Another Voice / State budget
Mark Alesse: For New York to survive, Silver must be defeated
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The new state budget sounds the death-knell for reform in New York. Crafted in the dark by three men in a room with no public input, it is the worst, most out of balance state budget in our history.
It takes no account of the worldwide economic downturn, reflects no awareness of permanent changes on Wall Street and ignores business weakness and job losses in New York that run into the hundreds of thousands. It gives no hope for the future.
Despite criticism the budget is getting from policy analysts and editorials statewide, what always seems to be lost in the post-mortems is the inescapable fact that this is a Sheldon Silver budget — just like so many before it.
Gov. David A. Paterson and Senate Majority Leader Malcolm A. Smith both deserve the sharp censure they’re getting for cravenly signing on after promising to control spending and taxes. But the real author of this spend-and-tax orgy, and the source of New York’s chronic dysfunction, is Silver, the speaker of the Assembly.
For more than a decade, Silver was the only man who was always there whenever the three men in a room would secretly meet, and being the sharpest of the bunch, it was Silver who would dictate the outcome. What Silver’s concealed control of state budgets has meant is that major policy coming out of Albany is almost always bad for the rest of New York, because in addition to being the sharpest negotiator, Silver has always been an unregenerate tool of labor and the trial bar.
One look at who supports Silver and his Assembly Democrats and the logic of this bloated budget becomes clear. Silver may well be economically illiterate and utterly indifferent to the rest of the state, but make no mistake about it: New York is “his” state to do with what he wants, and what he wants is to deliver for his public employee and trial lawyer friends at SEIU 1199, AFL-CIO, PEF, NYSUT, NYSTLA, CSEA and anyone else willing to pay to play.
Now that this is understood, reform advocates of every stripe should organize an active effort to defeat Silver at the polls. Such an effort would be unprecedented and undoubtedly a high-stakes game, but upstate’s business community and reformers could mount it with help from both parties. You can’t wrest responsibility out of a politician who cares only about re-election with carefully reasoned debating points. You can only defeat him.
People with the money it takes to mount a fight, like the idealistic Rochester billionaire Tom Golisano, should begin by meeting with those who oppose Silver in his district. With organization and money, Silver could be defeated in a primary challenge and sent back to the law firm on whose payroll he has been ever since arriving in the Capitol. Until that happens, nothing good will ever come out of Albany.
Mark Alesse was New York State director for the National Federation of Independent Business, a small business advocacy group for 18 years.
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