Measure twice, cut once

With about 72 hours until New York City’s budget deadline, there are deeply worrying signs the mayor and City Council aren’t seriously comprehending the gravity of the fiscal problem this city faces. Tax receipts are plummeting. Federal lawmakers aren’t rescuing states with aid packages. Albany rightly tabled approving billions in borrowing authority to pay the city’s operating costs; debt-financed spending on recurring costs is almost always more trouble than it’s worth.

To help plug a $9 billion revenue shortfall, Mayor de Blasio has proposed cuts that won’t recur in future years. Without finding real efficiencies, future year budgets face yawning deficits.

Late last week, in the 35th minute of the 11th hour, de Blasio says he’d like to see savings from labor unions. We’re skeptical he’s trying that hard, considering he wrote to Albany last week begging anew for approval of $5 billion in borrowing. Without the found money or labor-agreed-to savings, de Blasio says 22,000 city workers could lose their jobs come October.

But there’s a healthy layer of fat he could skim before resorting to layoffs or service cuts.

He should start by taking a harder look at costs he’s responsible for: record-high spending on public office leases; the creation of 14 new sub-offices in the mayoralty alone; and some 340 new employees who earn $29 million in salaries annually, some of them with too little work to show for it.

He should ask public employees, a majority of whom currently pay nothing for health insurance, to contribute something for premiums.

He should also ask them to do the work they’re hired to do, instead of outsourcing, incessantly, to contractors, for multi-million dollar reports.

Meanwhile, the Council’s taken its red pen to the NYPD, seeking to slash $1 billion. The exercise — line-item examination of agency spending in search of efficiencies — is a worthy one. Every agency should face such scrutiny, not just the one that’s politically unpopular at the moment.

Nearly half the Council’s proposed $1 billion in “savings” are gimmicks. Some $490 million, according to one draft we viewed, comes from transferring school safety agents from NYPD’s budget into the DOE’s. We’re skeptical $45 million in projected savings from capping NYPD overtime will materialize.

New York is in its most serious fiscal crisis in a generation. Put away the play cutlery