It was Feb. 5 – and crunch time for Michael Bloomberg.
The businessman-turned-politician was eight days away from giving the most important speech of his new mayoralty, the one where he had to somehow explain to New Yorkers how he was going to cut more than $4 billion out of the city’s budget and reduce the size of the police force.
After two big January rhetorical thuds – an inauguration speech and a State of the City address – Bloomberg told his advisers he was determined not to botch his Feb. 13 budget talk.
Following a breakfast speech to the Association for a Better New York on Wall Street, Bloomberg rushed back to City Hall to begin an eight-day cram session with Deputy Mayor Marc Shaw and Budget Director Mark Page.
The three men – and a handful of aides – met every day for several hours at City Hall and at Gracie Mansion to craft the city’s bad-news budget.
“He spent a lot more time preparing for this than anything else he’s done so far,” said David Garth, who ran Bloomberg’s ad campaign in the mayoral race last year.
“It was so important for him to know the numbers inside and out, and he was a fast learner.”
An old hand at private business, Bloomberg struggled with some basic realities of the municipal budget and was shocked that no one could even give him an exact head count of city workers.
“His attitude was, if you tried that in the private world, you would be guilty of fraud,” said one insider.
Like a customer at a Chinese restaurant, Bloomberg picked various options off a menu of cuts proposed by Shaw and Page – and came up with a few of his own.
When presented with the possibility of doubling the city’s cigarette tax from 8 to 16 cents a pack, the mayor decided to match the state by raising the city cig tax to a whopping $1.50 a pack.
After meeting with more staffers in Gracie Mansion over last weekend, Bloomberg locked in his budget numbers and then invited his commissioners for a dinner of fried chicken.
But the mayor didn’t talk turkey with his nervous cabinet, keeping the event “social.”
“He said he’d see them again Wednesday morning and give them the bad news,” the insider said.
Even after he was satisfied with his numbers, Bloomberg spent hours fiddling with his many charts and changing the language in his CEO-style presentation.
Unlike his State of the City address, Bloomberg did not engage in a dry run for his budget talk.
“His attitude was that he’s an engineer who solves problems and that he wasn’t going to make this sound like a political speech,” said another administration insider.
Shortly after entering City Hall’s Blue Room filled with reporters this past Wednesday morning, it was clear that Bloomberg was finally hitting his stride.
For more than 90 minutes, he calmly and coolly presented the city’s dire economic forecast and unveiled budget cuts.
And he repeatedly emphasized that the budget was a work in progress.
“The idea had to be ‘we’re in this together’ and that he has an open mind. Otherwise, he’s done for,” said an aide.
“Reverting back to his business-world persona obviously served him well. He was a convincing salesman,” added another.
While the toughest part of the budget process is yet to come – negotiations with the City Council – his aides said they were relieved the first step went smoothly.
“I think he’s going to continue to get better, be more relaxed, and the fact that he’s mayor is going to sink in deeper with him every day,” Garth predicted.