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Bloomberg Says He’ll Leave de Blasio No Deficit

The financial picture that New York City’s next mayor will face just got a little brighter.

Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg said on Thursday that he was leaving his successor, Bill de Blasio, with a balanced budget for the next fiscal year, which begins on July 1 — a rosier outlook than the $2 billion deficit that his administration had projected in June. The change is due to a combination of savings and greater-than-projected tax revenues, the mayor said.

“It doesn’t make the next mayor’s job easy,” Mr. Bloomberg said at a news conference at City Hall. “But it reduces the pain.”

The announcement, which had been widely expected by budget experts, comes as Mr. Bloomberg is trying, despite his policy differences from Mayor-elect de Blasio, to preside over what he has called “a world-class transition.” Mr. Bloomberg said that it was the first time “in modern memory” that a mayor had left his successor a balanced budget for the coming year.

But the new budget outlook does not eliminate the most significant looming problem for Mr. de Blasio: that the city’s municipal unions are demanding some $8 billion in retroactive pay, because they have been working under expired contracts.

Mr. de Blasio’s camp responded skeptically to the mayor’s announcement. “We’re reviewing the budget modification released by the mayor today, and remain concerned about the continued impact of sequestration, high uncertainty around the flow of Sandy recovery aid, and the liabilities from unresolved labor contracts,” Lis Smith, a spokeswoman for the mayor-elect, said in an email.

Budget experts said the more positive outlook was good news for the city. “It shows that things are going relatively well in New York compared to recent times, in that there is some steady growth in revenue and that expenses are also relatively under control,” said Carol Kellermann, president of the Citizens Budget Commission.

But she said that, in addition to the labor contracts, there were other variables that could open new holes in the budget, like whether the city would decide to pump more money into the Health and Hospitals Corporation or the New York City Housing Authority, to offset potential declines in federal funding.

The savings came from numerous sources, such as refinancing of debt, a freeze in the city’s health care costs and public bidding for school busing contracts. Revenues came from many sources, including the sale of two buildings, earnings from an auction of new taxi medallions that exceeded expectations, and increased tax revenue.

In terms of labor contracts, Mr. Bloomberg said there were reserves in his budget to give unions the deal that his administration has been offering since 2010, which would mandate three years of no unionwide base pay increases (the clock starting when each union’s contract expired), followed by two years of 1.25 percent raises. It would also require workers to contribute to their health care plans.

Labor officials responded with anger.

Harry Nespoli, chairman of the Municipal Labor Committee, said that not setting aside money for greater wage increases was “like a homeowner developing a budget without counting the mortgage as an expense.”

“The city’s municipal employees assume good faith as a prerequisite for bargaining,” Mr. Nespoli said. “Mayor Bloomberg has not met that standard, and we expect that the new administration will come to the table to sit and negotiate, not dictate, when we bargain.”

The city comptroller, John C. Liu, who lost a bid for mayor, also criticized the mayor in a news release, saying that his budget did not “add up.”

“Not only will the next administration not inherit a balanced budget, but it will also be greeted on Day 1 with a fiscal mess of historic proportions — 300,000 employees working with expired contracts,” Mr. Liu said.

Mr. Bloomberg’s budget “may seem balanced on paper,” Mr. Liu added, “but the fiscal reality points to multibillion-dollar budget gaps on the fiscal horizon.”

A version of this article appears in print on  , Section A, Page 22 of the New York edition with the headline: Mayor Says He’ll Leave De Blasio No Deficit. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe

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