Tomorrow the main event of the Spitzer Administration begins: the first state budget. State government provides relatively few public services and benefits directly, but through the state budget and related rules, it finances and controls the services and benefits provided by local government and by private entities such as the health care system. For those concerned with services and benefits, and the taxes required to pay for them, the state budget is the policy. And the first state budget will be Governor Spitzer’s best opportunity to change the longstanding fiscal priorities of the state, priorities that have provided increasing rewards to a shrinking number of organized interests while disadvantaging everyone else. For the losers, including the future and those who plan to be here during it, he’s the best hope we’ve got.
I expect my next few posts will be about the budget, and I will do the best I can to analyze it. It won’t be easy, since the New York State budget documents are those I find the most difficult to understand. According to the U.S. Census Bureau, for example, the State of New York and its related entities spent $132 billion in FY 2004, a figure that is comparable to similar data provided for other states (although with adjustments for the different division of responsibilities between state and local governments elsewhere). The year-end review of the state budget for that fiscal year, however, totals just $97 billion in spending, excluding among other things the local share of Medicaid. If it is possible to see in a single large table how much is being spent on what for whom, and who is paying for under what assumptions, that itself will be a reform.
The language used to describe the budget will be critical. Speaking merely of changes from this year to the next concedes up front that last year’s priorities are the base for this year’s. The winners keep winning, and the losers keep losing. Comparing New York State with other states, and parts of New York State with each other, as I do, puts the winners and losers on notice as to who they are. I’ll be listening for the unsayable things to be said. Only then can the undoable things be done. And I’m hoping that in addition to Spitzer being pressed to justify his changes, Silver, Bruno and associates will be forced to justify the past and present. Someone needs to ask “this is what you have done, and this is what the consequences have been. Is this what you believe in?”