“I'd gladly pay you Tuesday for a hamburger today,” the character Wimpy often said in the Popeye strip. The payment never came. There is much I could praise in the New York State budget recently agreed to, in its precedents and, to a lesser extent, even the way it was adopted, which bad as it was better than in the past. Unlike the Daily News or New York Times, however, I will not write about anything I agree with until my question is answered. Including school aid that is called school aid, back door school aid (STAR), Spitzer's new checks, and all CASH to be spent IN A GIVEN FISCAL YEAR to fund, or to offset local funding for, elementary and secondary education, what was NYC's share of total state spending last year, and what will it be this year? In his initial budget Powerpoint presentation, Governor Spitzer said it was 37% last year and proposed to be 37% next year, with Long Island's share also unchanged at 14.1% (despite a “school aid” shift) because of all the money that area would get from Spitzer's checks. So what was the final result? The Governor and others are going around the state talking about everything else.
Perhaps the newly restructured formula, though ignored this year, will result in fairness for the city down the line. There is a reverse precedent for that. The City of New York has often agreed to deals in Albany that have allowed a short term infusion of cash to solve a political problem for the current administration, but at a terrible long term cost. New York City Transit's share of the toll money from what was its own Triborough Bridge and Tunnel Authority is one such example. It was high at first, but he formula guaranteed it would fall ever after, as it has.
But if the city's share of education funding went down, isn't that itself a precedent for next year and the year after and the year after that, now that the Campaign for Fiscal Equity Lawsuit case is over? When that case was filed, the city had 37% of the students and 29% of state education funding, after the state had cut the city's funding while increasing it to the rest of the state in a fiscal crisis, with terrible consequences for the city's schools. The city's share of state education funding also went down after 9/11, from 35.8% of the total in fiscal 2001 to 34.2% in fiscal 2002 and a similar share in fiscal 2003.
The city’s share went up, on the other hand, every time a key decision was about to be reached in the CFE case, finally reaching the same as the share of the city's public schoolchildren (but not its residents’ share of state income taxes) last year. Here is a quote from the New York Times on the budget. “”We expect that it won't be any different next year,’ said John E. McArdle, a spokesman for the Senate majority leader, Joseph L. Bruno. ‘We fight this fight and are successful year in, year out, and we expect next year to be no different.’” To me, that means when money again gets tight, there will again be a big cut in state education funding for NYC in order to offset continued increases elsewhere.
Bill Hammond of the Daily News blames the State Senate, but I won't blame them alone. I predicted HERE http://www.r8ny.com/blog/larry_littlefield/it_takes_a_thief.html Governor Spitzer would be offered symbolic victories in exchange for real defeats, and would have to offer the reverse to get the reverse. So who got which? I also predicted HERE http://www.r8ny.com/blog/larry_littlefield/faso_and_spitzer_agree_nycs_share_of_state_education_funding_should_be_cut.html that given his expansion of the STAR program, Spitzer would end up cutting NYC's share of total education funding. Is that what happened?
Ironically, a fair and simple school funding formula may be in Nassau County’s long-term interest. All over the country, places have become poorer when their housing stock reaches 50 years of age and is passed down to the less well off as the better off decamp to newer places elsewhere. It happened to Manhattan, which had the lowest median household income in the city in 1949, after the better off used the subway to move to the outer boroughs. It happened to Brooklyn, which had a per capita income that was above the national average in 1969 but is now nearly 20% lower. It happened to Queens, which had a per capita income that was 34% over the national average in 1969 and is now below average as well.
Most of Nassau’s housing was built after WWII, and will be reaching 50 years old for the most part over the next 20 years. Meanwhile, there is a second wave of increasing wealth moving out from Manhattan, which now has the highest per capita income in the country by far. If the city, where only one-third of the housing units have three or more bedrooms, continues to gentrify with young singles and couples and empty nesters, while middle- and moderate-income families with children move to Nassau for more affordable housing, Nassau’s share may legitimately rise to more than the “traditional” 13% (actually 14%) over the next two decades. The city’s share could legitimately fall.
That would mean that New York City had been stiffed while in need, and then taxed for others when those others needed it more. There is plenty of precedent for that as well. The most costly Medicaid beneficiaries are the frail elderly, and the 25% local match was a huge burden on NYC in the 1970s and 1980s, when the parents of the baby boomers, who had been left behind in the city as they moved to the suburbs, required custodial care. Looking at the population by age over time, I remember thinking 15 years ago that the high local share of Medicaid would work in the city’s favor someday, because the suburbs and Upstate would age while the city would attract the young and immigrants. And that is what happened. And then the state cut the local share of Medicaid for nursing homes to 10%, so NYC residents will have to pay more for the seniors elsewhere.
“I'll gladly reform you Tuesday for a big increase in spending, with the city getting a lower share, today?” The final judgment may wait a year. But to decide what I think of the current budget, I want someone to answer my question. How about the all inclusive education bottom line?