A new study confirms what exasperated New Yorkers already knew: Their town is one of the worst-run cities in America, behind only Washington, DC and San Francisco.
WalletHub compared “the quality of services residents receive” in six categories (financial stability, education, health, safety, economy and infrastructure and pollution) to the total budget of 150 of the largest US cities to rank the best (and worst) run. Gotham secured the third-worst spot by being 35th in quality of services and 148th in total budget per-capita — meaning New Yorkers are getting barely a pop for each buck city government spends.
This can come as no surprise to Mayor Eric Adams, who this month said he’s “shocked” by “how bad” the city’s “deployment of resources” has been.
It isn’t Adams’ fault, as he’s holding the bag after eight disastrous de Blasio years (including such lowlights as the $1 billion-plus burned on the mental-health initiative ThriveNYC with near-zero result), and after decades of a municipal culture that lavishes resources on the maximally unionized city workforce and politically connected nonprofits with no regard to results.
Indeed, the common denominator among the poorest-managed metropolises is obvious: They’re controlled by Democrats who endlessly expand what city government pretends to do, at the expense of average citizens. Not coincidentally, the “bottom three” are also all seeing crime soar — though San Francisco voters at least just fired soft-on-crime District Attorney Chesa Boudin, while New Yorkers hired Adams because he vowed to restore public safety.
The disastrous results of progressive policies also explain why deep-blue states like California and New York have seen a mass exodus of people, while Republican-led states like Texas and Florida boom.
Maybe a larger urban voter rebellion against dysfunctional government will follow the revolt on crime: All the polls indicate that America’s working class of all races is fed up with Democratic leadership that just doesn’t care about average folks’ needs.