A weekly COLUMN by NY State Senator Tom O’Mara
Governor Hochul and the Legislature’s Democrat majorities may be touting that they’ve finally finished work on a new state budget. Make no mistake, though, we haven’t heard the last word about New York’s new fiscal plan and taxpayers sure haven’t reached the finish line on it.
Not by a long shot.
It’s merely the latest chapter in what’s become the same old story of this era in state government. It’s just another verse in the ongoing string of overblown state budgets since 2018 enacted under one-party, all-Democrat control of New York’s purse strings. It simply spells out the sad case of yet another late, bloated, and unaffordable spending spree.
New York government is defined in this era by out-of-control spending and a clearly broken budget adoption process that has set us moving in the wrong direction economically, fiscally, and on public policy priorities in fundamentally key areas including health care, public safety and security, and transportation.
At roughly $254 billion, the new budget increases spending by nearly $15 billion over last year. Keep in mind, however, that the governor and legislative Democrats also agreed to tap state reserve funds to the tune of $6 billion to pay off a COVID-related debt in the state’s Unemployment Insurance fund. That move is badly needed for small business owners and other employers who have had to unfairly shoulder the increased costs of keeping the fund solvent, yet only an accounting trick keeps it from being counted as increased spending in the new budget. We’re essentially looking at a $260 billion fiscal plan being dropped on taxpayers’ shoulders.
It results in state spending under all-Democrat control since 2018 increasing by an amount approaching $90 billion.
According to the Empire Center, a prominent state fiscal watchdog, “The state budget finally heading to approval in Albany was definitely not worth the wait. It calls for a spending increase that would have been unsustainable even in rosier times. Given the current reality – with obvious threats to federal funding, Wall Street and the broader economy – the plan from Governor Hochul and the Legislature is nothing less than reckless.”
As noted earlier, Democrats can talk all they want about having finished work on a new state budget. State taxpayers, however, are far from finished with it.
New York State taxpayers today and long into the future already face trying to afford, live, and work under a bloated, wasteful, and unaffordable state government. New York is already one of the highest taxed, heavily mandated, overregulated, and least affordable states in the nation. This budget makes it worse. It increases spending and handouts by at least fifteen billion dollars but fails to address any truly meaningful tax relief, mandate relief, or numerous key priorities in health care, public safety, local roads and bridges, and so many other fundamentally important areas.
It ignores the economic and fiscal warnings on the horizon and keeps on increasing government spending like there’s no tomorrow. It sets us up for short- and long-term budget deficits.
To afford it, Governor Hochul and the Democrat majorities in the Legislature will go on squeezing every penny they possibly can from state and local taxpayers through higher taxes, passing the buck to localities, ignoring badly needed priorities, more borrowing, raiding reserve funds, increasing fees, and every other anti-taxpayer, anti-business, anti-economic opportunity, anti-economic growth, anti-freedom action contained in the budgets they have approved in the past, as well as in this new budget.
We will remain a national leader in irresponsible, irrational, misguided, and unsustainable spending that will make this state unlivable for taxpayers, families, workers, small businesses, manufacturers, farmers, and every segment of our local communities and economies.
Furthermore, without reforms, the state’s budget adoption process will go on producing disasters for the taxpayers. Continuing to allow the use of “messages of necessity” to rush through votes on final budget legislation will go on preventing individual legislators, and the public, from having adequate time to review and debate budget legislation before it’s voted on and enacted.
It’s time to bring this state’s budget adoption process into the modern day, especially at this time when one-party control keeps on producing skyrocketing state spending plans that are increasingly chock-full of policy initiatives that should, for accountability’s sake, be given stand-alone consideration.
Fundamental checks and balances have effectively been thrown out in this state government. That’s never been more clear. Governor Hochul and the Legislature’s Democrat majorities go on working behind closed doors to allocate state taxpayer dollars and set in motion far-reaching public policies impacting our local citizens, communities, and economies in consequential ways.
The enactment of a state budget – the most impactful action facing New York government every single year — demands a full public airing and the appropriate time for review and debate. That’s never what we get. It’s a broken process that blindfolds the public and keeps producing bloated state budgets that taxpayers will never be able to afford.
Again, from the Empire Center, “Contrary to their rhetoric about affordability, the governor and Legislature are compounding the already excessive burden on the state’s taxpayers and economy and worsening the long-term decline of the Empire State.”
