It's not investing. The city has gotten worse in spite of a larger budget over time. The waste and corruption need a way to be corrected and budgets need to be managed; there's no incentive if bailouts have a well established path. If you want more of something, subsidize it.
Not letting one of the US's crown jewel cities with a 236B economy spiral into decay over a ~.7B shortfall is financially prudent. Not doing so would certainly cost the taxpayers more than that, so it definitely meets the literal definition of investment!
Again, I agree that there's plenty of corruption to stamp out, but letting one of the most important cities in the USA decay over a relatively meager amount of money is not the way to go.
