From WAMC in Albany, this is the legislative Gazette, a weekly magazine on New York State
Government and Politics. Your host is Dave Galetli, with Commentary by Political
Scientist Dr. Alan Shartock of the State University of New York at New Polts.
Coming up this week, Governor Cuomo has released his plan for dealing with the state's budget
deficit will have reaction. Another environmental bond act is in the works, but it's not coming
from the governor's office, and the state is planning for the holidays. Those stories,
Alan Shartock will be along, and much, much more on this week's legislative Gazette.
Governor Cuomo has released his plan to slash a state budget deficit that's closing in
on a billion dollars. Two thousand state workers will be laid off another 4,000 jobs
he limited it through attrition. Twelve thousand additional jobs would be eliminated in the
next fiscal year. All state workers would have to take a five-day furlough before the
end of this fiscal year. Those cuts will save the state about $135 million. The governor
also proposes cutting $200 million from this year's school aid package. 46 million remaining
in pork barrel projects would not be spent. Services would also be cut for people on Medicaid.
Now that everything's on the table, it's up to the governor and the legislature to hammer
out an agreement. While those negotiations take place, groups who would be affected by
the billion dollars in budget cuts are scrambling to assemble a defense for programs and state
aid they say should not be cut. More from Karen to it.
Lobbyists, unions, and trade organizations are gearing up to fight a number of proposals
in Governor Cuomo's $1 billion budget cutting plan. One of the cuts expected to be the
most hotly contested among members of the legislature is a $200 million decrease in funding
for education for the current school year, something Lou Grumet, director of the New York
State School Board's Association says school districts have no way of planning for.
To our knowledge, this will be the first time in history that there's been a state aid
cut during the school year for which the state aid was allocated. School district is
basically a very labor intensive school. It's an education boiled down to teachers and children.
So Grumet says the plan would result in layoffs of teachers with a new semester coming
up. It could be that some classes will have to be discontinued and may be particularly
remediation efforts and some of the efforts to help pregnant teenagers and kids who are
having drug problems may indeed have to be cut.
Grumet says he realizes money is tight and says a tampering with teacher pension funds
was the only reason districts were able to see aid increased when the budget was passed
in May. But the days of one shot financing mechanisms may be over. Unlike past years,
the state budget deficits grew. Governor Cuomo appears to be taking a stiff stance against
fancy financing mechanisms or new taxes. Hospitals are reeling from the weekend announcement
that a hard fought hospital reimbursement bill worth half a billion dollars to hospitals
will be re-examined. Dan Sista was president of the Hospital Association of New York State.
They've got it the bill. The proposal really would eliminate all of the relief that the
legislature unanimously passed to help hospitals cope with the age epidemic, the nursing shortage
and the overcrided conditions in many areas.
Sista says private insurers are now saying that if the state goes through with the reductions
and Medicaid reimbursements as Cuomo has proposed, they want to reduce their rates too.
He says eliminating the provisions of the hospital reimbursement bill just shifts the
problem from the state to the hospitals.
This budget cut would obviously devastate the hospitals and many would be unable to make
a payroll would be unable to meet mortgage obligations pay vendors.
Cuomo says he remains committed to an insurance program for poor children that was part of
the bill. Sista says over the years, New York State has increased regulations and mandates
but has not helped pay for those programs. For instance, he says while it was probably
a good idea for the health department to impose limits on the number of hours med students
and interns could work in hospitals, the state has helped pay only a portion of the costs
that resulted from hospitals having to pay staff to make up for those hours.
Local government groups also complain that mandates have grown and state aid has not.
Cuomo is proposing a 10% cut in aid to local governments but he says if Medicaid payments
are also reduced, that should soften the blow.
No local government is going to be devastated by cuts.
The New York State Association of Counties disputes that claim and predicts property tax
increases.
Unions representing the 180,000 state workers who under the plan face a mandatory five day
unpaid holiday as well as layoffs are also planning a campaign against the budget proposal
and what could be a long, bitter December as the legislature prepares to meet in special
session to deal with the budget gap.
In Albany, I'm Karen DeWitt.
Karen DeWitt's report courtesy of the New York Public Radio Albany Bureau.
Karen DeWitt said that no one will be pleased by the cuts but that they were necessary.
He told our Alan Shartock the cuts he proposed were judged in two ways.
Number one, will these cuts hurt and how much do they hurt?
Number two, what would you do instead and rule out borrowing and rule out taxing?
And so you're down to what other cut would you make?
Devon, let's take prisons.
Corrections.
I have said over and over the corrections offices need protection and they do.
I have said over and over.
I reject the Republican position in the last campaign and control the Regan's position
that you could simply knock off corrections offices.
Fire prison doors.
Yeah, because the ratio was already too high.
I don't accept that.
What happened is that Coglan, Tom Coglan, the commission of corrections, a person I've
described as probably the best in the United States, has come up with a new way to configure
corrections by clustering buildings, by putting a whole series of prisons in one part of
the state into one cluster that has one central administrative unit instead of various administrative
units.
And by his design, he is able to reduce and by civilianization, which is to replace some
trained correction officer men and women with civilians who can do clerical work and non-correction
officer work actually through civilianization and reconfiguration.
He can reduce the number of corrections offices without increasing the burden on the corrections
offices without increasing the number of people in a yard that they have to watch.
Well, how do we know he won't just add another layer of bureaucracy when he creates those
clusters?
No, he's reducing layers of bureaucracy.
Instead of four administrative offices, I'm just making this up as an example, you'll have
one.
And then there's a reduction in levels of bureaucracy.
Anyway, that's being studied now by the corrections offices, Council 82 and all the other people.
I think it's a very good plan.
So we're not going to hurt people there.
Also with the social services, you have to remember to judge our budget over eight years.
Over eight years, for example, with mental health.
We have increased the budget over eight years, well over 104%.
The inflation rate for that period was only 30%.
That is more than three times inflation.
You can't continue growing at that level, especially if you're broke, especially when the
country's in recession, especially when your revenues have disappeared.
In 1988, this whole economy nationally grew at 4.5%.
In 1989, it grew at about half that.
In 1990, it's not going to grow at all or no more than 1%.
You can't in the face of that.
Well, that's all right, Governor.
We got accustomed to three times inflation.
You have to keep doing that or you're unfair to us.
That's naive.
It can't be done that way.
Now there are certain areas where costs explode like people with AIDS.
There's no question that that has exploded.
A drug addiction that has exploded way above the inflation rate.
And you have to try to accommodate that.
In some cases, salaries of local employees have gone up well above the inflation rate.
But to say that you have to keep spending it three, four times the inflation rate, even
though you're broke, it just makes no sense in making the cuts we're trying to protect
the most vulnerable people.
That will be the big argument in education it develops.
We have tried to protect the weaker school districts with our cuts, the Republicans
according to this morning's paper, saying no, our job as Republicans is to protect the
rich districts.
And that will be a contest, I think, between Mel Miller's assembly and Ralph Marino's
Senate.
The assembly saying those who have not should be protected?
Well, obviously, yes.
The weakest people are the people who depend upon the state most.
And we'd like to have more money for everybody.
But if you're going to have to cut back, doesn't it make sense to try to cut back in a way
that doesn't damage the already vulnerable?
Well, this has been going on for years.
The Democrats have been saying, well, let's equalize a little bit.
Let's give a little less to the people who need it less, a little bit more to the people
who need it the most, the New York cities and the rest.
Now, we know that the Republicans who represent Long Island, some of the Westchester counties
are going to say no to that.
How do you have your way with them?
You've never had it before.
You've never had it before.
No, I did.
That's correct.
And each year, the Republicans have pushed up toward the top of the ladder as they have
in Washington.
Governor Cuomo, speaking with the Legislative Gazette's Alan Chartac on their weekly
Capitol connection radio broadcast heard on many public radio stations.
Last week, we told you about the efforts of two assemblaments to get more money for local
environmental programs.
And money would come from attacks that would have paid the interest on the defeated environmental
bond act.
Now, one of those assemblaments has come up with a new bond act, Bruce Robertson reports.
The environmental bond act was defeated at the polls, but the state's environmental
problems are still here.
And now a new political dispute is shaping up on how these problems are to be solved.
State officials long have said that local governments are on their own, but now Republican
assemblyman Neil Keller, of Troy, says he will introduce legislation calling for a new
scaled down version of the bond act.
One aimed specifically at solid waste issues, closing landfills, treating sewage and recycling.
What actually happened there is what they say, I call it the spoiled brat or the the
pouting syndrome, political pouting.
What happened is they got defeated.
So the statement was, well, that means the localities are going to have to do this on their
own.
I've never heard anything more irresponsible in my life.
That doesn't mean they have to do it on their own.
I'd much rather have to ask the question, what are you going to do with the tax money
that you put in place to pay off the bonds now that you don't have bonds to pay off?
They gave us an answer.
You know what it was?
Put it in the infamous general fund.
That's the same fund where people have been asking for years where does the lottery money
go.
They don't want to talk about that.
That's irresponsibility.
Keller says the defeated bond act was just too broad.
His version would apply to the state's worst environmental problems.
The tragedy of that defeat was that there is still serious problems being experienced
by literally hundreds of communities across the state as far as the closure of their land
fields are concerned.
We have very small communities that have been told that it's going to cost a million
or two million dollars to close their land fields.
And if you don't close, then the state's going to do terrible things to them.
Keller says the cost of these three projects would be about one-third the cost of the defeated
bond act.
And could be paid off in ten years using only the existing beverage and container tax
revenues originally intended to pay the interest on the failed bond act.
But any responsible person in public office should be dealing with these problems and that's
exactly what I'm trying to do by proposing this question, borrow the money and pay for it
out of existing money in the budget.
It will not require new taxes.
Governor Cuomo's spokesman Terry Lynam says the governor is currently concerned with
the state's budget difficulties and we'll look at Keller's and anybody else's proposal
when budget negotiations for the next fiscal year begin.
After the deficit in the current fiscal year is closed, he'll look at next year's budget
and determine how to deal with such pressing issues as solid waste disposal and sewage
treatment.
Obviously the bond act would provide local governments with more than a half billion dollars
for managing their solid waste and $162 million for helping build sewage treatment
plants.
Obviously there's a little doubt that local taxpayers are going to feel the consequences
of that no vote.
But the people have spoken and Assemblyman Keller was one of those who opposed the bond
act and he too knew the consequences when he decided to oppose it.
Lynam says without the bond act there is just no way the state can afford to help localities
right now with their environmental problems.
For the legislative Gazette, this is Bruce Robertson.
Funding for AIDS programs is one of the many sacrifices the state will have to make as
it deals with the budget crisis.
But one AIDS group says the problem of AIDS is one that can't afford to undergo budget
cuts.
Lee Farbman has more.
David Hansel is a spokesman for gay men's health crisis and AIDS service organization
located in New York City.
He says his group is deeply concerned about the AIDS spending freeze, saying it will have
a devastating impact.
You're seeing not only in New York City but statewide increases in the numbers of people
affected by the epidemic constantly for a month to month and year to year.
And so even the existing amounts of funding are not keeping pace with the growing caseload
and if the funding were to be cut, it would simply mean that a lot of people would not
get the kinds of services they need and that's really a matter of life and death.
Gay men's health crisis is trying to communicate its concerns to Governor Cuomo and state health
commissioner Dr. David Axelrod.
Hansel says the group even took out a full page ad in a recent edition of the New York
Times.
But the response from state government has not been good.
Certainly people in the state AIDS Institute, which actually funds a lot of the programs
around the state that deal with AIDS are sympathetic to what we're saying.
They understand the problems, they understand what the needs are.
But the people who are actually going to be making these decisions, the governor himself,
the people in the budget office have not responded to us at all.
We have not been able to reach them, we've not been able to meet with them and we have
gotten no indication from them of what exactly is it they intend to do.
But public response has been quite the opposite.
We've, I think, generated quite an outpouring of support.
As I mentioned, we have asked people to telephone and to write to the governor and to the
health commissioner and we understand from their offices that they have really been
flooded with phone calls.
We're asking people to continue that and I would still urge anybody, anybody who is listening
to this to call the governor and to call the health commissioner.
Hansel says his group understands that the state is going through a serious budget crisis,
but cutting programs, freezing spending and not increasing AIDS spending every year won't
help the situation.
Wrong approach is the sort of Graham Rudman type, you know, Minax approach that said,
we'll just cut a certain percentage in all programs across the board.
We've seen what that's done at the federal level and we think it's been a disaster and
we think it would be a disaster at the state level as well.
What we're saying is look at the programs, make some judgments about which ones really
need the level of funding they're getting or maybe even more funding and that with respect
to AIDS particularly what I think distinguishes it from a lot of other programs is it's not
a static situation, it's a situation that's growing all the time.
For the legislative Gazette, I'm Lee Farbman.
You're tuned to the legislative Gazette on public radio.
I'm Dave Galethi and joining us now is our political analyst, Dr. Alan Chartak.
Alan this week, the budget and the state's fiscal lows have taken center stage once again.
You've talked to the governor, the prospect of layoffs is in the cards.
What's going on?
Well, David, there doesn't seem to be much doubt that not only in New York but all the
surrounding states that the revenues are not coming in producing enough money to run
the state government.
Therefore, you get two choices, you raise the taxes or you stop spending as much as you're
spending much as you would one would do in their own family unless one was running up
their credit cards to unacceptable limits, which of course New York has also done.
So the governor got the message loud and clear that people did not want new taxes and
they didn't want fiscal gimmickry.
They didn't want the so-called one-shots which would raise money just for one time.
They wanted a balanced government.
Now what he has said is all right, if that's what you want, that's what you get.
Most of our budget in New York State is aid to localities, over 60 percent of.
And so what he's saying is, since we're going to all share the pain, school districts and
everybody else is going to have to take less money and do it less.
And of course the howls are going up already because all of those people are landing on
their local politicians who are coming back saying, hey, wait a second now, we meant tax,
we meant cuts in spending, but we didn't mean us.
Then he said, and then just to put a cap on this, we have two choices.
We can either fire people or we can lay them, we can furlough them for a short time, maybe
five days.
I'm a State University professor.
If you're telling me that my younger colleagues would have to be fired as opposed to my taking
five days without pay, I'll take the five days without pay, thank you.
However, the unions aren't quite so sure.
And one of the interpretations that is going on, which is most interesting, is that the
reason that the unions leadership may not be in love with this idea is that if people
are furloughed, this is a somewhat cynical approach to the whole thing.
I admit it's hard to believe, but that if people are furloughed, you've got angry union
members who can hurt you.
But if they're fired, you've got people who aren't there anymore.
In other words, ex-workers and ex-union members who don't have the vote.
Now for whatever the reason, perhaps it's that the union leaders simply don't believe
that the State doesn't have the money, but I think that the books on this are fairly clear
at this moment.
Cuomo this week on our show made all of the wires, made a statement.
What did he say?
He said, look union leaders, here are the choices.
You take firings among your ranks because we're going to have to fire a lot, get rid of
a lot of people under that scenario, or everybody takes this cut.
And when I say everybody, I mean everybody from me, the legislature, the judges, and
everybody else.
Dave Galetteley, we've been talking for a long time.
Do you really think that this legislature is going to take cuts?
I mean, after all, what they do now is almost disgraceful.
They show up for a day, they run their law practices, they run their insurance practice,
they run their telephone companies, whatever they have.
Oops, excuse me.
They run a lot.
But the fact of the matter is that they don't work at being legislators, many of them.
Some of them do, people like Maurice Hinchey and some of the others work very hard, but
for the most part, it is not a hard working legislature.
I want to see if they take the same five day furlough that everybody else does.
I know the governor will.
Okay, Alan, going back to the governor's decision.
Over the last Republican administrations in Washington, this is exactly, isn't it, what
the governor has accused them of doing, of taking their cuts out on the state level, and
now, is any taking it out on the local level?
Well, but remember that 60-something percent is the local level.
If you have to save all of this money, if what he was saying is, we're not going to take
it out on our own side, which they are, they're going to lay off people, they're going to
fire people, they're going to furlough people, they are obviously, I think, for example,
public radio and television may be in deep danger in terms of cutbacks, and those are the
rumors that I've been hearing.
If all of that is true, then you can't just take the 20 percent, you've got to go for
the entire amount across the board of the state budget, which is $55 or so billion a year,
and that's a lot of money, and you can't just say the only place we're going to look at
is 20 percent of that, or 25 percent of that.
That doesn't make an awful lot of sense.
Now, it is true that the federal government, which spends lots of money, has cut back on its
revenue sharing programs to the states, but that stuff is gone now.
And I think that's really what the big difference is.
I guess that answers the question, at least I hope so.
Legislative Gazette, political analyst, Dr. Alan Shartock.
Now that Thanksgiving is over, we can look to the holidays ahead.
For those times in mind, the state has a number of special activities planned.
Mori Small has this report.
The holiday season is now at hand, and the New York State Office of General Services
has a number of activities planned for the Christmas season.
Most of them will be taking place at the Empire State Plaza.
John Houdax is the OGS Commissioner.
He says the Plaza's activities appeal to both families and the state workforce.
Special activities will have as on the concourse level.
There will be a variety of crafts activities that will allow people to do the holiday shopping here at the Empire State Plaza.
And these will be crafts, arts and crafts of New York State artists ranging from silver, jewelry to macromay and other types of arts and crafts.
The big event is December 9th with the lighting of the state Christmas tree and the opening of the Plaza's Skating Ring.
Also coming to the Plaza for the Holidays is an art collection.
As an art collection is a very interesting abstract art collection.
The Governor Rockefeller created at the time that the Empire State Plaza was constructed.
It comprises about 92 pieces.
And there was an investment made of about $2 million from 1966 to about 1973 to purchase these works of art.
Incidentally, there are 16 of these 92 pieces of art that were commissioned for specific sites in the Empire State Plaza.
And what we have done over the past year and a half is to take a look at the art in terms of its security
and take in terms of its visibility to the public.
It's very important that the public have the opportunity to come down and walk through the Empire State Plaza and see this art.
And we also were concerned about the security because in 1985, six paintings were vandalized here.
They've been removed. They've been restored and we're now replacing them.
Anyone interested in arranging group tours of the art collection is asked to call 518-473-7321.
That's 518-473-7321.
For the Legislative Gazette, I'm Mori Small.
And joining us now as he does each week with a look at other events in state government, here's Paul Rosenthal with our Legislative Notebook.
There is some Adirondack Park residents who don't want to live in New York anymore, but they don't want to move either.
The Adirondack Solidarity Alliance says it is studying the legal possibilities of having several Adirondack communities
secede from New York State to become part of Vermont.
Dale French, vice president of the Solidarity Alliance, says the group is studying secession because in his words,
we have no representation in how the 6 million-acre park is operated.
The Alliance says it is hired constitutional experts to study the issue.
Deputy Assembly Speaker Arthur Eves says a tax increase may be the only way for New York State to close its $900 million budget deficit.
Eves, a Democrat from Buffalo, said that under Governor Cuomo's plan to reduce the deficit,
the poor will be asked to help the state bridge the deficit.
Cuomo has pledged that the deficit will be dealt with without borrowing or new taxes.
Eves promise to take a hard look at Cuomo's proposals when the legislature reconvene sometime in the next three weeks,
but added he's certainly going to be looking at some tax increases.
Our Republican state lawmaker, Senator Dale Volcker, criticized Cuomo for trying to renegotiate the budget with his new proposals.
The Union representing New York's prison guards say they will not tolerate layoffs and furloughs planned by Governor Cuomo to
trim the budget deficit.
Officials of Council 82, representing 20,000 corrections officers in the state prison system,
says firing 300 guards will make the prison system more dangerous.
State officials say a reorganization of portions of the system will lessen the impact of the cuts.
A state legislative panel has renewed a call for employer-funded universal health insurance,
saying it would save the financially strapped state some money.
A subcommittee of the New York State Council on Healthcare Financing says as many as two and a half
million New Yorkers lack health insurance, most of whom are the spouses and children of employed people.
The subcommittee said when those folks get sick, the state is usually stuck with the tab.
The panel called for legislation requiring businesses to provide health insurance to workers
and their families or pay a surcharge to subsidize health coverage for uninsured workers.
In return for providing health coverage, businesses would get a tax credit.
Assembly Health Committee Chairman Richard Gottfried, the Manhattan Democrat, says every
industrial country except the U.S. and South Africa has such a system.
Previous attempts to create universal health insurance in New York have been thwarted by opposition
from small businesses, which say the cost would put them out of business.
U.S. Senator Alfonz Demato says state GOP Chairman Patrick Barrett should not take the blame for
the party's poor showing in this year's gubernatorial race. Barrett was instrumental in selecting
Maverick economist Pia Rinfra to run against Governor Cuomo, only to watch Rinfra turn on the party
and post the worst showing for a GOP candidate in history. Since then, there have been rumblings
of an attempt to oust Barrett. Demato said all Republican officials should share the blame for
Rinfra's showing, including himself. Demato says he was not outspoken enough in trying to persuade
the party to select someone else. For the legislative Gazette, I'm Paul Rosenthal.
And that about does it for this week. Join us next week at this same time for more news on New
York State government and politics. For the legislative Gazette, I'm Dave Galately.
The program is made possible with grants from the legislative Gazette, the newspaper about
state government, subscription information available by calling 518-473-6482.
And Empire Information Services, serving New York and New England with electronic news release
distribution.
The plan is out, the reaction's in and now negotiating starts. I'm Dave Galately.
Coming up on this week's legislative Gazette will have the reaction to Governor Cuomo's plan
to slash the state's budget deficit. Join us each week for the legislative Gazette.
CC BY-NC-SA 4.0