New Yorkers are getting robbed blind.
Gov. Kathy Hochul and the state’s two legislative leaders announced a budget deal Monday night on how much to tax New Yorkers and how much the state government will spend in the coming fiscal year, which starts June 1.
From the smattering of information available, it’s likely this deal will necessitate additional tax hikes months from now that could trigger an economic death spiral for the state and its largest city.
Here’s the kicker. This is a backroom deal, done in secrecy. No press allowed, and none of the other 211 members of the legislature were permitted in the room.
New Yorkers are paying through the nose because of this backroom dealing. It allows the state to spend a staggering $254 billion in the coming year. That’s more than it costs to run Florida and Texas combined, even though New York has 33 million fewer people to serve.
As lieutenant governor, I witnessed this backroom dealing 30 years ago. It prevented lawmakers from doing the right thing. They’re still getting sidelined today. State Sen. Tom O’Mara considers the level of spending “reckless,” but his voice isn’t heard. In fact, there was no Republican in the room.
Now that the deal is announced, nine or more bills will be hurriedly printed and put on each lawmaker’s desk, along with a “message of necessity” from the governor asking that it be voted on within hours, even in the middle of the night. Unread.
Lawmakers will vote with no debate. Like party puppets. This is not representative government.
The New York state Constitution requires three days to read a bill before voting on it. There is no justification for waiving that.
Americans fought a revolution against taxation without representation. New Yorkers should not put up with it in their own state capitol.
On her first day as governor, Hochul promised “a new era of transparency,” but now she’s going along with Albany’s customary backroom horse trading.
She insists she doesn’t negotiate “in public.”
Sorry, but in public is how a budget affecting millions of New Yorkers should be negotiated.
Why elect 213 legislators and pay them the highest salary of state lawmakers anywhere in the U.S. – a cool $142,000 a year – only to lock them out, leaving them to wander the halls of the Capitol killing time.
Monday night, Hochul put out a press release boasting that the new budget deal doesn’t “raise income or statewide business taxes” and reduces “the payroll mobility tax for small businesses.” Those are half-truths at best.
The budget continues a tax hike on millionaires for five years that was scheduled to sunset, and increases the payroll mobility tax on most businesses in the Metropolitan Transit Authority region. New Yorkers would get a straight story if their reps and the press were allowed in the room.
One other state – solidly blue California – does backroom budget deals. Ironic that the Democratic Party styles itself the defender of democracy, but the two biggest Democratic-controlled states locked the people’s reps out of the budgeting process.
Thirty years ago, there were complaints about “three men in a room” making the New York state budget. One of the three, then-state Senate Majority leader Joe Bruno, wrote a spirited defense of the backroom process in his memoir, claiming it worked pretty well.
Truth is, it doesn’t work. New York state is one of the worst-governed states in the nation. New Yorkers pay the most in taxes, according to the Tax Foundation, but the state is rated 50 – dead last – in economic outlook, per Rich States Poor States.
More people are fleeing New York than any other state, turning the Empire State into the Exit State.
What’s especially worrisome is that Hochul and her fellow dealmakers refuse to downsize the budget now to accommodate expected cuts in federal funding and possible downturns in tax revenue caused by financial market turmoil. Ed Ra, ranking Republican on the Assembly’s Ways and Means Committee, said “Democrats keep warning about thunderstorms while driving with the top down.”
An open budgeting process would invite more caveats like Ra’s. Hochul’s Budget Director Blake Washington says, “We want to deal with the facts as they are today, not what could or could not be two months from now.”
That’s crazy. No sensible person managing their household budget would deliberately ignore risks ahead.
Count on the governor to come back in a month or two proposing tax hikes. Another nail in the coffin.
New Yorkers need to demand a real say in how their state is governed, tell their elected reps to do the same, and put an end to Three Stooges budget deals.
Betsy McCaughey is a former Lt. Governor of New York State and Chairman of the Committee to Reduce Infection Deaths. Follow her on Twitter @Betsy_McCaughey.
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Sorry but as long as NYC continues to blindly vote straight-line Democrat, the entire state of New York will continue to be held hostage and stuck with ever-worsening conditions across the board. That’s the bottom line. So, while it may be nice to periodically run articles such as this, which highlight the consequences of poor decisions of the majority of voters, which are unfortunately extremely low information Democrats (I’m being very nice here so as to not be censored by AMAC yet again), nothing will improve. Same goes for every other Democrat controlled state in the country.
I encourage everyone to take a quick look at the upcoming Mayoral race for NYC as a prime example of the stupidity of the Democrat voter base in the city that controls the voting outcomes of much of New York State. While there are a couple of Republicans nominally running for mayor in the race, you wouldn’t know it from the massive leads in the polls of the assorted Democrat contenders over every one of them. Clearly the Democrat voters will simply vote for whichever Democrat wins the primary and then they will robotically vote for that person in the general election. That is what they have been conditioned to do.
same as with their neighbor namely New Jersey. people ( i am one of them soon ) are leaving in droves .we are being taxed right out of our homes and businesses. i can no longer afford to live in this god forsaken state as long as dumbocrats rule the roost. TTFN.
Unless New Yorkers want to help themselves by throwing scoundrels out no one can help them. Perhaps they collectively suffer from Rip van Winkle syndrome. Time to wake up.
I grew up in a fabulous NYS and even better NYCity. It is such a beautiful state with so much to offer and so much variety geographically and demographically. We had wonderful education from K-12 and the university system. Taxes were fair and businesses thrived as did farming and other industry. No longer. Now, from afar, I look on the state with horror at what it’s become. How were the voters stupid enough to vote Huchul in to be governor?! All the sloppy stuff began to happen under Mario Cuomo and he took the state down the Left path only to have his politics taken further away from sane and reasonable by his son, Andrew. Now Andrew wants to be mayor of NYC — and only — ONLY– because he is a Democrat, will he win and be another failed mayor or another failed city. Upstate residents, mostly Republican, are so dismayed because their intelligent voting is always overruled by the downstate Democrats in NYC and environs. Any state that can produce an AOC and pretend she is worth listening to on anything, will surely keep voting in disaster after disaster. How this ends is anyone’s guess , but it won’t be good.
You need to keep in mind that NY voted these Incompetent individuals in office. This is a practice that has been a NY standard for decades or longer. They asked for this, now they’re going to get exactly what they voted for. They don’t have a right to complain. Their Governor is there to remind them of that. These same people are about to vote Andrew Cuomo right back into office. So how can anyone feel sorry for these,,,, whatevers??? I say leave them alone and let them suffer the consequences of their own Stupidity. The good folks will continue to leave the state along with all the rich corporate business owners. They didn’t get rich by being stupid. If the NY citizens want to be ripped off by their chosen leaders,,,,then so be it.
Gee whiz!!! New Yorkers are getting EXACTLY what they voted for. I see no reason to feel sorry for these folks, since this is self-inflicted. These folks can easily fix this at the next election, assuming they collectively extricate their heads from you-know-where before then.
full disclosure (and it pains me to say this): I live in New York. This garbage has been going on in the state for DECADES. Hochul said she would fight to make NY more affordable. She has failed miserably because this budget does NOT do that at all. If Hochul and the rest of the democrat party (whom I did NOT vote for so don’t blame me.) keep running NY like this the only people who will be living here are the politicians, the union bosses and people who benefit from the taxpayer-funded giveaways. Everybody else (millionaires, billionaires and businesses included) will be gone.
lawless gov, at work
Wow! And here I thought California was bad. Sheesh. Don’t any of them remember their oath’s of office?
It’s New York…do we expect anything else? NO surprise here.
NY has been deeply in debt for decades. When Rockefeller was our Gov. the state was heavily taxed, and in debt. NYC isn’t solely responsible. Buffalo also votes heavily democrat. The rest of the state doesn’t have a chance. Lived in this beautiful state my whole life.
NYC, Vote the Democrats out of office!
THIS… Is why I packed up my family and left New York.
I thank God literally every day that I left New York when I did! Almost forty years have I been grateful for that. And to think, at the time I didn’t want to leave!
Yes, as a New Yorker myself, I have no idea why I live here. Hochul is a disaster. I DO NOT live in NYC, Buffalo, Rochester, Syracuse, or Albany. All Democratic cities. It is so disheartening how this wonderful state has gone down the tubes. Our car insurance went up $300 from last year. Makes no sense and soon no one will be able to afford to live here. And the weather stinks too. And as a republican. . . . I have no more words!