From Albany, this is the Legislative Gazette, a weekly magazine on New York State
government and politics. Your host is Don Decker, with commentary by a political
scientist Dr. Alan Shartock.
Hello and welcome to the Legislative Gazette. Well, the state's chief executive
presented his blueprint this week on how to get the state out of the red and into the black.
Governor Cuomo presented his budget proposal. It indeed includes a call to freeze the tax cut as many of us as expected.
We'll take a closer look at the governor's plan and we'll have plenty of reaction from both sides of the aisle.
Also, political analyst Dr. Alan Shartock has joined by the New York's post-Fred Dicker
and Dr. Shartock puts on a little bit of a different hat this week as well.
All of it coming up on the Legislative Gazette.
If the governor has his way, New Yorkers will have to pay some more taxes and will not see another income tax cut as expected this year.
Bruce Robertson takes a closer look at Cuomo's budget plan, which he unveiled officially.
Governor Cuomo wants to delay a promised income tax cut for New Yorkers. This has part of his state budget proposal for the upcoming fiscal year.
Cuomo also said he would need to raise some other taxes and fees as well to the tune of about $700 million.
We now have the lowest rates in 30 years. We're very proud of the tax cut. We felt all of the Democrats were Republicans that we needed it.
And we got it. Lowest rate in 30 years. I assume a lot of you know what it cost you to do the tax cut.
Very good politically you got a lot of points for it so did I. $7.5 billion.
I just imagine yourself put the $7.5 billion and not the tax cut. If I gave you $7.5 billion but not the tax cut.
It was back up to 10% of where it was when we started it. You'd have $7.5 billion. Nobody's asking for that money back.
But just get some sense of what the tax cut cost you.
The chief executive also says he needs extra money to deal with budget deficits, money for drugs and aids and funding for quote one time only projects and programs also known as one shots.
If you don't want to do my freeze. If you want the tax cut, if you want the advantage of going to the people and saying we're going to raise cut the taxes still further to 7%.
You have to come up with the $400 million. So this year that's easy. You could lie about $400 million.
And then you have to come up with a billion dollars more for those one shots because I will not spend one shots that you don't pay for in 91 because that's buying a deficit like 82.83.
And I'm making myself clear these are one shots that we use to spend on education, on debt service, on drugs, on prisons. If you tell me,
oh no, we want to give up the $1.61 billion next year and the $400 million this year, then I can't rely on the one shot.
Under Cuomo's proposal, the overall budget would grow by about 9.3% to $51.3 billion. The general fund, meanwhile, will grow by 4.5% under the inflation rate.
The governor says the jump is due mainly to increases in federal assistance for Medicaid and other entitlement programs and to building such things as prison cells through the use of bond monies.
Governor Cuomo is also calling for new taxes on New Yorkers who smoke, make long-distance telephone calls, and those who trade in old cars.
The state tax on cigarettes, which was raised by $0.12 to $0.33 per pack last year, will now go up by another $0.05 under the governor's proposal.
Cuomo also suggested imposing a $0.06 tax on interstate and international calls. Currently, the state cannot tax telephone calls made to a different state or country.
Under the governor's proposal, New Yorkers who trade in their old cars to auto dealers when buying new cars will find themselves subject to state sales tax. Currently, the trading allowance on motor vehicles is tax exempt.
The chief executive also says that state spending cuts is tough, but it can be done.
I called on OGS. They have thousands and thousands of automobile and vehicles. I called upon them the way I did not battery park and I told you about it.
I said get rid of one out of every five vehicles. Somebody called me from OGS. John Egan is a very deferential nice person. He says, I just want to understand, where did you get the formula one out of five?
I said, I was going to do one out of ten, John, but we're broker than that. And he said, but how do you figure one out of five in the efficiency? I said, I don't figure that. You figure that, John. I believe you can do one out of five without hurting.
And if it does hurt, John, you come in and tell me how it hurts the people of this state to give up 20% of your vehicles. We have done 24.9% of the vehicle.
The formula suggested the importance of freezing the final phase of the tax cut as well.
You have to keep those numbers in mind. Incidentally, if you go to the next phase, how many people pay tax increases? 200 and 2 million people pay tax increases, mostly lower middle class and in that range. Why? That's the way they structured it.
The question is, can we afford to give up another $2 billion over the next two years? What would it cost us? Do we want to leave drug dealers and violent felons on our streets because it has to give up? Part of the drug program is no doubt about that.
Do you want to abandon your commitment to the decade of the child? There's no question that would be affected as well. Do you want to re-negg on your commitment to fight age? If you don't take it from there, where would you take it from?
How about eliminating nearly $1 billion in general revenue sharing we provide to our localities, thereby shifting the burden to local property tax pay? Who's in favor of that? Or possibly to all of these things? Do we want to jeopardize our credit ratings?
All of these things, if you want to give rid of $2 billion, they're going to happen, right? How could they not?
Even though the budget is serious business, there was room for levity. Ever mindful of political reaction and fallout, the governor was not quite ready to sign his name to the spending plan.
I've given more and more opportunity to my lieutenant governor Stan Lundin to function you know that I gave him superconducting, super collider and I've given him all sorts of opportunities. This year I thought I'll let him take a hand at writing a budget.
And that's what we have here today is the first one being the...
And you know...
Of course these everything changes and if things get better before April 1st is conceivable that my imprint will be involved too.
But for now we'll think of it as the Lundin budget.
Cuomo followed through on his promise to ask the legislature for a $1.9 billion environmental bond issue, $1 billion of which would go to buying Newland for the state.
The state's new fiscal year begins on April 1st, between now and then the state legislature surely will rework the governor's spending plan.
For now, for the legislative gazette, this is Bruce Robertson.
As you can expect, there was plenty of reaction from the legislative leaders and for that story we go to Ingasada.
Cuomo's budget plan has prompted some to describe the governor as a fiscal conservative.
The assembly's top Republican minority leader Clarence Rappliye candidly shares his thoughts on that notion.
If I tell you I've left a look at this thing, if governor Cuomo is a fiscal conservative,
then while Norega is a boy scout, I can't quite believe this thing that the governor has broken a $400 million promise to the taxpayers if it were to go as he's programming it here.
And I'd suggest that the governor's retreat from tax-custle costs far more than it's going to save.
It may give him $400 million more to spend this year, but it's going to cost New York jobs and prosperity for many years to come with this goes according to his game plan.
Rappliye also says Cuomo's plan to impose a sales tax on old cars traded for new cars will not help the sluggish business in many car dealerships.
You're looking at a market right now that's sagging badly, the automobile market, and all you need to do to put one last zinger in is propose something like this in terms of people trading in the car and having to pay a full shot on the sales tax.
I can't think of a bigger collar that's put out there right now in the face of a market that's not very solid.
A simply minority leader Clarence Rappliye meanwhile Cuomo's plan to increase state school aid by $240 million just in-coded with state legislative and education leaders.
State Senate Majority Leader Ralph Moreno asked if he could live with Cuomo's plan to raise the state education aid package by 2.8% simply said no.
Cuomo's state education aid proposal was about one quarter of the $966 million increase the state board regions requested.
Meanwhile Marina wasn't pleased with much else.
I do not agree with the governor's proposed a furl of the next phase of the income tax cut nor am I receptive to the additional 909 million in new taxes and fees which have been proposed.
Now the difference between 8.1% growth in this year's budget and his proposed 9.3% of talking on the cash faces is $400 million which I suggest equals the amount of the tax cut that he proposes to current.
The next phase of the income tax cut is $400 million which I suggest equals the next phase of the income tax cut.
Senate Majority Leader Ralph Moreno but according to Assembly Speaker Mel Miller a Democrat from Brooklyn it's just not that simple.
The one point that has to be made clear and I know the governor tried to make it to you during the briefing is that the tax deferral is a hinge for more than $400 million this year.
You know there isn't the year that you can't put together $400 million one shots, rollovers every trick in the book that these people sit and dream during the night on how to get the less $10 out of a dollar bill.
The fact is that the $400 million in the federal is the leverage for the 1.1 billion dollars in one shots so that the federal is worth a billion and a half dollars.
Unless we impress that on the public in general then the whole budget will make no sense.
You pull out the deferral then you have to start thinking how could you do one shots when there's no money to back it up next year.
I think that's the problem it's a it's a very sophisticated argument. I don't know how you do that when you sit down and explain to people that $400 million is really a billion and a half dollars.
And to make that quantum leap becomes the entire issue in my opinion of this budget.
And Miller also believes that a tax cut freeze is virtually a must.
Now last year I got up here and I attacked the governor's budget that it was too restrictive that we were neglecting problems that we should have dealt with the tax cuts last year and if we did we would not have that problem this year.
This year it's hard for me to see even though this budget will not meet all the needs as perceived it's very hard for me to see us doing really much more spending than the governor has in his budget.
I don't see where the money comes from simply because of the total governor's spending package for 1990, 1991, $1.2 billion doesn't exist today.
So if the tax cuts were to go through and you didn't do any of the revenue increases that the governor has in his budget, you're short $1.2 billion against his spending plan right now.
So for those who are going to oppose the overall spending plan of the governors, the issue becomes what are you going to cut?
Miller is asking where there can be cuts and Bob Ward of the Business Council of New York State says his powerful group has some ideas.
Well two areas that we're looking at are education and aid to localities.
The portion of the state budget that pays for the state's own agencies, the Motor Vehicles Department, the Transportation Department and so on actually has not been rising as fast in recent years.
As the portion of the state budget that goes to school districts and to counties and cities and towns and villages.
So we would like to see some real close attention paid to how much money the state gives those entities, school districts and the local governments and how perhaps they might use that money more effectively so that they don't need to lean so heavily on the state government.
Bob Ward of the Business Council of New York State, the council as you've heard here before is fully against a tax cut deferral as well as the tax increases urged by Cuomo.
But Ward says he's encouraged by reaction from the Senate's Republicans. Disagreement over the governor's tax deferral plan is clear and abundant.
But what many are agreeing on is that this is certainly going to be a political hot potato this year. For the legislative Gazette, I'm in Gazarta.
And now joining us, Dr. Alan Shartak, full professor at the state University of New York, our political analyst with us each week here on the legislative Gazette.
He spoke with a constant guest, Fred Dicker, the New York Post Investigative Editor about the governor's budget proposal.
So tell me Fred, what is this budget all about?
Alan, you know, you caught me an interesting time. I'm pouring through this four-inch stick document and must weigh three pounds. And as we both know, it's very, very difficult to figure out.
Let me give you my thumbnail assessment. I think it's clearly about trying to retain and maintain the level of state spending that we now have.
We have a governor who is up for reelection. He's a liberal Democrat. Clearly he's got big budget problems. And I think he's made a decision that instead of cutting programs that many people, especially liberal Democrats think are essential, he's going to try to pay for them while at the same time limiting their growth.
So what we see here, I think, is a record high budget with a lot of new taxes, well over a billion dollars in new taxes. But not that many new programs.
There's a little bit new spending, I think. We're here, significant new spending in the area of droggus is a little bit more money for education.
Clearly there's a lot more money for prisons, but there are no real new major programs that will require money because the money isn't fair.
So what happens here? Are we going to see a response by the Republicans that say, okay, you're going to need the money, we'll give it to you. Or in this gubernatorial year, are they going to get up on our hind legs and really put it to them?
Well, we're going to see at a ladder. And we're already seeing it. We're saying, Clarence Rappelier, who's the Assemblyman, already leader of Republican saying something like if Mario Cuomo is an individual who holds the line on taxes and manual Norega is a voice gap.
That's obviously a bit hyperbolic. More importantly, we see Ralph Moreno, the Senate Republican leader who's very powerful. More so than Rappelier saying he's going to oppose the governor's plan to roll back the tax cuts. That's probably the most significant statement so far. We're going to have to see if he can hold to it.
What happens when he gets beaten up by those long islanders who say you got to give us more money for education than the governor's giving us. That sets up a negotiating procedure. And how does it all turn out?
No question. Now, on the word negotiations, the key here, there's no question that the governor while pretty tough in his presentation, I think, has clearly built in some move rooms, some flexibility. It isn't a negotiating process. I think of Moreno gets up too badly beaten up too badly by his people.
On the other hand, if they don't beat him up too badly, if they say, look, the state should retrench and we're prepared to tell our local governments the school districts that they should retrench to do more or less as a governor says, the Moreno will be under less pressure to cave. It all depends, I think, or to a considerable degree, and it depends on what you suggest, what happens within the Republican conference in the Senate.
But of course, those Republicans know that this is a governor who has already said he's going to come after them this year. They've got a redistricting going up. They don't want to make themselves vulnerable. And they know that if they retrench and if they say no programs, then what happens that they put themselves into a bad spot?
No question. On the other hand, these are Republicans who are politicians and they don't like to be pushed around all the time. I just had handed to me just moments ago, news release from Senator Roy Goodman, accused the governor of quote, torpedoing New York state's income tax cut and attacking the governor's action strongly. Now, we both know Roy Goodman has normally thought of as kind of a liberal, democratically oriented kind of state senator. He is a Republican. He seems to be signing with Moreno, which others line up the same way that the governor could have trouble.
A few months from now, we're going to have to have a budget, no question. What do you think is going to be the bottom line? Tax cut or not, what's the crystal ball say?
Okay, I say, and here's a prediction I'm putting my neck out, that there will be a tax cut, but it'll be far smaller than the one now scheduled to be going to affect.
That way they can sort of have their cake and eat it.
Exactly. They'll extend it out over two or three more years. So the governor can say, I got the money and I got the additional taxes.
And we still saved the tax cut and the Republicans can say we fought hard like good Republicans. We saved the tax cut, but guys, we also had to give up a little bit more money.
Fred, you've heard this governor year after year, give these budget presentations. Where does this one rank?
I think there was a lot of unhappiness in the press court with it now, and because it seemed as if the governor was filibustering a bit that he was talking so much often on national and international affairs that the reporters couldn't get a chance to get a lot of questions in.
I don't think it was an especially good one. Keep in mind though, this isn't a specially good budget for the governor, so maybe he didn't want too many questions.
It was a very humorous moment when he referred to it as Stan Lundin's budget.
Uh-huh, that's always the tip off. I remember when the governor once referred to it as the Mike Finner in budget. He was the old, or Finner-D, I'm sorry, he was the old budget director.
And when he governor says that, you know, he's not happy with the package.
The New York Posts, Fred Dicker. Believe it or not, there was other news not related to the budget. And Paul Rosenthaw takes a look at that with this week's legislative notebook.
Governor Cuomo was joined this week by Sarah Brady. Brady's husband Jim, you may recall, was seriously wounded during the attempt on the life of former President Reagan.
She is now chair of handgun control, incorporated. The group is calling for state and federal legislation banning assault weapons.
Cuomo has boroughs banning certain weapons, including assault rifles with more than six cartridges and pistols with more than 17.
These are instruments that are described by the people who make them as designed to kill the largest number of human beings in the shortest period of time.
There is no purpose for them, except maybe target shooting and we allow that under the licensing law.
You don't need them for hunting. The present law allows you to hunt with up to six cartridges in this kind of semi-automatic.
We will continue to permit that. That's the bad in my opinion.
Or maybe so. But this does not affect hunters. It doesn't affect anybody who now is using weapons legally.
It goes beyond that the weapons you couldn't possibly argue you needed for hunting.
Of course, you've got up to six semi-automatic cartridges. And it's a perfectly legitimate deal, I think.
And I'm hoping that the Sarabraigh these presents will help us get it passed.
New York Governor Mario Cuomo. It's a commuter's dream, a toll-free through way.
And that's an idea many New York state lawmakers are bouncing around right now among them, Assemblyman James Tidisco, a Republican from Schenectady.
He supports making the through way toll-free between two Albany and Schenectady exits to help ease congestion.
So I think it makes sense right now to go into some of the congested exits of the through way across the state.
Pick out some areas, do away with the tolls, illustrate the people that we do mean business by 1996.
We are indeed going to do away with the tolls and we're going to start now with the most congested areas.
Save some money on gas, save some fuel, and really save some of the frustration that a lot of people and I know in the capital district, especially in the next 20-20 years.
I think it's 23-26, having the rush hour, especially going in and out of work, where there's so much tremendous travel going in and out of the capital.
So I think it's a real fine idea to count up the numbers of people, the count of costs of the toll and see which are the most congested areas in the state.
And I would think that right here in the capital district, we will be pushing for this to be one of the areas in some of the exits that will be relieved of the tolls to give some of that frustration somewhere relief.
The plan is a spin off of a proposal to eliminate tolls between exits 36 and 38 in the Syracuse area, where other lawmakers say there are traffic nightmares.
Senator Hugh Farley, a Republican from Niske, Yuna, and as someone who in Paul Tonko, a Democrat from Amsterdam, also say the plan is a good one.
Opponents of a dump for a low-level radioactive waste site this week used roadblocks to turn back state officials trying to inspect one of the proposed sites for the facility in Allegheny County.
Nonviolent action groups said about a dozen state officials and a three-car caravan were stopped at five roadblocks.
The officials who were accompanied by Allegheny County Sheriff Lawrence Sholes encountered parked cars and trucks blocking roads leading to the proposed dump site, seven protesters were arrested.
One protesters said the officials told demonstrators they had the right to visit the site, but he said the caravan eventually turned around and left the checkpoint.
Meanwhile, another protesters Sally Campbell says she expects heavy duty lobbying of state lawmakers and the governor over the issue.
And I believe that there will be some intense lobbying done of legislators.
This has become a rather thorny issue for governor Kwame and for the legislators and they're going to have to resolve it somehow.
Radioactive waste dump protesters Sally Campbell of Allegheny County. That's this week's legislative notebook on Paul Rosenthal.
What we told you earlier that Alan Shartack would wear a little bit of a different hat this week because you know he is a full professor at the State University of New York, he's a television commentator, publisher of the newspaper of the legislative Gazette.
We asked him to become something else this week, a make-believe legislator.
What do you think of the governor's budget message?
Well, it scared me a little bit. If I'm really playing the role of a legislator here, it scared me a little bit because I know that it spells a lot of bad news.
First of all, there's no real increases. This is not a year that I like as a legislator because I can't give out more goodies.
And when I'm running for public office, I like to spread the wealth around. I like to say to education we're doing more for you and to the museums.
If you're doing more for you and if I can't do that, then I'm in trouble because I go to a community meeting and some lady will stand up and say,
why can't we have more for the Medicaid budget? You're cutting Medicaid and you're hurting the kids. This is a nice thing for me.
Secondly, if I'm an upstate legislator and I already see it going on here, then I walked into the studio to interview the governor today.
And there was a sign on it saying, don't use studio tax on microphones, tax on this, tax on that because it's already beginning.
Everywhere I'm going, I'm somebody knows that I do political analysis and they're handing me a newspaper and saying, this is going to be taxed and that's going to be taxed.
And there's this general grumbling out there knowing that there's going to be another hit coming.
For example, almost everybody knows that when you buy an automobile, you don't pay on what the price of the trade in is.
Now you're going to pay on everything and people are ticked off about that.
Well, you don't, Mr. Legisl, that's ever going to see the light of day.
Well, here's the point. You're not going to vote for that.
Here's what we get. Well, the point you've voted for?
I may have to vote for the whole budget. Why?
Because I have to understand that the governor and just say, because the governor is saying to me, okay, Micah, whoever you are, you do that.
That's fine. Just tell me where to get the money.
So I asked the governor, I said to him, well, where would you get the money?
Where would I get the money?
You're upset about not having enough money to spread around to your constituents.
If I were a le- where are you going to get it?
Well, I'll tell you right now, I would get it probably the easiest way possible.
Number one, I would defer that tax cut. Number two, as a legislator, because it's the most-
You don't want to give me a tax cut?
You know what I would do?
You know what I would do? I would give you a little bit of a tax cut.
And I'd say, I thought for a little bit of a tax cut, it was a bad year, but I thought and I gave you a little tax cut.
I make sure there was an even teeny-
Yeah, but I was expecting-
I was expecting- you guys told me as a citizen a few years ago that we were going to have tax cuts every year.
Why are you re-nigging on that?
You know what your problem is. You think you're smarter than the general public.
The general public, A, doesn't know what the tax rate is.
They probably don't know what bracket they're in.
They probably don't know how much they're paying last time.
Now this is all just between us, because as a legislator, I'm never going to say this out loud.
But the fact of the matter is, if I can symbolically find a little bit of a tax cut for you,
well, the general public will grouse and gripe, but Cuomo's now talking about the quote,
truth budget, see? He's saying, tell the people the truth they'll understand.
And I yell out, you want a bit?
I don't think so. I think what happens is at this stage of the game that it's a tough time.
You got a governor who's willing to take the heat, and in the end, I'm going to blame the governor as well.
Well, why can't you take-
You're the legislator. Why haven't you got the guts to stand up at a meeting and say,
look at you, people want the tax cut. Okay, we can't give you the tax cut,
but you don't want to see taxes going up.
Therefore, we can't continue to spend.
But therefore, you Medicaid and you education and you this, I've got to say no to you.
The governor says, Mr. Legislator, you've got to learn how to say no.
Why are you afraid to say no? For obvious reasons, because I don't have to.
And if I don't have to, I shouldn't have to. Now, we're talking that Alan Shartock thinks that's reprehensible.
But in my presence, psychotic schizophrenic state, as a legislator, I certainly think,
I'm not going to offer anybody anything I don't have to do, which is why they're such cowards.
And it works. 95% of them are reelected.
So you admit Mr. Legislator that your main job day in and day out is simply,
but we all know is to get reelected to survive rule number one is to get reelected.
And rule number two is never to forget rule number one.
And we thank Alan Shartock for putting on that different hat for us.
And that does it for this week's show. The Legislative Gazette is produced by Ingasada
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