Three Cheers for Mike

New York City is on the eve of a mayoral election. The business sector that serves as a cornerstone of its tax base has been hit heavily by hard times. Meanwhile, a growing deficit threatens the city’s future economic stability.

The year is not 2008, but 1965, and New Yorkers chose a politician, John Lindsay, who lacked any executive experience, to be the next mayor. What followed was the headlong decline of the city. The years after were almost universally acknowledged to be dark years for New York. Manufacturing, long the economic backbone of the city, moved overseas. Businesses left in the city in droves for the suburbs. Without the money to pay for vital services, crime rose and infrastructure decayed. The crisis culminated in the near bankruptcy of the city in the mid-1970s. To the world, New York appeared in irreversible decline, and it did not fully recover until the 1990s.

Today the city once again stands at a similar crossroads. Wall Street, which serves as a key source of tax revenue, is suffering from a crisis that may take years to resolve, and New York City is just a little over a year away from a mayoral election. The future prospects for the city are linked in no small part to the ability of its political leadership. Recently, Mayor Michael Bloomberg announced his plans to circumvent the term-limits law which prevents him from seeking a third term as mayor. Though it is still unclear if the city council will repeal the law, which was instituted by a voter referendum in 1993, allowing Mayor Bloomberg to run for reelection would contribute greatly to the city’s future success. Throughout his two terms in office, he has led New York residents through a number of potentially disruptive events. From fears of terrorism post-Sept. 11 to the MTA Transit strike of 2005 to the blizzard of February 2006, Bloomberg has successfully demonstrated his strong management skills. He has also accomplished a number of important goals in fighting crime, reforming education, and maintaining the fiscal soundness of the city’s budget.

When Bloomberg became mayor in 2002, the city was the safest it had been in years. Despite the additional resources the Police Department needed to protect against terrorism, under Bloomberg’s leadership the crime rate has continued to fall. In 2007, the murder rate was the lowest it had been since the city began keeping records in 1963. In nearly all categories of crime and almost all police precincts, the dramatic gains made against crime under Rudolph Giuliani have continued under the Bloomberg administration. In many cases the crime rate has continued to drop.

Bloomberg’s most sweeping achievement is his education reform. In his first term as mayor, Bloomberg assumed direct control over the city’s public schools. This allowed him to pursue a range of reforms. These included raising the salaries of teachers and principals, as well as ending the practice of social promotion in elementary school, whereby students were automatically promoted to the next grade level without regard to their academic achievement. These reforms have achieved results, as high school graduation rates rose by 20 percent under the Bloomberg administration.

Perhaps most pertinent to the current fiscal challenge facing the city is Bloomberg’s stellar record managing the city’s budget. He took his experience of running a major financial news firm and applied it to the role of mayor. Since he became mayor, the city has accumulated a budget surplus of $6.6 billion. Much of this surplus has been set aside to pay down the city’s long-standing debt and buffer against the effect the economic downturn. While running a deficit may be unavoidable in a period of prolonged economic decline, Bloomberg’s fiscal policies have placed the city on solid footing to weather such a crisis.

In his two terms in office, Bloomberg has demonstrated the leadership and managerial skills the city needs to overcome its future challenge. His success in crime, education, and fiscal planning will prevent the city’s tax base from leaving for the suburbs and sending the city into a downward spiral. Michael Bloomberg, whose current approval rating, according to a Quinnipiac University poll, is at 75 percent, is ideally suited to serve a third term as mayor of New York City­—it would be a shame if the city council did not give him the opportunity to do so.

The author is a student in the School of General Studies majoring in History. He a member of the Columbia University College Republicans.