The Citizens Budget Commission, in its suggestions to Mayor Bloomberg on budget cuts, observes that a one-year wage freeze for all 308,000 city employees would save taxpayers a whopping $1.2 billion annually — not just once, but forever (assuming the city wouldn’t make up for it with bigger raises later). 

In making the suggestion, the CBC’s Carol Kellerman notes that such a measure is “reasonable” and “would be less painful a concession than that typical for many New Yorkers in the private sector who have contended with pay cuts and layoffs.”

The CBC further criticizes the mayor’s decision to take $1.1 billion out of the city’s $2.5 billion retiree health-insurance trust to cover employee pension-fund losses. Kellerman says the money should go only toward the expected growth in future healthcare costs. 

The group also calls for a moratorium on new tax hikes.

CBC says such hikes would “harm prospects for economic recovery and growth,” especially as they would come in the wake of a whopping nearly $12 billion in new taxes and fees that the state and city have either approved this year or seem about to approve, from the MTA’s new payroll tax to the city’s request for a half-percent hike in the sales tax.