EDITORIALS
State leaders must act
Governor has it right, but lawmakers must also respond to financial crisis
Updated: 07/27/08 8:29 AM
New York State is facing an economic crisis and the people who should get it — state legislators — don’t. State revenues are drying up; it’s time to get serious.
Gov. David A. Paterson has been raising the alarm and is himself becoming alarmed by the apparent unwillingness of politicians and the people of New York to understand the severity of the problem.
The governor points out that the state’s budget deficit stands to top $5 billion next year and is predicted to hit $21.5 billion over three years. The state’s top 20 corporations and banks paid $533 million in taxes in the last quarter two years ago, but only $72 million for the same quarter last year. That’s down 86 percent. Project that over all revenues, and the state and its people are facing a crisis.
The governor says he is hearing from lawmakers and special interests that the fiscal situation isn’t so bad and that no one ought to be expected to sacrifice for the public good. But Paterson correctly argues that in any scenario, the state faces problems that are extremely serious. He is right, and if the leaders of either legislative chamber say otherwise, they are serving the interests of someone other than taxpayers.
With 20 percent of state revenues flowing from New York City’s financial district, when Wall Street catches a cold, Albany sneezes and upstate takes to its bed. Wall Street is shivering.
In the aggregate, New Yorkers are concerned about deficit spending and would like to avoid any budget-balancing tax hikes. As individuals, New Yorkers measure the success of their own elected officials by their ability to spend money the state doesn’t really have in their hometowns. That’s as true in New York as it is anywhere else.
Paterson is preparing a specific plan to deal with the fiscal problems, other than a pledge not to balance the budget on the backs of the poor or students. That will be really difficult because, as Paterson points out, 44 percent of the state budget goes for health care, mostly for the poor.
The governor resists a tax hike, he says, if only because adding more revenue to the current culture of Albany is less likely to balance the budget than to whet the appetite for spending.
Paterson has focused on the state’s most serious problem — a staggering loss of revenue. One would hope that the Republican Senate would understand this. The ball is really in the Assembly’s court. It’s up to Speaker Sheldon Silver to face the reality of this crisis and act in the responsible way citizens expect of their top leaders.
