Whatever happens with the threatened transit worker strike, there is one group of individuals that will not be worrying about how to get around town. They are the city employees who take advantage of about 7,000 of the cars in the city’s vast fleet. Those particular vehicles are not fire engines or police cruisers or garbage trucks. They are cars that the city buys and maintains so that, say, the city’s sports commissioner, or the chief of the Civilian Complaint Review Board, or of the Human Resources Administration, and thousands of their underlings, can ride around town in comfort without having to suffer the subway, a bus, or the back of a taxicab. When city employees take these cars home at the end of the day, they are actually thanked for saving the city the expense of paying for overnight parking spots.

Mayor Bloomberg has made reducing the city fleet one of his budget-cutting priorities. The Department of Citywide Administrative Services, which is responsible for the city’s motor pool, told us that it has been meeting the city’s fleet reduction goal of 731 cars. That amount represents about 10% of the “non-operational” (i.e., not directly related to public safety) vehicles that the city owns. No agency has a comprehensive report on what the city’s vehicles actually cost, or who drives them. A spokesman for the mayor said that he did not believe the city should keep a better accounting of the city’s vehicles, leaving them, like the rest of the budget, to be doled out at the discretion of the city’s agencies. “We don’t budget every shoelace,” he said. Though the city may pass around its vehicles like shoelaces, they are expensive items that cost the taxpayers tens of millions of dollars for purchase, maintenance, and fuel.

New York’s vehicle perks are out of line with other municipalities. The city of Phoenix, Ariz., a sprawling expanse of blacktop with a paltry public transportation system, allows a small number of city officials only a modest allowance to cover the cost of using their own personal vehicles for city business. The mayor of Phoenix leases his own car at a significant discount through a program the Ford Motor Company maintains for heads of government. In San Francisco, only a half-dozen or so heads of key departments are given cars. The staff of their City Hall shares a pool of 15 hybrid vehicles for all official business. In New York, meanwhile, the city’s Department of Investigation spends $51,000 a year just on gas for its vehicles.

Mr. Bloomberg’s office estimates that the city will save $28 million over the next four years through the 10% fleet reduction. Why stop there? If the city’s budget were in balance and New York didn’t already have such high taxes, we wouldn’t object to city employees riding about in style. But New York has one of the highest tax burdens of any city, and it is facing a $6 billion budget gap. We propose a 90% fleet reduction, saving the city an additional $63 million a year.