NEW YORK — Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s election-year budget spares teachers, police officers and firefighters from his layoffs, but the billionaire former CEO refuses to consider proposals to raise taxes on the rich.
The independent mayor’s Democratic front-runner, City Comptroller William Thomp son Jr., wants the city to raise personal income taxes on those earning $500,000 or more annually.
But Bloomberg, ranked by Forbes magazine as the wealthiest person in New York, says the rich help keep the city’s economy humming. Instead, he proposed raising the sales tax even further than he initially suggested a few months ago — to a total of 8.875 percent on purchases in New York City.
“People that have more money buy a lot more things, and they spend more of it,” Bloomberg said Friday as he presented his plans for the 2010 budget.
He said the city has no choice but to lay off thousands of workers, cut spending further and raise the sales tax to bridge a multibillion-dollar budget gap amid the recession.
Bloomberg’s budget is insensitive to the needs of struggling New Yorkers, Thompson said in a statement. It places the burden on “hardworking middle-class residents of this city,” he said.
Bloomberg said the city’s economic picture is grim. He projects the city will lose 328,000 jobs during the recession, up from a forecast of 294,000 a few months ago, including 47,000 financial sector jobs that fell victim to the Wall Street meltdown.
Tourism and the real estate market are slow and retail sales are sluggish while the city faces a $6.6 billion gap to close for fiscal 2010.
