I read in the NY Observer that Governor Paterson slammed “good government” groups for being “drunk with power.” “Here are good government groups who are always talking about what government is doing, and no one knows who their donors are…It's about time they realize they have been drunk with power, just like the legislators,” he said. Well, I donate to one of them, because I see coverage of state and local government issues ebbing away in the for-profit media, and that group has a website that produces original new content on state and local government issues as well as links to that for-profit media. Even if I often disagree, it’s much better than nothing, and I’m free to comment there. So do I see the Governor’s remarks as those of a desperate man lashing out, well, blindly? Not necessarily.
Unfortunately, as a general rule just about the only information being produced about state and local government policy is being produced by “think tanks” financed by those with a particular interest in that policy. Much of it is, in my view, misleading, if not in the information provided, then in the information not provided. The unsaid. My view is that one third of what I say the Manhattan Institute can’t say, one third of what I say the Fiscal Policy Institute can’t say, and one third of what I say neither the Manhattan Institute nor the Fiscal Policy Institute can say, even if it is true. Especially if it is true, and challenges the entitlement of privileged interests, and their unwillingness to face the fact that if they pay less or get more, someone else gets less or pays more. That is doubly the case of organizations funded entirely by one sector. The health care industry in New York has a “think tank” issuing reports on health care issues, and until recently those reports were widely quoted as having at least some objective facts in them. Not so.
What about the “good government” groups, however? What is their interest? What does their funding have anything to do with it? In this case, I think the Governor was close but off the mark. They aren’t “drunk with power,” because they have none, and aren’t necessarily influenced by their funding sources. In many cases, however, they are “drunk with importance,” and are limited in what they can say and do by the need to maintain their status as the “official opposition,” a status that those who hold power have the ability to give or take away.
Those in the official opposition practice the art of the possible, and keep the criticisms – and the policy options presented – within bounds. Take the issue that prompted the Governor’s remarks – ethics reform. The “good government” groups have been “working with the legislature” on the passage of ethics legislation. If the ethics legislation passes, the legislators and their apologists would be able to claim that they are ethical. Even if in order to be permitted to work with and testify before the legislature, the good government groups had refrained from demanding anything that might directly undermine perpetual incumbency, such as term limits (which the Governor has proposed) or ballot access reform (which to my knowledge he has not). Even better than the passage of quarter-of-a-loaf ethics legislation, in the view of these legislators, is a failure to pass legislation that each side came blame on each other. Often, I believe, as a result of an under the table deal.
Let’s move on to something I know more about, public finance. Each year the Citizen’s Budget Commission “respectfully” submits suggestions on the state and local budgets, and is invited to give testimony on those budgets. This provides them with legitimacy and a sense of importance, and gets them in the newspaper. I doubt they would be asked if, as I do, they explicitly tied the question of who should have to pay more or accept less in the future, to information about who had a better than average deal in the past, and challenged the decision makers to justify those decisions. Instead, for example, they’ll propose lower pay and benefits for future public employees as an offset to pension enrichments for existing employees and retirees, because that is more “politically tenable,” and questions of fairness just lead to complications of what are merely “technical” issues. Newspapers, with their aging readership, also support sacrifices for younger generations to pay for the collective burdens imposed by that aging readership.
It should also be noted that the CBC thought it was a good thing to slash the initial cash pay of future public employees, because it saved money. Even though it reduced the quality of worker recruited to provide future services, as with the $25,000 per year police officers.
Which gets back to the observation I’ve been making for years: public policy is dominated by producers of public services, public employee and non-profit unions for the Democrats, contractors for the Republicans, both for both in New York, who have the goal of getting paid more for less. And by those affluent enough not to require public services (because they drive their own cars, live in the suburbs or send their kids to private schools, etc) and don’t want to pay taxes for others to have them.
Consumers of public services are unrepresented. So is the future, which is what the powers that be always agree to sacrifice when neither has the complete upper hand, and sometimes when they do. Which is why public services and benefits are going to collapse in the future, which is now just around the corner. The CBC will be happy if tax increases are limited and debts are paid, the unions if those with seniority and the retired give up nothing, so what is the “everybody wins” deal?
I once tried to show up at a few public hearings, before I realized what a waste of time they were for those outside the tent. The list of people signed up to testify was usually so long you had to wait around for hours. When you got to speak for 30 seconds, many of those to whom you had intended to testify were gone, replaced by staff members taking notes for reports no one reads. Members of the official opposition, meanwhile, got to jump the queue and speak first, and at length, along with the pontificating pols. There is, however, a price to be paid for that access, and it involves the unsaid and unconsidered.
At the MTA, along with Straphangers, there were until recently “official” representatives of riders and other interests, as non-voting members of the board. They stuck me as equivalent to company unions, or official worker unions organized by the party under communism. The “official representative” of riders warned quietly for years that growing debts would lead to disaster, and yet voted yes on the budgets. Never once did she vote no, or publicly challenge the moral principles of those making the decisions, or threaten to resign in protest, or actually do so. And now that the bills are due, someone in Albany decided that even non-voting, carefully selected “official” representatives” are no longer to be to present at the MTA. After all, what if they went off the reservation?
What would the “official opposition” say in response to my criticisms? Probably that by working within the system, they have been able to push for incremental improvement, and that by being completely incapable of thinking inside the box, I’m just a Don Quixote tilting unnoticed at windmills.
Take the Straphangers. Their influence led, for a time, to a drastic reduction in the real cost of a ride on New York City Transit, as discount after discount was added. In return, others also got in on the deal – tax-based support for the MTA was cut, pensions enhanced, etc. with all the costs deferred to the future. Well, now it is the future, and the Straphangers can proudly claim that past riders got their cut of the carcass, even if future riders will see their transit system wrecked while paying more. If they had insisted on defending the future, they would not have been in the room, and riders would have been left out of the deal, they might say.
As for the ethics legislation now before the Governor, “good government” groups got the best deal they could, I suppose, but what is the price? Are they now constrained from claiming that the situation is still a bad joke? Have they lose their credibility if they do say so?
My response: after all those years of all those advocates and good government groups working within the system and practicing the art of the possible, what do we have? A bankrupt government. A deteriorated democracy. A possible if not likely institutional collapse. All these groups may have had their egos stroked, and their sense of importance increased, but what did they actually accomplish? They may have been drunk, but in the long run they had no power.
I also once had an “official” role, if a low level one, as a city planner and public policy analyst working for various government agencies. What I had assumed, what I had been taught, was that my job was to provide objective information for use by democratically elected decision-makers (or their appointees) to use when debating options (based on their values, not mine) and reaching decisions. What I found was that at the legislative level, the decision-makers were not elected. And there were no decisions – just deals and non-decisions to do nothing – which various staff members were hired to draft rationalizations for after the fact. No one wanted information. What they wanted was the ability to keep their privileges. I looked myself in the mirror, decided it was all a waste of time, and left the public sector. I was off the reservation.
It’s a little late, but confronted with the situation, it seems the Governor is now off the reservation, after decades as a yes-voting member of the state legislature. So is the New York Times, which has called for the ouster of every member of the state legislature after decades of falsely believing they could be pushed in the right direction by editorials that alternately criticized existing policy and praised half steps.
More people seem to understand that we have reached the point where evolutionary reforms, with the same people backed by the same interests in charge, will no longer do. Some have even moved on from the idea that electing the man on a white horse to executive office, whether Eliot Spitzer or Barack Obama, can change things if the legislative branch is unchanged.
Unfortunately, the legislative incumbents have the benefit of, and any challengers must overcome the indifference of, a far more powerful news organization than the New York Times. The New York Times of ten or twenty years ago. Unfortunately, there is little the legislative incumbents can do to make things better even if they wanted to, if they insist on being bound by the deals they themselves had made over 20 years. What is needed is the kind of radical overthrow needed to divest all the vested interests. It’s too late, and too much damage has been done, to work our way out of it over time by having those outside the charmed circle pay more and more and accept less and less, which would be unjust in any event.
In this situation, the least valuable characteristic of anyone seeking to do good is the desire for approval, status, or presence on the inside, because the edifice of our institutions sits on a rotted foundation, and inside may not be where you want to be when the walls come down. Believe me, I’m someone who believes in being a responsible supporter of social institutions, and have reached this very painful conclusion reluctantly – based on the evidence. Although I must concede in fairness that over in the private sector the bond raters, appraisers, accountants, corporate board members, actuaries and others seem to have come off OK for now, having lost only their pride. My advice even so: get off the reservation, say the unsaid even if for nothing on a blog or in the street.