No green for blues
Blas budget lacks police refunding
The city’s $98.7 billion budget deal contains just $200 million more to fight crime amid a surge in violence, and another $100 million to house and employ ex-cons — but not a nickel for additional cops.
Mayor de Blasio and City Council Speaker Corey Johnson (D-Manhattan) on Wednesday announced what they vaguely called “targeted investments to break the cycle of incarceration and reduce gun violence” that will use “housing and employment as an anti-violence measure.”
And although President Biden last week said cities could use federal COVID-19 relief funds to hire more cops, de Blasio said the Big Apple was taking a different tack amid a surge in shooting incidents that includes Sunday’s wounding of a tourist in broad daylight in Times Square and two kids who miraculously avoided gang-related gunfire in The Bronx last month.
“We took the stimulus funds, we focused them on ways to create growth in our economy — to create jobs, to create a lot more city revenue that will sustain our future,” de Blasio said during a City Hall news conference. “That’s our focus.”
De Blasio said the NYPD budget, which was reduced by $1 billion last year amid “defund the police” protests, was being increased by just $200 million, which he described as “police reform money.”
De Blasio said that “a big piece” would pay for information technology, but conceded that the bulk, $166 million, was going to police overtime.
“We worked together on OT. We reduced overtime a lot,” he said. “We put in a number that we now believe is the realistic overtime number.”
City Hall said the NYPD would also get $12 million to hire 180 workers for “enhanced precinctbased customer experience,” and a mental-health outreach program for cops and an early-intervention program to address allegations of police misconduct.
Although the new spending — which includes $47 million on IT in the form of cellphones and tablets, data plans and specialized apps — adds up to more than $200 million, the overage is being offset by savings that include a freeze on buying new vehicles, City Hall said.
Another $100 million-plus is being allocated to the Mayor’s Office of Criminal Justice to fund the “anti-violence” social spending touted by de Blasio and Johnson.
Those programs were listed dead last on an official summary of the fiscal 2022 budget, despite a recent Post poll that showed crime was the top issue among the Big Apple’s Democratic voters.
The spending plans include $57 million to provide “re-entry housing with health care and employment counseling” to ex-cons, who are euphemistically described as “justice involved New Yorkers returning to the community.”
Another $24 million will go to a new “Precision Employment Initiative” that will offer summer jobs to 1,000 people who are “most at risk” in the crime-ridden neighborhoods of Mott Haven, the Bronx; Brownsville, Brooklyn; and South Jamaica, Queens.
Parolees and other ex-cons will also be eligible for “transitional employment” through a $6.6 million expansion of the city’s Jail to Jobs program.
The document notes that the NYPD has reassigned 200 cops who had been working desk jobs “to the field full time, specifically assigned to high violence commands.”
The budget deal sparked criticism, with the head of the Citizens Budget Commission, saying “sparse” details left it unclear if officials made “strategic use” of $6 billion in federal COVID-19 relief funds.
“The Mayor’s Executive Budget did not fully maximize the potential benefits of the aid because it was frontloaded, sprinkled among a broad set of initiatives, and used to fund between $1.3 billion and $4 billion annually in recurring programs, creating a fiscal cliff when the aid is depleted,” CBC President Andrew Rein said.