| There is a general consensus emerging in New York State: we need to spend less at the State level, tax more progressively, and rely less on local property taxes.
All spending has a constituency. The public employee's unions, the private companies that provide services (including nursing home owners and prison service providers) to the State, and lobbyists for spending designations.
The current tax structure is popular among the wealthy-- witness the opposition to a "millionaire's tax" a few months ago.
The Governor needs to take on these interests: he needs to slash spending at the state level, reconfigure our taxes to rely more on a more progressive income tax, and provide more property tax relief.
Cutting the budgets will cause an uproar among the people who are the end recipients of State spending. We've already seen that in the cuts that he has made. But they aren't enough and he needs to do more.
He hasn't done much to improve our tax system. He should. He should make it more progressive and raise the rates so that he can provide more property tax relief to localities.
The political calculus for doing that, though, leaves him with an underfunded campaign and public unions and special interests that are determined to help defeat him.
So he needs to go populist. He needs to run-- hard-- on a progressive taxation structure and reductions in State spending. He needs to appeal directly to the voters who are most affected by the State's taxing and spending.
He needs to shore up his support by promising to dramatically reduce the tax burden to most New Yorkers.
He needs to be seen as the best friend of the Main Street business community. He should look to cut the corporate tax for all businesses with revenues under $10 million per year. He should slash the fees they pay the State. He should provide a small business ombudsman in every department with which they regularly interact to make it easier for them to operate and expand their operations in the State.
He then needs to eliminate Cuomo as a primary opponent. He should do this by privately pledging to step aside in four years and by pointing out that he will leave Cuomo in a much better position by, essentially, doing the dirty work of putting the State's house in order.
He then needs to defeat Lazio in the general. He gets there by proposing better funding cuts and a smarter, more progressive taxation system. Lazio doesn't want to do specifics-- he made that clear on a local Rochester NPR show yesterday. So the Governor needs to make him look like a phoney by being very, very specific. And, in some ways, running to the right, fiscally speaking, of Lazio.
Again, I'm not saying this will be easy. And I'm not saying it's likely.
But this Governor has done more to deal realistically with New York State's budget than any other in my memory. He's proven he has in him something I don't see in Cuomo or Lazio and have not seen in Spitzer, Pataki, or Cuomo Sr.: the willingness to make hard choices and budget cuts. |
