The Nation: Out in a Rowboat with Mayor Lindsay

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NEARLY all of America's big cities share the malady: while the cost of services steadily mounts, the tax base that provides for those services just as surely shrinks. In this year of recession, funds are shorter than ever, leading desperate mayors to seek relief in Washington, in state capitols and in an array of burdensome new taxes that the public can scarcely support. Yet, aggravated as they are, the problems of all other American mayors absolutely pale beside those of John Lindsay, the embattled mayor of New York City.

The mayor of Seattle may confront more unemployment. The mayor of Newark may be closer to city bankruptcy. The mayor of Cleveland may be more bitterly at odds with his own council. Yet Lindsay must face a state legislature that is determined to give his city as little help as possible. Moreover he is up against a Governor, Nelson Rockefeller, who openly berates him, despite their common home in the liberal wing of the Republican Party. In his book The City, Lindsay described his annual pilgrimage to the state capital of Albany to get the city budget cleared. "When I prepare for the Albany journey," he wrote, "I think of Henry Hudson, who began his journey as captain of the stately Half Moon and ended it in a rowboat somewhere off the coast of Canada."

Contemptuous. When he went to Albany this spring, Lindsay was lucky to have a rowboat. Never had the legislature been more hostile; never had Rockefeller been more openly contemptuous. As if that were not enough, militant municipal unions went on strike last week in protest against budget cuts, thereby tying up traffic, dumping raw sewage into waterways and threatening to turn off New York City's water supply. Under those crisis circumstances, budget negotiations could scarcely be conducted in the cool, rational manner appropriate for such complex issues. Instead, they were carried on with bad manners, vitriol and vilification.

Consider this sampler of Lindsay-Rockefeller exchanges in recent weeks:

Lindsay: "The state government is acting with a combination of arrogance and contempt."

Rockefeller: "Progress is being seriously hindered by a growing loss of confidence in the city due to inept and extravagant administration."

Lindsay: "We have been raped and we're accused of prostitution. I have never seen any leadership so determined to exact the last pound of flesh from its opponents."

Rockefeller: "He's not responsible for what he's saying. He's emotionally upset. The poor man has been under a lot of pressure."

Rockefeller's antagonism was reinforced this year by a changed mood in the state legislature. The recession had hardened the resolve of rural and suburban representatives, who were already suspicious of Lindsay's jeremiads predicting destitution and disaster if he did not get the $9.13 billion budget he was seeking. Nor did they forget that in last year's election many of them had been returned to office with Conservative Party support.