News Nov 4, 2010 at 4:00 am

Good News in Budget Update: $9.7 Million Surplus

Comments

1
This sounds something like great news. But do you think it is slightly misleading not to mention the city's unfunded debt in an article about our sunny future? Three billion or so in retiree pensions, another 3 billion in bond and line-of-credit debt?

This year the accounting standards people are now requiring municipalities to include such bad news in their financial reports. The New York Times has responded with a dismal story on the nature of the outstanding debts owed by New York's state and local governments.

You cite some unnamed sources in the penultimate paragraph of this peace, warning against over-optimistic views of the future employment scheme. But when this debt comes due, and all of us are paying for healthcare for retired baby boomer bureaucrats as our services are incrementally removed (that may have already started), what do you think happens to unemployment in a state that is so heavily reliant on bureaucrats to pad its employment numbers?

You'uns are going to have to start talking about this kind of thing sooner rather than later, I'd bet. Why not pick things up early in the game?

Seriously, you can look at Adams using words approaching the phrase "austerity budget" and not question him? For someone so endlessly fascinated with the purity of European politics, even the mayor must realize that those words mean extreme pain in the UK, Greece, and Spain right now. Assuming he reads any global press, outside of football scores.

I really hope you might consider questioning this type of information, for all of our sakes. If only to remember the illustrious past of the news editors of your current publication.

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