Mayor Bloomberg isn’t even a declared candidate for president, but a national anti-tax, pro-business group is already claiming he’s a big tax-and-spender who oversees a nanny state.
Officials at the Washington, D.C.-based Club for Growth say they take exception to characterizations of Bloomberg as a “fiscal conservative.”
“We want to set the record straight,” said Club for Growth President Pat Toomey. “As mayor of New York, Bloomberg presided over huge increases in spending, multiple tax increases, and whole new levels of government intrusion on individuals and businesses.”
He was referring to Bloomberg approving an 18.5 percent property tax hike and income- and sales-tax increases to deal with a budget gap left by his predecessor, Rudy Giuliani, following an economic slowdown and the Sept. 11 attacks.
Bloomberg also more than doubled taxes on cigarettes and banned smoking in bars and restaurants, which the Club for Growth opposed as nannyism. The mayor has said the measures led to a 20 percent reduction in smoking.
Toomey said the numbers show that annual spending increased more under Bloomberg than Giuliani or David Dinkins.
City spending shot up 40 percent over his first five years as mayor, or more than double the 17 percent inflation rate over that period, according to a study by Manhattan Institute senior fellow Nicole Gelinas.
Bloomberg defended the initial “emergency” tax hikes as unpopular but tough medicine to improve the city’s long term health.
Bloomberg spokesman Stu Loeser insisted the mayor has been a responsible steward of the city’s treasury by turning “multibillion deficits after 9/11 into multibillion surpluses today” and “keeping controllable spending close to rate of inflation.”
Aside from this year’s tax reductions, Loeser said the mayor has reduced out-year deficits, pre-paid $2.5 billion in looming health-care costs, and won the city’s highest bond rating ever on its borrowing.