From Carl Paladino's web site:
Even drastic [spending] cuts will still leave us behind governments in our neighboring states - Ohio and Pennsylvania - which spend about 70 cents to the New York dollar. So I will work tirelessly each and every day of my administration to make more spending and tax cuts to provide New Yorkers the relief they need.
This is - and more - long, long overdue.
There are apparently two Carl Paladinos. One of them is running for governor of New York and has a problem with Jews, Muslims and, I hope just so I'm not left out, gays as well. This Carl Paladino proposes to slash state taxation and spending much as you might mow your lawn.
The other Carl Paladino is a multi-millionaire developer sucking energetically at the public teat. Michael Daly in today's Daily News has the numbers:
Just cut the $5,251,415 in rent you collect each year on 28 leases with 17 state agencies.
How about 20%?
That's your target for cutting the budget.
Surely, you can slice that much off your annual take from the Office of Temporary & Disability Assistance ($454,363), the Office of Mental Retardation & Developmental Disabilities ($128,425) and the Office of Children & Family Services ($362,028).
There's also the Office of Vocational & Educational Services for Individuals with Disabilities ($337,606). You scored big using that agency as the anchor tenant needed to develop a shuttered Buffalo department store into a mixed-use complex you grandly named the Belesario.
I don't think anyone has a problem with smarter state spending. It just seems rather self-serving to hang from the rafters screaming about it with one hand and taking literally millions of dollars every year from the state with the other. |
