ALBANY — A week after he criticized Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo’s budget as unfair to New York City, Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg appeared before lawmakers on Monday and offered grim examples to prove his point. Classroom crowding would worsen, he said. More than a third of the city’s senior citizen centers would close. The scale of layoffs, in the schools and at government agencies, would be “devastating.”  But when he was done chronicling the budgetary fallout that lies ahead, Mr. Bloomberg sounded a note of détente. The city, he said, would largely accept the proposed cuts, which by his math add up to $2.1 billion, but he wants something in return.  “We know you have to cut back,” the mayor told legislators. “We’ll have to live with it. But you can find ways to mitigate or eliminate an awful lot of the pain.” Rather than take aim at the governor’s sweeping cuts, the mayor spent the day lobbying lawmakers to ease a wide range of state mandates that he said had the effect of making a bad fiscal situation worse.  The word mandate was the pejorative of the day at the Legislative Office Building, where mayors and local officials — the tin cup brigade, as the annual parade of woebegone speakers is known — warned lawmakers about the consequences of Mr. Cuomo’s proposed cuts.  Mr. Bloomberg was the star attraction. While he showed a grudging acceptance of Mr. Cuomo’s proposed cuts, he made clear that he believed the governor had significantly understated the extent to which his budget would reduce money for the city, and their respective aides spent the afternoon bickering over numbers.  The mayor put the cut in funds at more than three times the $659 million that the Cuomo administration cites. The governor has framed his budget cuts in relation to spending in the current fiscal year, while the mayor did his calculations using the money that he said the city had been counting on.  Included in Mr. Bloomberg’s figure of $2.1 billion are a planned increase in school aid that Mr. Cuomo cut, and $300 million in annual revenue-sharing money that was due to be restored to the city but was wiped out in Mr. Cuomo’s proposed budget. Mr. Cuomo’s budget director, Robert L. Megna, released a statement saying it was “obviously not realistic” for the mayor to have counted on increased state funds, given the state’s fiscal condition.  In any event, Mr. Bloomberg himself seemed more concerned with winning concessions on mandates from the Legislature than with pressing Mr. Cuomo to soften the financial blow from his budget proposal.  Lawmakers and political observers have wondered whether the budget would lead to political war between Mr. Bloomberg, an independent, and Mr. Cuomo, a Democrat. Mr. Bloomberg, who met with Mr. Cuomo and legislative leaders after his testimony on Monday, seemed aware of the close parsing of his words. Speaking to the lawmakers, he frequently complimented Mr. Cuomo for his effort to drive down state spending and improve the state’s tax climate. On Mr. Cuomo’s broader agenda, the mayor told reporters, “I’m 100 percent behind him.”  But Mr. Bloomberg took an agenda of his own to the hearing. “If Albany feels it must walk away from their obligations because of previous mismanagement,” he said, “it is critical that the governor and State Legislature help us reduce our expenses.”  In a favorite example, the mayor cited the fact that state law required the city to pay the full tuition for some special-education students to attend private schools, even if their parents refused to consider city schools that provided comparable special-education services. The private school tuition costs taxpayers more than $100 million a year, he said.  The mayor added that because of mandates, some of Mr. Cuomo’s cuts simply shifted costs from the state to the city, including $31 million for homeless shelters and $120 million for summer-school special education.  Mr. Bloomberg also repeated his plea that the Legislature pursue pension reforms for public employees and scrap teachers’ seniority protection before the city had to carry out layoffs.  The mayor’s requests seemed to find a receptive audience. Mr. Bloomberg has donated huge sums to the Senate Republicans, who control that chamber, and the Assembly is dominated by members from New York City, who if only because of geography share many of the mayor’s interests.  But even if he gets some of the legislative changes he is seeking, Mr. Bloomberg will still have to find substantial savings in balancing his own budget, which is due to be unveiled on Feb. 17.  For instance, the change on seniority, which would allow more experienced but less competent teachers to be fired before the most recently hired, would not save any substantial sum of money. But Mr. Bloomberg said it would go a long way toward blunting the effect of teacher layoffs on the quality of students’ education.  Mr. Cuomo and Mr. Bloomberg still disagree over whether layoffs will be necessary.  Mr. Megna suggested that tapping the city’s $2 billion in reserves was a way for the mayor to cut costs without firing teachers.  Mr. Bloomberg’s budget director, Mark Page, responded by calling that assertion “flat-out wrong.” Aides to the mayor said the city had only about half that amount in reserves, already planned to spend it and even then would still face a budget gap in the billions.  Mr. Bloomberg was unequivocal that job losses loomed.  “It’s not going to be just teachers,” he said. “It will filter through the whole system. Every agency is going to have fewer people.”
Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg tells lawmakers that state mandates must be reduced if the city is to avoid crippling layoffs.