From: enews@nyaprs.org
[mailto:enews@nyaprs.org]
Sent: Wednesday, February 02, 2005 1:45 PM
To: rgumson@mail.nysed.gov
Subject: Post-Standard: State Budget Could Be Latest One Ever
State budget might be
the latest one ever, experts say
State's highest court says Legislature can't change policies included in governor's budget plan
By Erik Kriss
State budget negotiations are
entering uncharted waters this year, with predictions that the 2005-06 budget
could be the latest ever.
The dire forecast comes as
the public outcry for a timely budget - following 20 straight late ones - is
louder than ever. It stems from a ruling by the state's highest court last
month that state lawmakers can't amend policies or policy changes written into
the governor's budget proposal. Lawmakers can only reduce or eliminate the
money the governor wants to spend.
Changing policy directives is
something legislators have done historically - and something Democrats say is
seriously needed in the budget Gov. George Pataki proposed this month.
No one's sure what will
happen next And those who depend on state budget money are nervous.
Take
But under the Court of
Appeals' ruling, the main thing lawmakers can do about it is the one thing they
don't want to do: delete or reduce appropriations.
School districts, heavily
dependent on state aid and required to propose their own budgets not long after
the state's is due, are unusually anxious.
"We've had20 years of
late budgets and now there's this new, huge factor that's going to complicate
the relationships and negotiations," said David Ernst, spokesman for the
New York State School Boards Association. "Our view is that it's only
natural, when the environment has changed as substantially as it has, that
people are going to go slow and carefully because it's all uncharted
territory."
Pataki's budget also proposes
raising taxes on hospitals and nursing homes. It proposes withholding half the
tuition assistance money the state offers public college students until they
graduate. It proposes raising tuition at the state university system by $500
annually and using some of the money for general state expenses.
Lawmakers say that because of
the court ruling, there's little they can do about any of that, short of
rejecting the entire budget. And if they do that, they can't substitute their
own. They could add separate areas of spending, but Pataki could veto them.
Their only other option, as
the Court of Appeals itself decided late last year, is to delay and try to
force Pataki to the negotiating table.
"It puts the Legislature
in the untenable position of acting in an obstructionist way," said Frank
Mauro, a former top Democratic Assembly budget negotiator who now heads the
labor-backed Fiscal Policy Institute. "The dilemma for the Legislature is
that is exactly what the public doesn't want them to do. The governor is
putting them in a bind."
Assemblyman Richard Brodsky,
D-Westchester, a leading Pataki critic, put it more bluntly.
"We are at a fundamental
crisis of democracy," he said. "This is not a small, inside-baseball,
maneuvering-in-Albany thing. This is absurd, irrational, destructive."
Democrats aren't the only
ones expressing concern. Senate Majority Leader Joseph Bruno, R-Brunswick, has
suggested the ruling could make the 2005-06 budget the latest ever - if it
happens at all. Lawmakers presumably could have to accept a string of emergency
budget extensions proposed by Pataki as he and the Legislature wrangle.
Top Pataki aides say the
Legislature has more budget-making power than it admits.
For instance, if lawmakers
disagree with Pataki's school aid formula, they can add appropriations for
specific districts, according to Richard Platkin,
counsel to the governor.
And acting state budget
director
The Court of Appeals, though,
cautioned that substitutions - as opposed to additions for distinct purposes -
are unconstitutional. And Pataki can line-item veto any added spending.
E.J. McMahon, a conservative
fiscal analyst for the Manhattan Institute who used to work for Pataki and
Assembly Republicans, said lawmakers have helped create the problem.
"They do not have an
orderly, transparent process for dealing with the budget," said McMahon,
noting the Senate and Assembly do not regularly reveal their own budget proposals
- including how they would pay for the extra spending they invariably desire.
"They have to get their
house in order," McMahon said. "They kvetch and complain, but they
never put their cards on the table. I don't think they're on the high ground
here."
McMahon said one tack
lawmakers could take is to force Pataki to the table by deleting all
appropriations for the governor's staff and favored programs.
"That's their nuclear
weapon," he said.
But as Brodsky put it,
"that's no way to run a system - 'He found a gimmick and we found a
counter-gimmick.' "
McMahon and Ernst say the
governor's sweeping powers aren't all bad.
Ernst noted Pataki has
proposed something school boards have long sought: repeal of the Wicks Law,
which school administrators say inflates the cost of school construction
projects by requiring separate bids on building contracts. He said Pataki is
now in a better position to insist on Wicks Law repeal.
Assembly Minority Leader
Charles Nesbitt, R-Albion, Pataki's staunchest legislative ally, said the
reason the constitution gave the governor sweeping budget powers during the
1920s is still valid: "to help the executive control the spending, at that
time, of the Legislature. And I don't think that's changed very much
since."
McMahon, Mauro and Brodsky
agree it's time to change the state's budget process by amending the
constitution. Pataki and legislative leaders have been discussing legislation
to change the process, but they haven't been able to agree.
Lawmakers did give first
passage last year to a constitutional amendment that would essentially carry
over the prior year's budget automatically if a new one is not in place in
time.
Second passage of that amendment this year would put the matter before voters in November. And on this issue, Pataki has no power other than the bully pulpit.
Source: Syracuse
Post-Standard