Quite the carfuffle has been stirred up about town by Mayor Bloomberg’s recent hints that a rollback of his property tax hike is on the table. The first hint was floated when the mayor addressed the Financial Control Board last Thursday, and he said he had raised $2.7 billion of revenue in “a mix, I hope, of temporary property, sales, and personal income tax increases.” In case New Yorkers thought they had misheard him — while the sales and personal income tax hikes are supposed to be phased out, no such thing had ever been said of the 18.5% property tax increase — Mr. Bloomberg reiterated the point on Sunday. Before the 15th annual Bronx Puerto Rican Day Parade, the mayor said he hoped he could allow the income and sales tax surcharges to phase out as planned — and cut the property tax.

This opened up a gap between the mayor and the City Council’s speaker, Gifford Miller, with whom the mayor, in a violation of his campaign promises, conspired to raise the tax in the first place. Mr. Miller, at the same parade on Sunday, declared that “It would be great if we could cut it, but we have to have fiscal responsibility.” But wait. There may not be any gap after all, according to the New YorkTimes. To that paper, Mr. Bloomberg’s communications director, William Cunningham, gave an interview where he said that “There is no talk of repeal.” He also said that “It can’t be done. It would devastate the city’s budget.” Maybe someone should tell the mayor, however, as he was out again yesterday pledging to “do everything I can” to cut taxes.

So, there is, if nothing else, talk about some kind of repeal — or at least a rollback. One Democratic council member, Anthony Avella of Northeast Queens, has put a proposal on the table to roll back the 18.5% property tax increase by more than a quarter by fiscal year 2006, which is at least a start. While this may cause howls among the tax and spend crowd, the fact is that tax cuts themselves could help to bring the economy back. Tax increases have only retarded that process. “This is the chicken and the egg,” a fiscal policy analyst at the Manhattan Institute, E.J. McMahon, told the Sun yesterday. “They added to the city’s economic problems,” he said of the City Council and the mayor. “He should do something proactively.”

Clearly the Speaker doesn’t get it. “We are at the mercy of the position of the economy,” a spokesman for Mr. Miller said yesterday. Mr. McMahon characterizes this as epitomizing the attitude that “The economy is something that happens to us.” But so far the high-tax, austerity combination has netted us a loss of 9,000 jobs just this June, and a loss of more than 22,000 since the start of the year, according to the most recent report of the City comptroller. While the national recession is over, New York City’s persists. The securities industry may be recovering, but that is one of the only glimmers of hope, and it is not likely to bring back many of the jobs that have already moved away. “I would like to leave office in six years with taxes lower than they were when I came into office,” Mr. Bloomberg joked yesterday. People will be listening as to whether he will finally pledge to follow through on phasing out the sales and income tax hikes, a promise he has pointedly yet to make. Maybe some of the Democrats in the Council, like Mr. Avella, can drown out the Gifford Millers of this city and finally lead us to economic recovery.