Cuomo’s Shadow Governor-ing

NY Magazine’s Intelligencer calls Cuomo “the shadowy fourth man in the Albany room,” a play on the old adage that New York is run by three men in a room (Governor, Senate President, Speaker of the Assembly):

Publicly, Cuomo has supported Paterson’s positions at key moments while not appearing to meddle. When the Legislature tried to replace school-aid cuts with tax increases, Cuomo spoke out forcefully on Paterson’s behalf at a press conference. Behind the scenes, Cuomo has been even more active. “Andrew’s mark is all over this budget,” a Democratic insider says. “He began a dialogue with Paterson about a month ago, and they’ve been having nearly daily conversations and Andrew talks a ton to Larry Schwartz,” Paterson’s chief of staff.

Paterson and Schwartz came up with a stroke of political genius—the lame-duck governor’s threats to shut down state government have enabled him to force weekly budget concessions from the Legislature. Cuomo has successfully bolstered their choices, from cuts to education spending to holding the line on most tax increases to fending off the temptation to add billions to the state’s deficit through Ravitch’s plan. Winning those battles now, by Paterson proxy, reduces the pain Cuomo will need to inflict should he get elected. The risk is that Cuomo has antagonized the Legislature six months before he’s sworn in. Last week, he declared that the Legislature was “dreaming” if it didn’t agree to a Medicaid-funding contingency plan and said the Legislature had “accomplished absolutely nothing” in their revisions to Paterson’s budget. “It’s classic Andrew,” says an Albany insider who likes Cuomo. “The fundamental points are accurate, but it’s going a little too far, it’s saying a little too much.”

Amazing Expose On The Politics Of The Failed NY Budget

If you haven’t listened to the “This American Life” episode from June 19, you should. Put it on while you’re working out, taking a bath or bored with your friend’s crappy story – I guarantee your jaw will drop at least once. Ira Glass rips into Albany, interviews Dick Ravitch and all around let’s us know that, while not the only state in budget shortfall (48 of them are), we’re amongst the worse.

Go ahead, click the link and edify yourself. Just stream the whole thing, it’s free – that’s what public broadcast is for.

http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/410/social-contract

In The Good Years, Take From NYC. In The Bad Years, Take From NYC.

The 1^st lesson of Economics 101 is the rule of scarcity: An economy is faces with limited resources but unlimited wants and needs for these resources. But what happens when you have someone each year taking more and more of your resources? This is the dilemma New York City faces again.

The worst kept secret in state and city relations is we have given billions more to the State coffers than we receive back. We have essentially bailed out the entire state year after year. But now that we are in a recession and New York City is facing the brunt it, Albany has decided that there’s no better time to take more from us.  In Governor Paterson’s latest budget, there are more than $700 million dollars in cuts for New York City.

Yesterday, Mayor Bloomberg gave his preliminary budget for Fiscal Year 2011 (July 1^st, 2010 to June 30^th, 2011). It was a sobering account of what New Yorkers must face given the hurting economy and Albany’s shameless practice of taking more and more from the city.

Here are only some of the cuts New Yorkers will have to face:

• Proposed New York City Budget would be $63.6 billion.
• Teachers would receive a 2% raise on the first 70K of their salary (instead of the 4% original agreed on) or would 2,500 teachers would be laid off.
• Four pools will be closed and “pool season” is shortened by 2 weeks.
• A 24-hr Drop-In Homeless Center would be closed.
• 20 fire companies would be eliminated.
• 32 more schools would be without nurses
• The staff at the Administration for Children’s Services would need to take on greater caseloads.
• 934 layoffs would need to take place and more than 3,300 jobs lost through attrition would not be replaced (police, fire, sanitation and corrections would be exempt)

Filling The Hole

The Empire Center for New York has published a “blueprint” for getting the state’s fiscal crisis under control. Setting aside the fact that the Empire Center appears to be a right-wing think tank (key words at top of website: “Freedom” “Opportunity” “Enterprise”) affiliated with the likes of the Heritage Foundation and the CATO Institute, there’s still some stuff that’s worth noting in here.

Take for example, this chart:

The report has all sorts of private sector jargon in it (e.g., “right-sizing” and “performance-based compensation” etc), again underscoring the pro-business/small-government stance of the source. That being said, the crisis facing New York state is a bipartisan issue, and one that has been highlighted time and time again by officials ranging from the Governor to the State Comptroller. When do we need to bring spending in line with revenues (the State was dependent on Wall Street for 40% of its tax base until just recently), which will likely grow much more slowly than in years past?

Watch carefully what happens in Albany as the legislative session and Budget wrangling begins…

Yes, The GOP Thinks You Are THIS Stupid

Bob Cesca of HuffPost came up with this hilarious re-graph of the spending comparison in GOP Rep. Ryan Davis’ WSJ Op-Ed introducing the new(est) Republican budget plan. (THIS TIME! WITH NUMBERS!)

The blue line represents Dem spending..

Read the whole thing, it’s astonishing. Here’s a taste:

It only makes sense that a party currently being wagged by fringe crazy people like Glenn Beck, Rush Limbaugh and Michele Bachmann would release its alternative budget on April Fools’ Day.

And here’s some Star Trek comparative analysis from Yglesias

‘Epic Fail’ Real Possibility on MTA Crisis

The MTA budget drama continues to unfold. Governor Paterson seems to have given up on a solution; the Senate punts; and meanwhile, a $103 monthly Metrocard may be voted into reality on Wednesday. If no solution is reached, commuters will be slammed with a 31% fare increase and service cuts. How any of our leaders in Albany (let alone the Governor!) could possibly be okay with something like this is beyond me.

Here are the proposals on the table to solve the $1.2 billion dollar hole the MTA faces:

The Ravitch Plan–so called because it was put forward by (apparently highly effective) former MTA chairman Richard Ravitch, calls for new revenue streams for the MTA to help it cope with the current budget deficit and meet its long-term capital needs. It raises money through a) a payroll tax; b) tolls on the currently-free East River and Harlem River bridges; and c) an 8% fare increase. It also prudently lays out a way for fares/tolls to be inflation-adjusted every two years, thus avoiding these budget crises every time the MTA runs itself into the ground (read: a frequent occurence). Response to this plan seems quite positive, as it shares the burden across commuters, drivers, and the business community. Read the full report here.

The Senate Plan, announced last week by Senate Majority Leader Malcom Smith, provides no solution for the MTA’s long-term capital needs (which will be dealt with on an unspecified timeline between “between now and the end of the session”). It raises payroll taxes less than the Ravitch Plan, and calls for a fare increase of 4%. The political background here is that consensus is much more difficult to build in the Senate, which has a far slimmer Democratic majority; in addition, Senators whose constituents would be most affected by new bridge tolls refused to support the Ravitch proposal.

And a third plan calls for tel-a-thons to raise money for the beleaguered Authority:

50K Flex Against Budget Cuts

Yesterday 50K people, mostly from unions (especially the UFT) and community groups, hit city hall to protest Governor Paterson’s proposed budget cuts. It’s hard to ever gauge the impact of such protests, but with a number of participants that high (the number is from the organizers by the way) – it’s at least impossible to ignore them as well.

Additionally – there’s probably no question that the union funded TV ads going after the Gov have had effect on his poll numbers .

Personally, I’m not budget expert, but the idea of cutting teachers to deal with a recession seems counterproductive.

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UPDATE: Have ideas for how New York State should balance the budget? You can submit them directly to the Senate . MYD knows the folks who get these emails and they really are reading them!