NEW YORK -- Boston Mayor Kevin White said Thursday that across-the-board budget cuts for cities proposed by the Reagan Administration and mandated by Massachusetts property tax reform are not just 'trimming one's cuticles' but cutting the patient 'right through the midsection.'
White said the minimum amount of budget cuts he must make will total $100 million out of a $250-million budget, or nearly half his budget.
'When Proposition 2 (property tax reform) was on the ballot I did not oppose it and I didn't support it. There were dimensions of it that even I subscribed to in the sense that we should get off the property tax, that we were overly dependent on it, it gave you a better handle over the unions ... .
'What I didn't know as a mayor was the dimension of the severity of the cuts. Cutting may sound like trimming of the cuticles but when you're cutting half the budget, that's an operation right through the midsection,' White said at a meeting with UPI editors.
White was in New York to talk with financial officials about Boston's bond ratings.
He said that many municipal officials in Massachusetts face budget cuts so 'horrendous' that they have decided not to start them.
And White claims that the proposed Reagan Administration cuts may appeal to the public's desire for reduction of government spending but may actually give the public something it doesn't want.
'Reagan is diagnosing a problem in terms of a patient's complaint and he has a good part of it. They (the public) do want the cutting, they do want the cutbacks. But he isn't doing a sophisticated diagnosis and in the end the prescription Xay not be what they want,' the 52-year-old mayor said.
He ascribes the mania for budget cutting to the voter's need to regain control of government and the economy.
'They want to get a hold of the economy, they want to get a hold of city government -- by the seat of the pants perhaps, but that does not mean a straight-jacket,' White said.
Asked about the massive cuts proposed for the cities' mass transit systems, White said despite the rise in gasoline costs and operating expenses for automobiles, he saw no increase in mass transit use.
'We don't see a concomittant increase in ridership in mass transit. There is no public movement that way. Mass transit is in trouble not only because of management, lack of funding but lack of public support. Even if the thing was the Ritz Hotel on wheels there is something missing here psychologically,' he said.
He spoke about the problems and abuses of many municipal unions and cited an example of municipal workers who recognized 'something was out of control.'
'In Ward 17 in Boston, a place where there are a lot of municipal workers, even their own relatives (municipal workers relatives) have a sense that they were home at 3 o'clock when the rest of the work force was coming home at 5 from their jobs -- a sense that something was out of control,' he said.
Concerning the fiscal problems of Boston schools and the possibility that the schools may be forced to close by March 30, White said the school superintendents were like hostages.
'It's like he hostage situation. They are totally aware of their situation but don't know what the hell to do about it,' he said.
White cited strong teachers unions with 'no-cut, no-layoff' contracts as contributing to the fiscal instability of Boston's schools.
