The Secretive NY Budget Process

As someone who worked for the State Assembly in the 1990s, this is nothing new whatsoever. The entire budget process is controlled by three men - the Speaker of the Assembly, the Senate Majority Leader, and the Governor. While there have been attempts in recent years to expand the loop of those who know all the details beyond that troika, they haven't gone very far.

Rank-and-file legislators have been grumbling all week that they feel cut out of the budget deliberations.

Ordinarily, the governor and the top two legislative leaders would not be making so many decisions on their own. And there are usually regular public meetings of the so-called conference committees, in which senators and Assembly members hammer out budget numbers for state programs like health care funding and transportation. But those committees all but stopped having public meetings last weekend.

“The structure of the state’s budget process that has been in place for decades has collapsed this year,” said State Senator Eric T. Schneiderman, Democrat of Upper Manhattan. “Things are getting done in bits and pieces, and it’s all being done in secret.”

As the state prepared to enter its second week without a budget, there were no signs that the process was becoming any more open. After he spoke to reporters, Mr. Paterson walked back into his chamber on the second floor of the Capitol. When asked where he was going, he responded, “I’m going back to crack the whip.”

When his press office released his schedule for the weekend a few hours later, there were no public appearances listed.

Most members wont know what is in the budget until someone goes through the thousands of pages to see what has happened. That's how members will know whether they've received their member items (otherwise known as pork for local constituent groups), and whether there are new taxes and fees imposed. Those conference committees Rep. Schneiderman mentions are not so much as to get input from members as much as to tell those members what they're going to get. Members generally provide lists of their items to the Speaker's office or the Majority Leader's office, and only know whether they get what they've requested after the fact.

We generally know that New York State will be increasing the tax on cigarettes by another $1.50, but that isn't the only tax or fee being increased to satisfy the state budget, which itself is growing by more than 4%. There have been no attempts to maintain a level budget - no growth whatsoever in the budget, so tax and fee hikes are necessitated. It should come as no surprise that taxes and fees will continue to rise in New York, already one of the most heavily taxed states, but the question remains what taxes and fees are being increased.

Capitol Confidential notes that Gov. Paterson isn't happy with the way the budget process is going, but then again, he's proposed a budget that increases state spending by 3.7% even as the Assembly and Senate want higher spending and the tax and fee hikes to match.

“I don’t like this process very much,” said Paterson. “I inherited two crises,” he said, explaining there was a crisis in government and one in the economy. As a result, he initially pushed and hoped to get an on-time budget as a message to the public.

Alas, said Paterson, “what I found in the last week was that the process is actually very ordinary, very much like Albany has been in the past.”

Things apparently fell apart, Paterson added, on Sunday night. While Spitzer’s initial budget came in at a 5.1 percent spending increase, Paterson said he put out a 3.7 percent hike, knowing it would probably be negotiated to 4.5 percent.

The trouble is, as things stand, ”we have a built-in $3.6 billion budget deficit next year,” even with a balanced budget.

All the while, Paterson said, people continue to flee the state’s high taxes.

Yet, Paterson knows that the only way to increase the state budget by 3.7% (or 4.5 or more after negotiations) is to raise taxes and fees. Like I said, this is the disconnect between Albany and the taxpayers. People will continue to leave the state in favor of better tax climates, and state spending will continue to rise until someone decides enough is enough.