Metro

De Blasio details $95B NYC spending plan

Dreams are expensive and New York simply doesn’t have the money.

Mayor Bill de Blasio admitted as much Thursday when he rolled out his tentative fiscal year 2021 budget, which features no new big-ticket items and the smallest spending increases he has ever requested as City Hall stares down the barrel of Albany’s massive $6 billion deficit.

Hizzoner’s budget lays out $95.3 billion in spending, up less than 1 percent from the $94.6 billion the City Hall projected it will spend through fiscal 2020 at the end of June.

“We do know that we’ve never seen this kind of state deficit, we’ve never seen this kind of threat to our Medicaid recipients, we’ve never seen this kind of threat to the Health and Hospitals Corporation,” de Blasio said during a City Hall press conference rolling out his initial spending plan.

“Right now, it’s not the time,” Hizzoner later said, when asked why the new ideas of his budget was so limited. “I want to protect all the big initiatives that are underway already.”

He declined to identify or described any of the initiatives sidelined until the state provides budget answers.

The state’s budget crisis is driven by an explosion in costs for running the health insurance program for poor New Yorkers, Medicaid, which the Citizens Budget Commission says have jumped 15.6 percent in just the last two years.

“The budget problem in Albany is real,” said Andrew Rein, who heads the CBC. “We need a sustainable Medicaid program and this is not it in any way, shape or form.”

Gov. Andrew Cuomo is scheduled to roll out his initial proposal to tackle the crisis next week.

However, Cuomo left many mayors and county executives fearful when he briefly argued during his annual State of the State speech that local governments should pick up more of the cost.

New York City’s share, Cuomo told the crowd, would be $2 billion — a figure that de Blasio referenced as he laid out his preliminary spending plan Thursday.

Cuomo’s office denied nothing, but pointedly referenced the recent Twitter flap over de Blasio’s love of toasted bagels.

“We have heard of smoke and mirrors and political straw men,” said top Cuomo spokeswoman Dani Lever, “but how the mayor can claim he is reacting to cuts from the State before the State has even proposed a budget is spreading the political cream cheese too thick even for a toasted bagel.”

De Blasio said Thursday that he has not spoken to Gov. Andrew Cuomo since the governor first hinted at the possible cost shifts.

When asked what de Blasio made of Cuomo — a constant de Blasio critic — eyeing City Hall budget to fix the state’s shortfall, Hizzoner smirked and simply said: “I rise above it.”

De Blasio’s latest budget proposal is his biggest ever — and a $20 billion jump in spending from de Blasio’s first budget in 2014 for $75 billion. But it’s the smallest uptick in spending since he took office.

Officials initially budged to spend $92.8 billion in the 2020 budget, but spending has ticked up to $94.6 billion, according to the latest projections.

De Blasio attributed much of the new spending in his $95 billion plan to new labor contracts with city unions, new spending on special education in city schools and costs associated with the state-ordered overhaul of the criminal justice system, which expanded discovery requirements and nixed bail for most non-violent offenses.

City Hall is planning to spend $175 million alone on the criminal justice reforms, which will fund expanding supervised release and hiring 1,000 new personnel most of whom will go to the Police Department and local District Attorneys’ offices.

Overall, most major city departments would see their budgets remain largely flat under de Blasio’s proposal:

The proposed budget still has a long way to go before it becomes law. The administration will continue to tweak the proposal before officially presenting it to the City Council in April.

De Blasio and Council Speaker Corey Johnson will then haggle over spending and taxes, but must strike a deal before July 1.