A question? Kill it:

Nearly five dozen women now say they faced sex discrimination because they became pregnant while employees of the financial-news company Mayor Bloomberg founded — and the number of alleged victims is growing, a federal employee-rights lawyer said.

A class-action lawsuit against Bloomberg LP named three victims when it was filed in September. But that number has ballooned as the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission continues to interview women at the company, said EEOC attorney Raechel Adams.

At a court conference yesterday, Adams told Manhattan federal Judge Loretta Preska that 58 women have joined the case as her office continues to interview some 475 employees who took maternity leave since 2002, all potential class-action members.

The suit, filed in September, claims supervisors at Bloomberg LP sidelined women after they revealed that they were pregnant and systematically denied them promotions and demoted them.

William Dealy, a lawyer for the original named plaintiffs, said, “They’re encouraged because in unity there’s strength.”

Mayor Bloomberg blew up at a reporter yesterday when asked about the lawsuit following a budget presentation.

“What does this got to do with the budget?” the mayor snapped angrily. “I have absolutely no idea. You’ll have to talk to the company.

“And next time don’t bother to ask us a question. You stick to topic. Everybody else plays by the rules. You’ll just have to as well. Thank you very much.”

OK, so about that budget. What’s the deal with continuing a $400 rebate if there are multi-billion dollar deficits expected until the next Olympic Games? We should kill that, too:

Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg, warning that the boom in real estate and on Wall Street has come to an end, unveiled a $59.1 billion budget Thursday that would virtually halt the growth in city spending for the first time since the economic downturn following 9/11.

Despite the darkening economic picture, Mr. Bloomberg called for preserving a popular $400 property tax rebate and a 7 percent reduction in the property tax rate, although he said he expected that the city would have to raise property taxes by July 2009.