
“His solution relies much more heavily on new taxes than on spending reductions,” said Edmund McMahon, senior fellow at New York’s Manhattan Institute, a free-market think tank. “Past attempts to tax our way out of deep holes have never worked. They have only made the hole deeper.”
New York finds itself at the bottom of one of the deepest holes in its history. Its economy already shaky before the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, the city hemorrhaged an estimated 100,000 jobs as a result of the disaster. The budget deficit for this fiscal year is an estimated $6 billion.
Not only did the new mayor inherit a wounded city, he was following a man who had emerged as a worldwide hero following Sept. 11. Who could stand comparison with Giuliani, the “Mayor of the World”?
“We will rebuild, renew and remain the capital of the free world,” Bloomberg, who spent $69 million of his fortune on his mayoral campaign, declared in his inaugural address, which mixed defiance with blunt warnings: “We will not be able to afford all that we want. We will not even be able to afford all that we have now.”
But within a few months, he had achieved what no other New York mayor had been able to do: wrestle control of the city’s schools away from the quasi-independent Board of Education, which was abolished by the state Legislature at Bloomberg’s behest.
He ensconced the city’s new Department of Education in a lavishly restored courthouse behind City Hall, symbolic of his desire to keep a close eye on efforts to improve reading scores and reverse a staggering dropout rate.
“I failed to get control of the schools; Giuliani failed to get it,” said Koch. “But the pressure was building up [on the state Legislature]. They were willing to cooperate with Bloomberg. He got it basically because he’s a nice guy.”
His success in the schools fight, as in other issues on his agenda, stems in large part from his previous lack of political experience, according to political observers. Unlike any other New York mayor in recent history, Bloomberg, 60, had never served in public office before squeaking out a 43,000-vote win over his Democratic opponent, public advocate Mark Green.
With no political baggage and only himself to thank for financing his campaign, Bloomberg has few enemies and is beholden to no special interests.
He suspended a recycling program after determining that it was too expensive, angering environmentalists. To unsnarl persistent traffic congestion, he restricted turns on some Midtown streets, angering hotels and other businesses.
Citing the public-health cost of smoking, in July he raised the tax on cigarettes, bringing the price to as much as $7.50 a pack. Then, arguing that waiters and bartenders were being harmed by exposure to secondhand smoke, he won approval last month for an ordinance that bans smoking in virtually all bars and restaurants.
So far, he has engaged in no public fights with other politicians, refraining from the verbal pugilism that Giuliani sometimes seemed to relish.
“He has shown that New York can be governed by someone other than an authoritarian father,” said Douglas Muzzio, a Baruch College political scientist. “He doesn’t see himself surrounded by forces of darkness, and he doesn’t personalize issues. I think this is his most admirable quality. He doesn’t get sucked into fights.”
Although New Yorkers have been willing to give Bloomberg wide discretion in his handling of most matters, his popularity plummeted in November as a result of his property tax increase, which will boost homeowners’ tax bills by 18.5 percent this year.
And he’s mulling other tax increases, including slapping tolls on city bridges and tunnels and seeking state approval to levy a commuter tax on workers who live in the suburbs.
A Quinnipiac University poll found that only 34 percent of New Yorkers approved of his handling of the budget.
“The first rule of recession is don’t raise taxes,” said Fred Siegel, a senior fellow at the Progressive Policy Institute, who rates Bloomberg’s performance as “mediocre at best.”
Rather than raising taxes right away, the mayor should have sought more than the $1 billion in budget cuts he has so far proposed, added the Manhattan Institute’s McMahon, who estimates that the property tax increase could cost the city 60,000 jobs.
But Andrew White, an urban-affairs expert at New School University, sees the tax increase as a sign that Bloomberg wants to ensure that New York remains a livable city.
“He’s trying to promote the idea that government needs to function,” said White. “I really like that he has a respect for government. In a time of really intense fiscal crisis, he has come out and said we’re not going to slash services to the bone.”
Whether or not they like him, Bloomberg watchers agree on one thing: The mayor of this heavily Democratic city is a Republican in name only, a convenient affiliation that allowed him to bypass a fractious Democratic primary.
“The mayor is a liberal Democrat,” said Muzzio. “You can see it in his priorities. He’s an active government guy.”
