Editorial: New York calls Cuomo to action
Andrew Cuomo gives his victory speech on election night in November. Credit: AP
Once upon a time a dynamic New Yorker with a famous last name took charge of a polity that had lost faith in its leaders. The economy was terrible. Nobody knew exactly what to do. "Small wonder that confidence languishes," the new man said, "for it thrives only on honesty."
Compared with Franklin Delano Roosevelt, who uttered those words on the occasion of his first inauguration as president in 1933, the task facing Andrew Cuomo, when he is sworn as New York's 56th governor tomorrow, is modest.
By any standard other than the Great Depression, however, Cuomo's challenges are great. Moreover, they must be met by a state that is broke and a system that is broken.
Albany's culture of corruption is defined by rigged electoral districts that ensure incumbents almost never lose and a governance crippled by animosity between lawmakers and the executive. The upstate economy is an ongoing disaster. Our infrastructure is falling apart. Special interests don't simply wield power, they are the power brokers.
But none of the state's problems is as insidious and dangerous as the budget deficits these interests have deepened year after year.
New York spends more than it takes in - and has been doing so for years, despite the legalistic contention that its budget has been "balanced" in accord with state law. Spending is growing more than twice as fast as revenue. A deficit of up to $1 billion faces us in the current fiscal year. A gap of $9 billion or more threatens in the next.
The seriousness of New York's budget problems - we'll optimistically reserve "crisis" for now - was made plain in a recent report from the Nelson A. Rockefeller Institute of Government, a think tank unironically named for one of New York's biggest spenders. The report is the last in a series issued by Lt. Gov. Richard Ravitch, who was asked by Gov. David A. Paterson to figure a way out of the worsening financial mess. Ravitch has bluntly resorted to facts and reason, with the predictable consequence that his sensible suggestions have been ignored.
For example, he wants the state to join 46 others in starting its fiscal years on July 1, at which point Albany knows how much income tax revenue it has (the date also coincides with school budgets). New York remains the only state using April 1. Ravitch also favors adopting business-like "generally accepted accounting principles" to make Albany's budget masquerade harder to hide.
The problem is that when confronted with annual deficits, politicians in Albany consistently avoid the decisions they're elected to make. Cuomo and lawmakers won't be able to avoid cutting Medicaid and education spending, two of the state's biggest costs. They might as well get on with it.
Cuomo's decision to move Wednesday's State of the State address from the Assembly chamber to a neutral location is a sly metaphor about his determination to move the process of governing into the open. As he takes over, Cuomo must heed the words of his predecessor 78 years ago. As FDR said, restoration calls "not for changes in ethics alone" but "action, and action now." hN
