De Blasio Considers Laying Off 22,000 NYC Employees 

American cities face an imminent fiscal reckoning of apocalyptic proportions.

New York City is expected to suffer a sharp decline in tax revenues, resulting in Mayor Bill de Blasio to consider laying off tens of thousands of city employees. 

De Blasio is mulling over a new plan that would cut 22,000 city employees to save the city upwards of $1 billion in expenses after virus-related lockdowns led to a decline in revenue, reported Bloomberg. 

“De Blasio presented a $95 billion budget in February. That was reduced to about $89 billion in April after the coronavirus outbreak. On Wednesday, he said the budget must be pared down to $87 billion, and the city needed to find about $1 billion more in savings. The city may have to lay off workers, de Blasio said, if the city doesn’t get fiscal aid from Washington or state authority to borrow $7 billion.”  – Bloomberg 

Budget shortfalls are forcing New York City and other municipalities across the country to cut jobs and spending, similar to what was done around the 2008 financial crisis when local austerity stymied an economic recovery. 

De Blasio has already pledged for the first time to slash the New York Police Department’s funding for the next fiscal year, following weeks of social unrest and mounting demands that he overhaul the department. 

“We’re committed to seeing a shift of funding to youth services, to social services, that will happen literally in the course of the next three weeks, but I’m not going to go into detail because it is subject to negotiation and we want to figure out what makes sense,” de Blasio said in early June. 

De Blasio, searching for ways to trim down the budget, is likely to target public service jobs. Now it remains to be seen if he’ll cut New York’s bravest, that are police and firefighter jobs…