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Koch agrees with Reagan in principle, so he is not about to storm the White House.
He has lobbied Congress, however, on mass transit and Medicaid. And his friendship with the President has paid off in at least one area. New York will receive $1.7 billion to complete its Westway construction project, a covered highway that will link midtown and downtown Manhattan.
The areas most affected by Koch's own budgetary cutbacks have been crime and education; one up, one down. Depending on his mood, Koch will sometimes make less of the city's crime situation by pointing out that New York is only ninth nationally in crime statistics and is not No. 1 in rapes and murders, which is no consolation to victims, and is, in any case, misleading. Last year was a crime bonanza for New York, a record, and Koch does take that seriously. In next year's budget he calls for 1,000 new cops and 500 civilians to be added to the police force, along with 37 new trial courts to try to break the gridlock of the criminal justice system. Yet the New York State Bar Association has approved only twelve of the mayor's 33 legislative proposals to reform the system. Two of the disapproved ideas, the most controversial, are Koch's call for pretrial jailing without bail of certain people charged with major crimes and his proposal that prosecutors be allowed to appeal, to a higher court, sentences they regard as too lenient.
As for public education, New York's problems only differ from other cities in magnitude. Schools are dangerous; truancy is rife; classes are unwieldy; teachers can't teach. Koch emphasizes the good news; reading scores are up about 6%, exceeding the national average. And for 1982 he proposes the hiring of 1,100 new teachers, 400 more school guards, and an additional $9 million for new equipment and the schools' maintenance budget. Yet a central pedagogical problem must also be met. The city's economy, like the nation's, is changing from one of manufacturing to one of service. Will the schools produce students who can compete in this new market?
The mayor's most publicized problem these days is the New York transit system, which successive administrations of the MTA have let go to hell, until now it has become both a mess and a high-crime district. Of the subway, Koch says that "it stinks" and that it isn't his baby. That is true: only the Governor can hire and fire the MTA chairman, and Koch controls but four of the fifteen votes on the MTA board.
Still, the city is Koch's baby, and the subway is a disease coursing through its arteries.
Recently a panel was appointed to recommend comprehensive solutions. It had better. Responsible or not, Koch may well see much of the good will he has won in the past three years go down those tubes.
Of all Koch's concerns, the one that rankles and disturbs him the most personally is the accusation that he does not care about the city's blacks and Hispanics. Even his severest critics on this issue rarely accuse Koch of actually being a racist. What they do say is that the mayor, through his championship of the middle class, is exacerbating the normal racial tensions in the city by treating nonwhites as if they were not true citizens.