“A great day for New York City,” is how Mayor Bloomberg described the deal announced last night between the city and its largest municipal union, District Council 37 of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees. There were elements of the deal that underscore the mayor’s legendary business acumen. In reaching a deal with DC 37 before reaching one with the unions representing the city’s police officers, firemen, or teachers, Mr. Bloomberg struck a bargain with the weakest union and the one from which he could probably get the best terms. The teachers are powerful and organized and hold Mr. Bloomberg’s key agenda item, education, at their mercy. The police can affect the level of crime in the city, and, along with firemen, are popular after the September 11 attacks. District Council 37, on the other hand, has been weakened by corruption scandals and internal political divisions. Now that Mr. Bloomberg has a deal with them, he can use it as a template for making deals with the other, stronger unions.

Another creative element of the deal is Mr. Bloomberg’s plan to pay a $1,000 bonus to each DC 37 member immediately upon ratification of the contract. Mr. Bloomberg could have pressed the matter and made the $1,000 payable only to the individual union members who vote in favor of the contract, but the union members no doubt get the idea and will vote accordingly. Clever. Mr. Bloomberg is also to be commended for making wage increases in the contract going forward — after July 1, 2004 — conditional on the achievement of genuine productivity savings from the union.”There will be no extra cost to the city,” Mr. Bloomberg vowed of that aspect of the bargain, which is a precedent and a principle worth fighting for in future agreements with the city’s other unions.

There will be a cost to the city — a onetime $73 million — for the $1,000 payments and another $98 million annually for a 3% wage increase effective July 1, 2003. Mr. Bloomberg said he wished he could have achieved a deal earlier so that those increases, too, could have been paid for with productivity savings.

For all that, though, we can’t go so far as to agree with Mr. Bloomberg that — at least on the basis of the DC 37 contract — yesterday amounted to a “great day” in New York. After all, Mr. Bloomberg began his announcement yesterday by acknowledging that the city’s taxpayers are hard-pressed, and he vowed, “We’ll try to reduce their tax burden as much as we can.”Yet Mr. Bloomberg has so far offered the taxpayers a mere $400 property tax rebate. He and his partners in Albany have raised taxes on New Yorkers by far more than that, all the while claiming there were no significant productivity savings available to be wrung from the city budget. The city’s unionized municipal workers will end up, after this deal, with $1,000 each in their pockets, plus raises. That’s money plucked directly from the city’s taxpayers, who bear the highest combined state and local tax burden in the nation. It’s not “great” to see the city’s workers getting their bonuses — and bigger ones — before the taxpayers get theirs. And if the city’s unionized workers are getting wage increases retroactive to 2003, how about making tax cuts for the city’s taxpayers retroactive to 2003? Maybe the taxpayers need a union of our own.