| This week,two leading state politicians are trying to get our attention about things they have been pursuing over a long, long time. Bruno's "Upstate Now" initiative is basically more of same-economic development through, as the TU's article puts it, "$3.7B for high-speed rail, tourism and tax credits." More debt and tax exemptions. Brodsky is crafting legislation, with Spitzer, to deal w/NYS's out-of-control authorities and their massive public debt-one of his perennial issues. The NYTimes titles this "Citing Waste, Albany Seeks to Rein in Public Authorities." Of course, Brodsky's last go-round on this stuff (the law to make Empire Zone beneficiaries who did not reincorporate for a valid business reason, but, rather, in order to qualify for "new business" tax exemption giveaways) did not actually result in, well, results… See this in which the Syracuse Post-Standard quotes Brodsky regarding the non-enforcement of the changed rules that were intended to close that particular tax loophole: "It is unacceptable." |
| But, which do NYers really want to see and hear-the blue-sky "let's just borrow for it now, and the `investment' will surely pay off" of con-man Bruno, or the harsh accountability of Brodsky looking our real debt, and the dismal, detailed, often-hidden reasons for it, square in the maw?
There was recently some flap from the Comptroller's office about how Spitzer's office computed the budget figures. Some of what DiNapoli thought should be counted "on budget" was being accounted for by the Governor's office as "off-budget." If you are remembering some of these terms from the likes of Fastow and Enron, well, you know, it turns out that both the public and private sectors can engage in creativity in accounting (much of it inherited from former adiministrations, in the public sphere). If only the many subsidiaries of Empire State Development Corporation could have some catchy names like "Wookie Syracuse" and "Vulcan Vultures in Buffalo" perhaps we could build an entertaining news story around this…
But, alas, the ways in which NYS spends those greater-than-elsewhere tax levies are a confusing, complicated, less-or-better-hidden mess that defies even partial comprehension. This mess would never spur interest or provide entertainment, just discourage and baffle and frustrate.
No wonder that the Business Council of NYS (www.bcnys.org) can determine NY to have the highest per-capita taxation. Our state "revenue bucket" is sprouting new holes (tax exemptions) even as we scurry in vain to fill in the old holes (programs scammed). And, an amorphous group of "off-budget vehicles" are accumulating additional debt for every locality's infrastructure or capital project, which dutifully pass real debt risk back to the "mothership" of NY State, and those bagholders, the taxpayers.
The real news about spending in NYS is that tax expenditures-including "economic development" giveaways to businesses and what Mimi Abromowitz calls (see book http://www.amazon.co...) the "fiscal welfare system" for middle and upper class taxpayers---are a major, though unexamined, part of how public money is expended in NYS. So, too, are the debts incurred by public authorities off-budget, passed back as interest (and sometimes principal, too) on public debt.
There is nothing more dangerous, I think, than a dapper borrow-and-spend legislative con-man selling pork now that your kids will pay for later (unless they leave the state...). Brodsky's dull to listen to, not photogenic, and neck-deep in details. But, he is right. We need to pay attention to our profligate past ways, and the obligation to clean up our mess, not go on another public-debt spending spree to convince ourselves that we are not as bad off as we appear to be. The public will surely go broke if it must purchase all its own jobs from corporations, using public debt and tax-expenditure funds passed unaccountably through campaign donors to do so. "It is unacceptable." That, I think, is real leadership. |
