Spitzer's First State of the State Address

Gov. Eliot Spitzer jumped right in to the pandering nature of being governor by promising a little bit of everything to everyone, but no word on how he's going to pay for it all.

He's called for $6 billion in property tax cuts, additional health care coverage for children, and is mandated to spend $1 billion more on education for New York City.

Where's all that money coming from? Spitzer has already said that he wouldn't be increasing taxes.

Spitzer is in precisely the same bind that Corzine is in. Both are in charge of states where spending is completely out of control and both promised to do something about the out of control property taxes. Yet neither has any real power to do anything about it.

Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver, long used to being Mr. Pataki’s Democratic foil, responded with relief.

“For the last 12 years, we have witnessed what happens when the two-party system becomes the too-petty system,” Mr. Silver said, adding that there was “very little I can disagree with” in the governor’s speech.

But there is no shortage of questions, including how Mr. Spitzer will find the money for all his proposals — an elixir of promises to decrease spending growth over all but, at the same time, spend billions more on school aid and to insure the state’s roughly half a million uninsured children while also providing $6 billion in additional property tax relief over the next three years.

Silver makes me laugh. He's the one who scuttled development on the West Side, the NYC 2012 Olympic bid, because of his petty personal needs, as he withheld his votes in the Public Authorities Control Board unless he got projects coming his way, and even if he did, spiked projects out of spite. Silver is part of the very problem that faces the state. He doesn't want to address the budget issues caused by the cozy relationship between Albany and the unions, which dominate the issues of health care and education, and which are the major expenditures in the state budget.

So, we get a wish list of things that sound great on paper, but cannot be enacted because of the following: 1) the unions; 2) resistence by the legislature to give up their pet projects; and 3) no clue of how to prioritize spending/no clue in Albany of how to provide a balanced budget without enacting taxes/fees to cover the spending.

It is a combination of those three that will scuttle his plans for Medicaid reform, which includes a more vigorous prosecution of fraud. Too bad Spitzer didn't make that one his priorities while Attorney General (which was one of his responsibilities and instead chose to go after the drug companies and Wall Street).

However, there are a couple of ideas that I do find would improve the situation in NYS and come from Spitzer's legal background. Fix the court system in NYS. It's a mess, and is in need of serious streamlining. I'd also suggest the creation of a Fifth Department to lessen and spread out the workload downstate, where the First and Second Departments already handle the overwhelming majority of cases heard in the state. Fixing the public authorities is a major concern as many, including the NYS Thruway Authority, are far too opaque in their operations and can run amok without much in the way of government oversight.

Here's the text of the speech if you want to read through it.