BEHIND THE HEADLINES
Paterson finds his role reversed in fiscal crisis
Governor preaches to his former choir that realism, not ideology, is needed for budget emergency.
ALBANY — State troopers rushed to block advancing protesters one day last week outside the Capitol office of Gov. David A. Paterson.
“We want Paterson,” the group of mostly disabled people in wheelchairs shouted while demanding a face-to-face session with the governor to oppose the cuts he is seeking in their state-funded services.
One floor above, other organizers stopped lawmakers in a vain attempt to convince them that the cuts proposed by Paterson would hurt senior citizens, the poor, those who suffer from AIDS, drug addicts, the mentally ill and others served by social welfare programs.
Paterson’s detractors are urging him to recall the days when, as a state senator from Harlem, he led fights against other governors — Democratic and Republican — when they were making budget cuts that affected his constituents.
Nine times out of 10, Paterson said in an interview with The Buffalo News, he would oppose budget cuts such as those he is now making.
“This is the 10th time. This is the one that measures whether or not your ideology can respond to reality. This is a really bad problem,” he said as he sat in his second-floor office just a few hours before cutting a final deal with lawmakers on a $427 million package of spending cuts.
The “bad problem” is the state’s finances, which improved after the State Legislature approved those spending cuts and Paterson said he was trimming an additional $630 million on his own through agency reductions and a hiring freeze.
Fiscal conservatives say that Paterson did not go far enough and insist that the state would not be in this mess had Paterson not cut a deal with lawmakers in April to increase the size of the 2008 budget by twice the rate of inflation.
But various organizations assailed last week’s reductions because they come less than five months into the fiscal year, wrecking havoc on many programs that already spent money that now will not be reimbursed by Albany.
‘This is different’
As a result, they say Paterson is not the same man they knew over the last two decades of his service in Albany.
“I think the positions I’m taking today enhance the positions I took in the 1990s,” the governor said during a break in budget negotiations.
The governor believes that his approach is “more intellectually honest” than those of previous governors because he is focusing on what he believes is the core problem: overspending.
He cited, for instance, three-term Gov. George E. Pataki’s income tax cut at a time of reduced services.
“Even as governor,” Paterson said, “I’d go out and march with those groups” if Albany last week had turned to some of the budget-balancing approaches used during 1990s’ fiscal problems.
“But this is different,” he said, defending his across-the-board approach to reducing spending.
Some of the most politically popular programs — represented by influential special interests — were left untouched, such as state aid to public schools.
The governor believes that his critics do not recognize the different economic climate today.
“They’re using a 1990s approach for a 2008 problem,” he said.
He talked of trying to convince state lawmakers that his recent rallying cry of budget crisis is real. Some dismissed him for crying wolf, while others wanted to wait until later in the year to see if the problem worsened or maybe even improved.
“To a certain degree, what this governor would have done was expose the Legislature,” he said.
Paterson explained that he received much publicity on the state’s crumbling finances and that legislative inaction would have backfired on the Legislature.
“It is not a place anyone would want to be a month before Election Day,” Paterson said of lawmakers who wanted to wait until the next quarterly fiscal report before acting on the budget.
Sense of high urgency
That is why he brought lawmakers back to town for a rare August special session. He said some lawmakers had “called me out” by saying the matter was not as bad and could wait until October or later to address.
“I picked the date because I wanted it to be an emergency,” he said.
The governor said he saw an attitude change by the time lawmakers returned to Albany last week.
“They’ve gotten into it,” he said. “They’re alive again. They’re in government again. They’re doing what they desired to do when they first got into public service: really making a difference.”
Paterson talked of wanting to “break the culture” of Albany’s spending. While not ruling out future tax increases, he said an income tax on wealthy residents, as Assembly Democrats are pushing, still would not bring in enough to satisfy Albany’s spending appetite.
The governor pointed to California, which has been in the throes of a true fiscal crisis, with widespread cuts to services and an initial move to slash the salaries of state workers to minimum wage.
If Albany does not completely resolve its problems, he said, the state is looking at a $9.3 billion deficit by 2010.
“That is on a scale of where California is now,” Paterson said. “You ask any legislator, lobbyist or union head in California, and they wish they could buy two years back. We have a distinct advantage of hindsight looking at California.”
The governor believes that his hand was actually strengthened last week by television and radio ads that called his cutbacks draconian and devastating.
“I think the ads were overplayed,” he said.
Plus, he added, they “were inadvertently making my case just by pointing out that they couldn’t deny there was a budget crisis.”
Forced to be defensive
Beyond the budget problems, the governor insists that he isn’t abandoning his desire for a cap on the annual growth rates in property taxes to support school districts. He and the Senate GOP want a cap of 4 percent, or 120 percent of the inflation rate, whichever is lower.
“We’ll be right back on it. It’s very important to me,” Paterson said of the proposed cap.
Paterson was asked how the state’s fiscal problems — which will continue to be a major topic for the 2009 session — is affecting his vision for his administration. He talked of wanting to work on major programs to improve infrastructure and transportation systems and to make funding available for clean, renewable energy sources.
“All of these objectives are somewhat thwarted because I’m devoting most of my time to a defensive posture, which is trying to save the state’s finances. It’s frustrating,” Paterson said.
“I envy the governors who were around during an economic boom, but the governors who were in during economic-boom times couldn’t stop the spending. So maybe, in my own way, it will pave the way for us having a reliable spending proportion to revenue-raising.”
