Blas’ Budget Time-Bombs

With one foot out the door, Mayor de Blasio is setting up a nightmare budget crunch for Gotham’s next mayor — and trying to hide the damage in the process.

De Blasio’s latest financial plan, which went into effect July 1, projects a $4.1 billion cash shortfall next year — a huge chunk of change (even by New York standards) the next mayor must grapple with the moment he takes office Jan. 1. Yet the gap is actually $700 million higher, totaling $4.8 billion.

On Tuesday, Citizens Budget Commission head Andrew Rein pegged the deficit at $5.4 billion, including $1 billion in concessions from city workers that de Blasio promised last year but failed to produce and $300 million needed to pay about 4,000 new workers Blas wants hired but hasn’t budgeted to pay for.

Then, on Wednesday, de Blasio announced a deal with labor groups to save $600 million a year in retiree health spending, trimming the shortfall to “only” $4.8 billion. It’s a start — but not even close to fiscally “responsible.”

Fact is, de Blasio spends like a Kardashian.

After rolling back his partial pandemic-year hiring freeze, he’s now bloating the city’s headcount to a record 337,294. Let the next mayor figure out how to pay these people.

And that’s just the tip of the iceberg: This year’s $98.7 billion budget is up about 34 percent over his predecessor’s last plan, more than double the inflation rate since then. And, as the CBC also recently pointed out, spending for the current year is actually $103.3 billion, nearly $5 billion more than advertised, after adjusting for a few technical issues.

The story only gets worse: “These are large budget gaps” — totaling nearly $13 billion through 2025 — “and the next round of collective bargaining with the workforce will put additional upward pressure on costs,” warns Rein. And those holes will grow even larger if revenues fall short because, for example, many workers never return to the city, real-estate values dip or the crime wave deters tourists.

De Blasio’s eight years did untold damage to the city. Yet in his final months he’s ensuring even more harm — he leaves.