When In Doubt, Just Say You’ll Cut Library Hours; Public Sympathy Follows

But when no one blinks at across-the-board five percent cuts, you might have to make your threats a little clearer:

Insisting the state budget is shortchanging the city by nearly $750 million, Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s administration is mandating that each city agency cut its upcoming budget by 3 percent, in addition to the 5 percent cuts the mayor laid out earlier this year.

The supplementary cuts, which will affect agencies typically held harmless from the budget ax, such as the Department of Education, stunned City Council members who learned of them yesterday from Mark Page, director of the city Office of Management and Budget.

Page announced the combined 8 percent slash for fiscal year 2009 during his annual budget testimony before the Council’s Finance Committee in City Hall. He delivered scathing remarks about the state’s proposed budget, which he said reduces city funding by $747 million.

And don’t forget to roll out the children:

Council members and education advocates, already reeling from the $100 million cuts hitting the city’s roughly 1,400 public schools last month, slammed the additional reductions.

“This year, with the 2.5 [percent], it’s impacting the schools and it’s hurting the kids. I have literacy programs that aren’t fully supplied with [materials]. These are the things that impact kids,” said Sean Rotkowitz, the Staten Island liaison for the teachers’ union. “At the very least, the classrooms and the schools should be held harmless.”