In “What Is a Mayor’s Job?,” Myron Magnet reminds us that for New Yorkers of his generation, “a keynote of our youth was fear,” and he eloquently evokes what the city was like when you had to avoid eye contact (lest you draw the unwanted attention of some drug-maddened thug) and triple-lock your doors to keep the bad guys out. Nothing has been more important to New York’s turnaround than the city’s triumph over crime, as City Journal has tirelessly argued. That’s vital, Glaeser explains, because entrepreneurial small firms can grow into the giants of tomorrow and have proved to be “the wellspring of long-term economic success.” And in “Growth Engines,” economist Edward Glaeser echoes McMahon’s call for lower taxes and adds that less red tape would make Gotham friendlier to small businesses. With competition for investment and people intensifying among localities, New York must find a way to bring its tax levels more in line with national norms. Coming on top of onerous New York State taxes, the city levies make Gotham a remarkably expensive place to work or live. But back in 2002, Bloomberg pushed for and won an 18.5 percent hike in the property-tax rate. Giuliani managed to reduce taxes slightly and held the line on increases. McMahon points out that no city in America imposes so many. That means political strife, Malanga acknowledges, but unless the fisc gets fixed, crucial public services will suffer. The key to bringing the budget under control: reining in municipal-worker compensation costs. The reality is starkly different: an imminent “fiscal nightmare” as the bill for excessive government spending and borrowing comes due. Malanga notes that several mayoral candidates are tossing around billions of dollars’ worth of new spending plans, as though surplus revenue were flooding the city. One of the biggest threats to New York’s future is fiscal, warns Steven Malanga in “The Coming Budget Crunch,” which opens the issue. Hence this special edition of City Journal, which describes the “state of the city” at the sunset of Bloomberg’s tenure and says what his successor should do to keep the city healthy in the years ahead. Yet the mayoral debate so far has mostly ignored those challenges. After 20 years of sensible-and, at times, inspired-leadership from Rudy Giuliani and Michael Bloomberg, who brought the city back from near-ruin and made it again a symbol of urban flourishing, New York faces serious challenges to its prosperity and well-being. With a mayoral election rushing up in November, New York City finds itself in a strange place.
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