Shoot First, Take Pains To Seem Fiscally Responsible Later

Better get all your spending in now because things might not look so good down the road:

City budget officials say they are seeing signs that the soaring revenues of the last several years are coming to an end, and they have begun preparing for belt-tightening in the months ahead.

The anticipated falloff is due in large part to lower expected profits on Wall Street and a projected decline in large real estate transactions.

“The economies of our world and our city are cyclical, and it looks like, sadly, we’re going from one of growth to one of hopefully not decline, but certainly nowhere near as much growth, if any,” Mr. Bloomberg said yesterday at a news conference on the Brooklyn waterfront.

Officials in Mr. Bloomberg’s administration have often warned of shortfalls that never materialized. But this time around, said Mark Page, the city’s budget director, continued fallout in the financial services industry from the national mortgage crisis and recent losses at hedge funds are likely to significantly cut into profits on Wall Street this year.

In turn, that means less tax revenue for the city, and lower real estate transaction fees — an unusually rich source of revenue in recent years — as fewer fat bonuses fuel high-end apartment shopping sprees.

In addition, Mr. Page said, city officials had already been projecting lower revenue from real estate transactions in the current fiscal year than in the year that ended in June because they predicted fewer large deals like the $5.4 billion purchase of Stuyvesant Town and Peter Cooper Village.

. . .

Although city officials are not yet predicting an economic downturn, the city is already looking to rein in costs. About 10 days ago, Mr. Bloomberg sent a letter to all agencies seeking to limit new hiring and warning that budget cuts may be necessary in the coming months.

“As a practical matter, if you start trying to squeeze down marginal spending sooner, you don’t have to jam them down as much to save the money you need,” Mr. Page said in explaining the move.

In the letter, the mayor said he had asked Mr. Page to “closely scrutinize all agency hiring.”

“It is easier and more prudent to tightly manage headcount now, rather than face staff reductions in the future,” Mr. Bloomberg wrote.

(Diane Cardwell is relentless . . . who’s feeding her this? Is her husband still advising President Clinton? The Hillary juggernaut rolls over all the opposition!)

(OK, OK, so that’s paranoid — but if you want to investigate the mayor’s record she really is a good place to start.)