Tag: Albany

The New York Times had an interesting article about a month ago. The newspaper reported that for the first time since the Great Depression, senior citizens over age 75 are relocating from the South, from places like Florida, to the North, to places like New York “after losing spouses or becoming less mobile.” The migration means that seniors can avoid paying high New York taxes when they are healthy and wealthy, and then come back and claim New York’s more ample senior benefits, when they grow wise enough to see the value of extensive public services.

As one demographer put it “the South, and Florida especially, has been a magnet for yuppie elderly: younger seniors with spouse present and in good health. These are a catch for communities that receive them, because they have ample disposable incomes and make few demands on public services.” On the other hand, “the older senior population, especially after 80, are more likely to be widowed, less well off and more in need of social and economic support.” By not providing that support, states like Florida and Arizona take the money and dump the costs back to New York and the Midwest, where the federal share of Medicaid is low. “Many northern states seem to have better senior services than Florida,” that demographer told the Times.

In its ongoing effort to preserve an unjust state education finance system, the State Senate must rely on deception, because under no set of consistent principles would New York City receive even the level of state education funding Governor Spitzer has proposed, let alone what it has received in the past. If the State Senate accepts that places whose children have greater needs deserve a higher share of state school aid, New York deserves more. But if argues that better off places deserve more money based on the share of state taxes they pay in, New York City also deserves more. If it argues that those with high taxes deserve more aid, New York City, among the highest-taxed parts of the state, still deserves more. And if it continues to hold that whoever spends the most deserves more state aid, through back-door aid like STAR, then it is hardly adhering to purported Republican principles. In any event, Governor Spitzer hasn’t proposed giving NYC more money as a share of the total; the State Senate is demanding that it receive less money. So to justify the unjustifiable, the State Senate endlessly repeats two deceptions, but last week let slip a truth.

If you downloaded my tabulation of 2006 local government employment data from last week’s post, and saw that New York City had one instructional employee for every 8.9 students, you might have had the following thought: if all of these were teachers, they were with the children all day (like Catholic School teaches are), and if they didn’t take any sick days, New York City could have a class size of NINE. Or, perhaps six for special education, and ten for general education. In that case, teachers could hold class in their living room right in the neighborhood where they and their students lived, like the local home-based child-care provider or piano teacher. Without all the educational overhead, those teachers could then be paid more, and could earn additional money from parents to watch some of the kids after school. You may have thought of this now, but someone else with clout in Albany had thought of it already: state law would make this educational option illegal.

In my prior post here, I called for the Governor make the rest of the state face the truth about state education funding over the past 30 years, for him to say the unsayables. That New York City’s share of total education funding, including back door “tax relief” aid, has not only been lower than its number of public school children, and very low considering their relative needs, but also lower than city residents’ share of state income and sales taxes – the state has redistributed education funding AWAY from the city’s poor children. That no matter what happens how, the past cannot be undone, those passing through the city’s schools in the past can never recover, and the effect of past underfunding will linger on for many years. That as long as the city’s share of state education funding is less than its residents’ share of its residents’ state income and sales taxes, the rest of the state is doing absolutely nothing to help the city’s children – at best. And, that the money taken away from the city has been used to pay for extravagantly high spending in the rest of the state. But Spitzer hasn’t said those things, and the budget he has presented, net, hits the city hard. And the State Senate is predictably claiming the rest of the state is being cheated, and demanding that the city be hurt even more.

The Governments Division of the U.S. Census Bureau has released March 2006 state and local government public employment and payroll data for the United States and the states. I have downloaded this information, have done some calculations to make the data comparable, and have included relevant private-sector data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics and New York State and New Jersey Departments of Labor. The results are in the attached spreadsheet, on the two pages that print, and are directly relevant to the budget negotiations ongoing in Albany. Based on what I see there, if I had to choose I've vote for the Governor's budget rather than that passed by the Assembly or State Senate.

New York’s powerful and advantaged interests like to compare this year’s spending with last year’s spending. This locks in the winners and losers, by making the privileges of the past the baseline for the future. I like to compare revenues, expenditures, employment and pay between places as well, to identify who the advantaged interests are. I also try to adjust for factors that might explain, and justify, any differences. But when the health care industry told the New York Times that Medicaid spending per beneficiary has been going down since 2000, and cited the Center of Medicare and Medicaid as a source, I decided to check my spreadsheets. I get total New York Medicaid expenditures per beneficiary at $7,646 in 2000 and $7,910 in 2004, a 3.5% gain. For Hospital services, spending per beneficiary rose from $7,861 to $8,364, a 6.4% increase. And for Nursing Home services for the aged, spending rose from $35,187 to $43,957, a 22.1% rise. In the latter two cases, I do not believe the funds that are part of the 2002 Health Care Reform Act are included, since these do not concern the federal government. That said, these are smaller gains than these industries are used to ordering people to provide. But they still aren’t losses. Perhaps the health care industry provided data based on expenditures divided by the number enrolled in Medicaid, whether or not they needed any health care. The Times should not have swallowed what they were told whole.

With 1199 S.E.I.U. United Healthcare Workers East and the Greater New York Hospital Association running commercials attacking Governor Spitzer’s relatively small increase in Medicaid spending, and these commercials featuring nurses, I became curious how New York City’s nurses, and other health care workers, were faring relative to their colleagues elsewhere in the country. Curious enough to download and compile Occupational Employment Data from the New York State Department of Labor and U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. After their nearly 20 years of ruthless pursuit of unenlightened self-interest with total indifference to other priorities and needs through naked political power, nothing I could find here would make me feel better about these interest groups. If the employment level, adjusted for population and overall employment, and average annual pay, compared with the average overall, for workers in health care occupations were above average, I would be upset that the rest of us were funding these excesses through higher Medicaid spending. If they were below average, on the other hand, I would be upset that we were paying so much more for Medicaid and yet our health care workers were understaffed and underpaid. And if they were about average, I would be outraged that Medicaid, a program for the poor, was being overcharged so private health insurance for the wealthy could carry less of the load. So they are guilty. But the data can help show what they are guilty of. It is attached, and described below.

Among the Medicaid budget cuts Governor Spitzer has proposed, and the hospital and nursing home industries are gearing up to fight, is a rate freeze for 2007 in place of the automatic inflation adjustment these industries would otherwise be entitled to. In the past, whenever the state budget has been tight, these industries have received more money automatically, while other needs and concerns, whose increases (or even avoidance of decreases) must be approved each year, have been forced to fight over whatever money is left. Medicaid also has gotten the first bite of the apple at the local government level, as payments to the state are mandatory. By taking away the automatic increase, Governor Spitzer would not disadvantage hospitals and nursing homes in the future, when the state might be facing fiscal problems. He would merely put them in the same position that public schools, transportation, and other public services have always been in — with no guarantees, and thus forced to compete equally in surplus or shortage.

This post continues a discussion of how and why a hypothetical couple age 67 and earning $75,000 per year would pay little more than one-third the federal, state and local taxes as a young working couple with the exact same income. Even though, to the extent the two couple’s non-money situations differed, the senior citizens were better off. The scenarios are laid out, and a spreadsheet is attached, here. The topic of this post is New York’s state and local taxes. Based on some assumptions and the TurboTax program, my hypothetical older couple, the Senior Voters, would owe just $2,570, or 3.4% of their income, in New York State and New York City taxes. But my hypothetical young couple, Young and Younger Hopeful, would owe $7,962 in state and local taxes, or 10.6% of income. Adding a one-year-old “Baby Hopeful” would cut the state and local bill only slightly, to $7,857 or 10.5% of income. Eliminating Ms. Hopeful’s job and cutting the couple’s income to $50,000 per year would reduce the state and local tax burden to $5,346 (10.7% of that reduced income), still double what the Senior Voters pay at $75,000 in income. The rest of the post shows how this is so.

Mr. DiNapoli is the Comptroller, despite being having been called “unqualified,” and it is now his burden to prove the critics wrong. Unlike the Governor or the media it is not his technical qualifications that trouble me. Experts can be hired to provide information and advice, although the person doing the hiring must have enough knowledge to evaluate that advice, which often conflicts. My concern with a former member of the Assembly serving as Comptroller is different — conflict of interest. Our incumbent elected officials, those who work for them, and the small number groups that support them, have become an insular tribe with overlapping interests that conflict with, and have been given priority over, those of most current and all future New Yorkers. As Comptroller, Mr. DiNapoli will oversee three functions — financial reporting, auditing of state agencies and local governments, and pension administration. In each of those functions, doing an honest job would require him to show, for all to see, who the winners are, and who the losers are.