Mayoral aspirant Fernando Ferrer made it through a candidate forum yesterday with nobody mentioning the police killing of Amadou Diallo, but the Democratic front-runner was nonetheless singled out for criticism by his fellow candidates and the Citizens Budget Commission. At the luncheon forum, dedicated mainly to fiscal issues, Mr. Ferrer came under attack for his proposal of a stock-transfer tax, which would impose a $1-billion-a-year levy on Wall Street stock trades.

Earlier in the discussion, held at the Grand Hyatt hotel at Manhattan, Mr. Ferrer had said sales taxes were too high in the city and were driving retail jobs across the Hudson River. In the only question taken from the audience, a trustee of the budget group, Norman Mintz, asked Mr. Ferrer whether his stock-transfer tax would not also drive trading and financial-services jobs out of the city. Mr. Ferrer’s proposal – unveiled in mid-April as a means of obtaining the $3.5 billion he says the city must provide to get additional state money for schools that was mandated in the court decision in the Campaign for Fiscal Equity case – has been criticized as a move that could cost the city tens of thousands of jobs.

After being accused of dodging Mr. Mintz’s question, Mr. Ferrer responded by saying that the Wall Street establishment had threatened in the past to leave if the city weren’t more accommodating, and that such threats had proved empty. His reply was pounced upon by a rival candidate, Rep. Anthony Weiner, who excoriated Mr. Ferrer’s plan for hurting not “well-to-do stock barons” but middle-class New Yorkers.

The congressman, whose district straddles Brooklyn and Queens, also criticized Mr. Ferrer for adopting an “unwise bargaining strategy” in volunteering to have the city pay $3.5 billion to get the state school money. Mayor Bloomberg has maintained that the city should not have to pay anything to obtain the court-ordered billions from Albany, a position Mr. Weiner, too, has adopted. Mr. Ferrer responded testily that putting up zero city money “has gotten us exactly zero” from Albany.

The remaining candidates, the City Council speaker, Gifford Miller, and the Manhattan borough president, C. Virginia Fields, then piled on, saying Mr. Ferrer’s tax, which he plans to phase out after four years, was “not sustainable” as a means of generating revenue for acquiring the school money.

After the forum, the president of the budget commission and the event’s moderator, Diana Fortuna, said the organization had been concerned about the effects of Mr. Ferrer’s proposal on the city’s economy, as well as the feasibility of obtaining the money. “It’s a hard kind of activity to tax, given how mobile it is,” she said.

According to event organizers, most of the prepared questions asked by commission trustees and officers were based on a report released by the group last month, “The Myth of the ‘Uncontrollables,” which identifies methods the city can use to reduce budget allocations for “non-discretionary” items, such as pensions, health care, and debt service.

The importance of reducing borrowing-related expenditures was trumpeted by Ms. Fields in her responses to the commission members’ questions, in which she pledged to “immediately pay down debt.” The borough president, who has been running second in polls of Democratic voters, also said that to reduce the city’s health-care expenses, she would reduce the number of New Yorkers on Medicaid by putting more of them to work. After Ms. Fields said she would also keep health-care costs down by helping senior citizens stay in their own residences as long as possible – rather than move to more expensive nursing home facilities – Mr. Weiner began another sparring match when he accused her of having purloined a policy the congressman unveiled in a speech in April.

Among Mr. Ferrer’s proposals for reducing city health-care costs was to have New York State “assume the full burden of the non-federal match” on Medicaid funds. Currently, of New Yorkers’ Medicaid expenses, roughly 50% are paid for by the federal government, 33% by the state, and 17% by the city.

All four of the candidates were received politely but unenthusiastically by members of the Citizens Budget Commission, a watchdog and policy organization that describes itself as nonprofit and nonpartisan. As such, the group will not be endorsing any of the candidates, Ms. Fortuna said, adding that yesterday’s forum was intended primarily to familiarize members with the candidates and their positions.