Blas’ Cop-Deal Con

Mayor de Blasio managed a truce with the Patrolmen’s Benevolent Association in this week’s contract deal — with collatoral damage to the taxpayers and the next wave of NYPD hires.

The accord means 9.3 percent raises for 24,000 cops for the years 2012-17, which de Blasio says will run taxpayers $337 million.

We don’t begrudge New York’s Finest the extra pay. They went without a contract for years, and put up with endless new restrictions and verbal slams from de Blasio, the City Council and the cop-haters. Yet they still drove crime down to record levels.

But to keep the tab down, PBA boss Patrick Lynch agreed to reduce pay for future hires’ first years on the job. They’ll start at just $42,500; after 5 ¹/2 years, that more than doubles to $85,300.

That low starting pay will make it harder to hire. A similar scheme sliced starting salaries by $11,000 in 2005 (also to finance higher pay for veteran cops), and the PBA itself pointed out the recruitment problem. The Post reported that some rookies felt so squeezed, they applied for food stamps. Yet de Blasio still OK’d new cuts. Cops not yet hired aren’t members of Lynch’s union. No doubt he’ll start fighting for them once they are — but at the expense of taxpayers, not his veterans.

It was de Blasio’s job to protect the city’s interest here. Plainly, peace with the PBA in his re-election year was more important.

For the same reason, the mayor went along with a gimmick to justify giving the PBA a pay hike slightly higher than other unions had won.

That gimmick is a special 2.25 percent pay bump, supposedly for neighborhood policing. Sorry: There’s no reason to pay cops extra to do their jobs, even if it is a new program. Anyway, the perk also goes to those who aren’t doing that work.

Note, too: De Blasio’s $337 million price tag is almost certainly short, because it only runs through this year. Once the hikes become part of the baseline, taxpayers will shell out for them forever. The extra pay will also jack up pension costs down the road.

None of which matters, of course, to de Blasio. Heck, it’s not his money.