As New Yorkers grapple with the latest scandals enveloping their governor, the state faces some harsh fiscal realities — and the budget-approval deadline is rapidly approaching.
State leaders have to buckle down amid the turmoil and are supposed to iron out an agreement by April 1, using Gov. David Paterson’s $134 billion spending plan as a springboard. Today, the Journal concludes a question-and-answer series with state lawmakers about how New York should proceed to untangle the budget mess, in addition to finally passing meaningful ethics and other reforms.
The lawmakers were undoubtedly vague in spots. In some cases, they went after the usual suspects, including reining in Medicaid costs and reforming school property tax laws, promises the state has made for years now with little to nothing to show for those pledges.
But the lawmakers also provided a host of specifics that aren’t talked about as much, but should, indeed, be crafted into laws and policies that would bring sound changes to a state in dire need of them. Those recommendations range from enacting a spending cap not just on education but on the entire state budget, to requiring a two-thirds supermajority of state legislators before another tax or fee increase can be authorized. They include increasing SUNY tuition for out-of-state students to raise money and to bring it closer to the national average, to greatly consolidating the state’s criminal justice system. They involve renegotiating labor contracts and instituting work furloughs to cut costs, to demanding that public servants convicted of serious crimes forfeit their pensions.
The state is in dire need of strong leadership, yet it finds itself, once again, preoccupied by a governor embroiled in personal scandal and facing accusations of ethics violations.
Already confronting assertions he helped a top aide cover up an alleged attack on the aide’s girlfriend, the governor now has to answer a charge by a state commission that he violated ethics laws by getting free tickets to last year’s World Series. Yet, just weeks ago, Paterson saw fit to veto legislation aimed at improving the state’s pitiful ethics and campaign-finance laws. The governor defended the veto by saying the proposed changes didn’t go far enough. But it’s clear this state needs to see progress on many fronts, even if they are more incremental than one might hope.
Instead, immersed in political scandals, the state is losing precious time to make a series of corrections to restore some faith in public service and to bring some fiscal sanity back to Albany. The rank-and-file members of the Legislature have to continue to push for the changes they say are necessary. Collecting a paycheck from Albany and doing “constituency service” isn’t going to cut it. Paterson’s budget proposal includes cuts to health care and education and many other areas that will have impacts on the public, including major reductions in the state’s splendid parks system.
While this budget must include shared sacrifice, before any cuts are made, no good idea should sit idle or be ignored. And no lawmaker should consider his work done until he has exhausted every avenue possible to see that is the case.
— The Poughkeepsie Journal
