Category: News and Opinion

The vote in the New York State Legislature as to who will replace Alan Hevesi as Comptroller was not unanimous. It wasn’t 212 to zero. It wasn’t even strictly along party lines. Moreover, according to press reports, different legislators had different opinions, and some even expressed them in the legislative chamber, and then voted based on those opinions. I didn’t think of this at first, because the media did not focus on it. News outlets instead discussed the result of the vote. Thinking about it, however, it is almost stunning, given that this is the New York State Legislature we are talking about, that it might have been a real vote. This may be an aberration, but if it is a sign of things to come, then it is good news.

As should be no surprise to those who read my essays last year, I’m in favor of citizens having a choice in public and publicly financed services, such as health care and education, whenever possible. On egalitarian, not “right wing” grounds. And with some of his proposals in this year’s budget, Governor Spitzer has attempted to take a step in that direction. But the devil is in the details. More charter schools would provide more choices, but only for some. A tuition tax deduction would, in a very insignificant way, subsidize alternatives for those affluent enough to afford them on their own. The best news for choice in education in the proposed budget, in fact, could be a policy that has nothing to do with it directly.

Is the purpose of public spending, and the tax revenues we must pay to fund it, to provide public services and benefits? Or to provide a fortunate few with a steady job? In the progressive era it was the former, but today it seems to be the latter. Every time a public employee, or the employee of an organization that receives a large share of its funding from the government (such as the health care industry), decides to spend his or her money a slightly different way, they both create and destroy jobs, and force private sector workers to make adjustments to satisfy their needs. But in New York State, when the needs of the public have shifted, the tendency has been to keep people on staff where they were no longer required, either raising taxes further to cover needs elsewhere, or forcing public service recipients to do without. Thus in the 1990s school districts elsewhere in the state were at least “held harmless” or even given more money as their enrollment shrank, even as New York City’s share of state school aid remained low as its enrollment grew. Hospitals also had “hold harmless” formulas, to keep up their share of state health care funding up as health care shifted to clinics. As I said when I ran for state legislature, the political division has broken down into representatives of producers of public services, vs. representatives of those who did not require public services and do not want to pay for them in taxes, with no one speaking for the consumers of public services. Until now.

In the mid-1990s, at the tail end of a severe recession and a time of fiscal crisis, the incoming Pataki Administration, with the consent of the legislature, cut state school aid to New York City while increasing it to other school districts around the state, including those that were far more affluent and spent far more money. During my adulthood nothing any level of government has done has had as great an effect on my family and those of my contemporaries as that decision, and nothing will until our generation does or (more likely ) does not get Social Security. This year, the incoming Spitzer Administration says that we must be “one state.” Even so, Governor Spitzer has proposed eliminating $350 million in municipal aid to New York City, and redirecting it elsewhere. He calls the policy “a major expansion of aid to distressed cities, towns and villages across the state. ‘A resurgence of the Empire State cannot occur without a resurgence of our cities, particularly those in the Upstate region,’ Spitzer said. ‘Investment and jobs will flow only to those areas that are safe and vibrant places to live and work.’” If we are “one state” New York City residents can’t complain about money going where it is most needed, can we?

Thanks to a sick child that resulted in an early morning return from work, I’ve had a chance to spend a couple of hours going over the budget documents presented by Governor Spitzer — in one case before computer problems made the full five-year plan inaccessible. There is much to like, including a simplification of the school funding formula that if enacted might make it more difficult for the rest of the state to slash New York City’s share of state education funding in the next recession, and a slowdown in Medicaid growth focused in several areas where New York’s spending has been most egregious. There is more emphasis on the health needs of children, and the need for a turnaround in declining upstate cities.

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.