Welcome back to the Ten Blocks podcast. This is Brian Anderson, the editor of City Journal.

Joining me on the show today is my colleague and friend Steve Malanga.

Steve is our senior editor at City Journal and a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute.

We've invited him to come on the show today to discuss his new essay, The Bill Comes Due,

which details New York City's budget dilemmas and the fiscal challenges

facing its next mayor. Steve's essay is featured in our new special issue called New York City

Reborn, which we've just released. The issue includes essays by longtime City Journal writers

and others on how New York City can regain order and prosperity

as it rebuilds following the COVID-19 pandemic. You can find the issue and request print copy

on our website. Thanks very much for joining us, as always, Steve. My pleasure. You write in this essay that Mayor de Blasio, from the time he took

office in 2013, through the formation of his actual 2020 budget, boosted city spending by $25 billion.

This is a very significant, 34% growth rate. He added something on the order

of 30,000 full-time positions to the city staff. This was the largest increase in municipal

workers in 40 years. New York City provides its employees, of course, generous pensions and fringe benefits,

and the mayor's concessions to unions, as you note, including retroactive pay increases,

have boosted the city's personnel costs by billions. So could you describe some of the policies

that have contributed to the city's bloated payroll

and offer your take on how these personnel costs could start being paired back?

Yeah, so, I mean, it basically falls into two categories, giving those who work for the city more

and making more of them, hiring more of them.

There was an unprecedented, really, expansion of the city workforce by about the 30,000

full-time workers.

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