While State Imposes Furloughs, State Workers; Paterson's Staff Gets Raises?

Incompetence and stupidity are all par for the course in Albany these days, and the austerity measures to help close the budget deficit aren't helped when Gov. Paterson allows such tone deaf actions as providing raises to his staff.

Gov. Paterson was criticized for granting pay raises to office staffers on Tuesday, a day after the Legislature approved a harsh furlough plan for state workers.

Three of the five staffers are getting five-figure wage hikes.

The governor's office identified four pressroom staffers and their salaries as:

- Jessica Bassett, to $75,000 from $65,000.

- Anna Adams-Sarthou, to $45,000 from $35,000.

- Melanie Hartgraves, to $45,000 from $38,000.

- Margaret-Kelly McKeon, to $75,000 from $65,000.

A fifth, nonpress staffer in the New York City office, Elizabeth Banner, got bumped to $60,000 from $55,000.

Paterson spokesman Morgan Hook insisted the raises went to staffers who took on "substantially more responsibility" after four key aides left amid a probe by the state attorney general's office.

Even with the pay raises, the press shop payroll dropped by more than $300,000, Hook said.

But don't think that Gov. Paterson's staffers are alone in getting raises. They're not. More than 5,000 state workers got raises. These are workers who are not in unions and therefore got step raises.

Sorry, but given the sorry fiscal shape of the state, no one in the state workforce should have gotten raises. Moreover, the union workers will still receive their raises this year - they're only being delayed until a full fiscal year budget is adopted.

This is the kind of insanity that helped get the state into the fiscal mess it's in now. People think that if they can trim around the edges somewhere else, they can save raises for themselves, their staffers, or pet projects, and what happens is that over time everyone's pet projects get increased funding and no one has the capacity to pay for it without massive tax hikes.

What people in Albany do not comprehend is that the state doesn't have a revenue problem. It has a spending problem. Cut spending, and not only will revenues pick up, but the state's budget woes will improve. Moreover, curbing spending increases to less than the rate of inflation while engaging in far more conservative estimation methods for rates of returns on pension fund investments and other revenue sources will mean that the state will be forced to properly fund those obligations and will further restrain the growth of the state budget.

Gov. Paterson's actions here have resulted in frittering away what's left of his tattered political capital because he was right to employ furloughs to potentially save hundreds of millions of dollars this year (and still more if done going forward).

UPDATE:
Too little, too late. Gov. Paterson has rescinded the raises for his staffers, but that still leaves thousands others receiving their raises despite the furloughs, and even those who are subject to furloughs will see their raises once the state passes its fiscal year budget.

New York Approves Furloughs In Interim Budgets

New York continues to limp along without a fiscal year 2010-2011 budget in place, and has resorted to passing interim budgets to pay the bills. The latest such interim bill included what state workers consider to be a controversial furlough, that requires that state workers go unpaid one day a week.

Mr. Paterson announced last week that he would pursue the furloughs after the unions refused other concessions to save the state money, like giving up a 4 percent raise or delaying employees’ paychecks by several days. The one-day furlough is expected to save the state about $30 million, and the governor has said he would seek additional furloughs every week until the Legislature reaches a deal with him on the state budget, which is now nearly six weeks late.

The furloughs will exclude most public safety and health workers like State Police troopers, correction officers and nurses.

“I recognize that these furloughs represent a difficult sacrifice for many of the state’s public employees,” Mr. Paterson said in a statement issued moments after the final vote. “That sacrifice is only necessary because their union leadership has rejected all other reasonable attempts at compromise.”

“In the days ahead,” he added, “the special interests will use every tool at their disposal to try and prevent me from doing what is necessary to put our state’s fiscal house in order. My only objective is to help New York turn the corner on this fiscal crisis, and that goal guides every decision I make as governor.”

Many legislators expressed their anguish during debate about having to choose between furloughs or a government shutdown. And Republicans attacked Democrats, who control both chambers, for failing to close a budget deal.

The Senate unanimously approved a nonbinding resolution sponsored by Neil D. Breslin, a Democrat from the Albany area, that declared the furloughs illegal and asked Mr. Paterson to resubmit his emergency bill without the furlough language. The governor, who is also a Democrat, had said he would refuse to do so.

“This is a unilateral decision by the governor to force us to vote against the extender bill,” Senator Breslin said. “If we voted against that extender bill and it failed, everyone would be without health insurance. Motor vehicle departments would be closed down.”

The measure passed in both chambers along party lines. The Senate vote was 32 to 29, with all Republicans voting against the bill, and the Assembly voted 82 to 56, with some Democrats joining the Republicans in opposition.

By shutting down for one day a week, the state saves $30 million for each week the furlough is in place. With the state facing multibillion dollar budget deficits, this is a start, especially should the state contemplate moving to a 4-day workweek for state workers. Other states have already implemented furloughs or 4-day work weeks, in order to spare workers layoffs and restrict spending, but New York's workers are resisting any efforts to curb spending.

The state is out of money, and yet the unions and state workers are wagging the dog on this. They're the ones that are dictating and making demands on the legislature to continue funding as they always have, even though the state simply has no more money and can't continue funding at existing levels.

The sad fact is that the size of the state workforce has to be cut, and the choice is either layoffs or furloughs. At least with furloughs, workers get to continue getting paid, while the layoffs would result in much more grief.

Swinging a Budget Axe Doesn't Go Far Enough

Here's your morning fiscal insanity watch. New Jersey's fiscal situation is perilous at best, and the unions are busy screeching that Gov. Christie threatens to destroy the state's education system.

Funny, but they're silent on the fact that school administrators throughout the state are making more money than the governor.

Governor Christie receives $175,000 while the average annual salary for superintendents in Bergen and Passaic counties topped $180,000 in the 2008-09 school year.

And the overwhelming majority of schools chiefs in the two counties make more than Education Commissioner Bret Schundler — as do almost half the assistant superintendents and business administrators. One in four principals in the region also makes more than Schundler.

Most of the districts operate no more than four schools. Schundler, who sets state policy and oversees more than 600 school districts, is paid $141,000.

The Christie administration has been calling for all school staff to take salary freezes this year as local districts grapple with steep declines in state aid. But while the governor has focused heavily on keeping teacher salaries from rising, he has been less vocal about administrative salaries, which are generally twice as much.

They're ignoring the fact that Atlantic City has more city workers per capita than all but 30 municipalities out of 1,400 examined with a population of 20,000 or more. Atlantic City has more city workers than cities with three times the population.

The city’s work force is a fluid number that changes depending on the season: higher in the summer, lower in the winter. According to city payroll records, the work force was as high as 1,847 employees during the summer of 2008 under Mayor Scott Evans. At the end of last year, Atlantic City employed 1,513 government workers and spent $92 million on salary and wages.

Biloxi, Miss., another city with casino gambling, has a population of about 45,670 residents, about 6,000 more people than Atlantic City. But Biloxi’s municipal government employed 773 fewer employees last year and spent $62 million less, 2009 payroll records for both cities show.

Comparisons made by The Press with some other payrolls at cities that provide the same level of services as Atlantic City include:

Wilmington, N.C., a popular college town with more than 100,000 residents, employed 408 fewer workers than Atlantic City last year and spent about $43 million in salaries and wages — half as much as Atlantic City.

Green Bay, Wis., where the population exceeds 101,000, pays 526 fewer employees than Atlantic City and spends almost $50 million less on its salaries and wages.

“Atlantic City is significantly overstaffed,” concluded a December 2002 study of the city’s payroll commissioned by the Casino Association of New Jersey. And by the measure of payroll to population, the city’s municipal labor force has grown.

All this adds up to create a crushing tax burden that is collapsing on itself. For Atlantic City, it means that patronage and corruption leads to higher taxes, poor services, and a declining tax base because the city is spending tens of millions of dollars more than it should in any given year. That adds up. Consider that if Atlantic City had a workforce the size of Green Bay (which is three times the size), the government could save $50 million a year. That's $500 million over 10 years, more than enough to provide a better education system, and yet this is money squandered.

Christie has been calling for a cap on salary increases at 2.5% and called for increased worker contributions to benefits, and that's met by bitter shrieking by the usual suspects.

UPDATE:
Leave it to NJ Democrats to once again call for the resuscitation of the temporary "millionaire's tax" that hit people with incomes well below $1 million to fund what they're calling property tax relief. That's using one tax to pay for a program to mitigate the effects of other taxes, rather than getting to the source of the problem - the high taxes and their causes. The high property taxes are directly related to the high costs of governance in the state, and that includes benefits that are unsustainable and a workforce that is far larger than those of comparable municipalities.

President Obama Nominates Solicitor General Elena Kagan To Supreme Court

As was rumored on Friday, President Obama will be nominating Solicitor General Elena Kagan to the US Supreme Court, replacing retiring Justice John Paul Stevens.

Should she be confirmed, she would be the third woman on the Court, joining Justices Ginsberg and Sotomayor. In fact, she would be the third woman with strong New York ties, having grown up in New York City. Her education includes attending Princeton, Oxford, and Harvard Law (where she became dean 17 years after graduating law school).

Scotusblog is live blogging the nomination, and is a great resource to check for further background. Here's a quick look at her background.

Kagan would be the first non-judge to be nominated in 40 years, which means that her judicial philosophy has to be gleaned from her writings and by evaluating her in the course of the confirmation hearings and meetings beforehand. It's a more difficult task than merely attempting to review her rulings on judicial cases. However, since she's been previously confirmed by the US Senate, her nomination isn't expected to be particularly troublesome unless some unexpected situation comes to light.

Still, I think some people might feel disappointed that the President didn't choose someone from a wider geographical scope as the Court is very heavily reliant on Ivy League and Northeast-based justices. There's also some concern from the left that she may not be so reliably liberal because she's argued for preserving many of the executive powers that were explored and expanded under the Bush Administration.