PHOENIX, Arizona (Reuters) – More than a thousand National Guard troops brought in last year to shore security on the U.S.-Mexico border will go home in June, authorities said on Friday.

President Barack Obama's administration provided 1,200 National Guard troops to back up Border Patrol agents while the government hired more federal border and immigration police and bought additional equipment.

The troops have helped agents gather intelligence as well as providing surveillance and reconnaissance support since they began their deployment last August, U.S. Customs and Border Protection spokesman Mark Qualia said.

The Guard have helped seize over 14,000 pounds of drugs and contributed to the apprehension of 7,000 illegal immigrants, U.S. Department of Homeland Security spokesman Matthew Chandler said.

Shortly after the first troops began their deployment last August, Obama signed a bill with $600 million in funding to beef up border security.

It provided funds to hire 1,500 additional federal border police, customs inspectors and investigators, as well as two additional unmanned surveillance drones and improved tactical communications systems, Chandler said.

It was not immediately clear how many new border security agents have been hired.

Despite the additional resources, Arizona's Republican Governor Jan Brewer spoke out against the troop drawdown this week, calling it "inexplicable and inexcusable," The Arizona Republic newspaper reported.

Last month Brewer sued the Obama administration, charging it had failed to secure the porous southwest border..

(Reporting by Tim Gaynor; Editing by Greg McCune)

MADISON, Wis (Reuters) – A U.S. judge on Friday temporarily blocked a controversial new law in Wisconsin that strips public employee unions of key collective bargaining rights.

Dane County Judge Maryann Sumi granted a restraining order stopping official publication of the bill, which was passed by the Midwestern state's Republican-controlled legislature and signed by its Republican Governor Scott Walker last week.

Her ruling did not overturn the law but effectively blocked it while she considered a lawsuit filed by the Dane County district attorney, who has argued Republican lawmakers violated state open meetings laws by failing to give adequate notice of the vote.

Sumi still has to rule on the merit of the lawsuit, which asked that the law be voided. Even if it were overturned, Republicans could return to the legislature, where they control both houses, and pass it again in compliance with the open meetings laws.

"We are confident the provisions of the budget repair bill will become law in the near future," said Cullen Werwie, Walker's spokesman.

Wisconsin Attorney General J.B. Van Hollen, a Republican, said an appeal of the judge's restraining order would be filed next week. "The Legislature and the Governor, not a single Dane County Circuit Court Judge, are responsible for the enactment of laws," he said.

POLARIZING LAW

The judge's order gave public workers in the state more time to bargain new and better contracts with municipal authorities -- deals that could allow them to skirt the law's strict measures during the length of those contracts.

The lawsuit, filed by Dane County district attorney Ismael Ozanne, says lawmakers violated the law and state rules by holding a committee meeting with only two hours notice and at a time when the Capitol building was closed to the public.

A companion lawsuit being heard by Judge Sumi says the legislation contained fiscal items that required a quorum in the Senate. Republicans had maneuvered around a boycott of the Senate's 14 Democrats by stripping out what they said were fiscal elements.

State representative Peter Barca, the top Democrat in Wisconsin's Assembly, said Republicans had violated long-standing rules "because they realized how unpopular and undemocratic this legislation was."

The law polarized the state, among the first to give public employees the right to unionize, triggering the biggest protests since the Vietnam War and making Wisconsin a focal point of a national debate over unions and the public purse.

Other states with Republican governors have mulled similar measures curbing collective bargaining by teachers, highway workers, nurses and other public servants.

Walker, who signed the bill after weeks of protests in the state capital, has said it is aimed at protecting taxpayers and employment, arguing it will improve the business climate and help the state's private sector create 250,000 jobs.

He said the state needed the restrictions on bargaining to deal with funding shortfalls as it contended with a $3.6 billion deficit in the upcoming two-year budget.

Critics have questioned whether the bill would save money, saying instead it was a smoke screen to break the unions.

(Additional reporting by Andrew Stern; Writing by James B. Kelleher; Editing by Paul Simao)

NEW YORK (Reuters) – New York City's firefighting staff would fall to the lowest number since 1980 while its police force would be cut back to its 1992 roster under Mayor Michael Bloomberg's austere budget plan, a report said Friday.

Bloomberg, who has ordered 10 rounds of budget cuts since 2007, pins the city's fiscal health and its future on ensuring its residents' safety and improving public school education.

Budget cuts risk imperiling these priorities, reducing the number of firefighting staff to 10,282, and the number of uniformed police officers to 34,413. Bloomberg's $65 billion budget plan also includes just under 5,000 teacher layoffs.

"The city's ability to deliver needed and expected services while maintaining budget balance may be severely tested if state and federal cutbacks continue to mount," the Independent Budget Office's report said.

The study outlined the harsh fiscal realities driving service cuts, noting that the city has only won back about half of the 131,700 private sector jobs lost during the recession.

"The report shows the mayor has been making the hard decisions necessary to keep a balanced budget and that we face a very difficult road ahead," a mayoral spokesman said.

Thanks to low interest rates and the federal bailout, Wall Street, the city's most important economic pillar, has enjoyed a surprisingly swift and strong return to profitability.

However, that has not been the case for this industry's revenue, the fiscal monitor's report said.

Noting that Wall Street's 2009 revenue was just under $161 billion -- less than half of the $350 billion total in 2007 -- the report said: "Nor do we anticipate much of a rebound over the next few years." The report added: "This does not lend itself to rapid growth in hiring."

Real average wages paid to securities workers fell 27.2 percent in 2008 and 2009 -- "a drop off without precedent, even going back to the Great Depression," the report said. About 64,700 jobs in all sectors of the city's economy should be added this year -- but Wall Street is only expected to hire an average of about 2,800 people a year. The study added:

"The financial industry may become less profitable, and thus generate less tax revenue for the city, as it adapts to the Dodd-Frank regulations as well as new bonus restrictions proposed by the Securities and Exchange Commission."

Bankers and brokers may only see their compensation rise a "tame" 8.1 percent a year from 2010 to 2015, versus the 57.6 percent gain seen from 2004 to 2007, the report said.

For the current fiscal year ending June 30, the report forecast a $2.9 billion surplus -- $258 million less than the mayor predicted -- and a $195 million deficit in 2012.

But estimates for the 2012 fiscal year that starts July 1 assume the state comes through with $600 million more aid than Democratic Governor Andrew Cuomo has proposed. In 2013, the fiscal monitor projects an extra $1 billion of revenue for the city but says its budget gap will climb to $3.9 billion.

Risks to the city's budget the report identified include high fuel prices, which could clip tourism, the difficulty of getting unionized public workers to accept pension cutbacks and productivity increases, and the spiraling cost of Medicaid. The cost of the health plan for the poor, disabled and elderly has not stopped rising for four decades.

Cuomo proposed $2.3 billion of Medicaid cuts, which would hit the city's Health and Hospitals Corporation. The network of public hospitals gets 40 percent of its revenue from Medicaid.

Demonstrating his support for charter schools, Bloomberg proposed that the Department of Education spend $207 million less next year on public school classrooms but an extra $689 million on nonpublic and charter schools and systemwide costs.

The weather also poses a fiscal hazard: Central Park got nearly 61 inches of snow this winter and the storms, coupled with a tornado, cost the city almost an extra $100 million.

(Reporting by Joan Gralla; Editing by Diane Craft)