http://www.dailygazette.com

Quoted Text

DiNapoli: State set to spend more than it makes
The Associated Press

   State spending in New York is projected to grow faster than revenue over the next four years, according to a report issued Tuesday.
   In the annual report on the fi nancial condition of the state, Comptroller Thomas DiNapoli found that spending has increased to $112 billion in the 2006-07 fiscal year from $89.1 billion in 2002-03.
   The 26.6 percent increase from about five years ago is more than
CAPITOL
twice the rate of inflation, according to the report.
   The state is expected to increase spending by 31 percent over the next four years, while revenue is projected to increase only 21 percent.
   State-funded debt is projected to reach nearly $64 billion by fi scal year 2011-12 from $51 billion in 2006-07. New York is the second most indebted state behind California.
   Spending totaled $5,841 per person in 2006-2007.
   Education and public health expenses represented 69 percent of all spending. Medicaid costs increased by $1.6 billion, or 5 percent, and the number of eligible recipients decreased by about 79,000.
   Local property tax levies outside of New York City increased 40 percent from 2001 to 2006.  

  
  
  

It's apparent that our legislatures in control [Dems] have never taken a course on how to make a budget based on the amount of money coming into the state coffers.

Quoted from Shadow

It's apparent that our legislatures in control [Dems] have never taken a course on how to make a budget based on the amount of money coming into the state coffers.

They must be the ones buying those overpriced houses and then 'getting stuck' with the mortgages they never could afford--yet the same folks making off with alot of $$----Whitewater????

http://www.dailygazette.com

Quoted Text

Budget going up despite forecast Analysis
State spending likely to increase by at least 5.3%
BY MICHAEL GORMLEY The Associated Press

   ALBANY — Wall Street is wobbling. Tax revenue growth has slowed. Economic forecasts call for a chance of recession.
   Gov. Eliot Spitzer, Senate Republican leader Joseph Bruno, Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver and Comptroller Thomas DiNapoli — who have agreed on almost nothing in months — agree on this: The economic outlook is more bleak than in years, and likely to get worse.
   So, of course, New York’s state government is poised to spend like a drunken yachtsman.
   Never mind the projected $4.3 billion deficit for the 2008-09 budget. Billions of dollars in new spending have already been committed, promised or threatened by one faction or the other. Oh, and one more thing: Next year is an election year for the Legislature.
   “So far, the more talk we hear about the budget, the less things add up,” said E.J. McMahon, director of the Empire Center for New York State Policy, part of the conservative Manhattan Institute. “A lot of this is beginning to sound like the late ’80s and early ’90s, when the most disciplined player in the house was Mario Cuomo.”
   Yikes.
   Most New Yorkers — those who aren’t among the thousands who already fled to jobs in other states — remember those days as the heyday of the rising cost of being a New Yorker. That’s back when the state, in a flagging economy, resorted to gimmicks like trying to sell prisons to itself to feed its spending addiction.
   Although New Yorkers won’t pay attention to the state budget process until its often elusive deadline of April 1, if at all, the bulk of the budget work quietly hits a sprint last week. Spitzer is preparing his budget proposal for Jan. 22 with a goal of holding spending to a 5.3 percent increase. That’s about $4.2 billion and well above the inflation rate.
   Tough times indeed.
   “There are warning signs out there that things could get worse,” Paul Francis, Spitzer’s budget director, told The Associated Press. “There will be significant cuts in spending really across almost every sector of the budget.”
   Except not really. In Albany, a “cut” means less of an increase. And even that’s rare.
   And Spitzer’s 5.3 percent target for increased spending is before the Legislature gets to it. By the time most fiscal years start, the Legislature usually adds another $1 billion or so. The result in the current budget was a $120 billion plan, including $80 billion in just state spending. Those figures are more than double the 1990-91 budget.
   The current budget, Spitzer’s first after campaigning to rein in state spending, grew by about 8 percent.
   The governor was quick to note that was still lower than any of the three previous years. He didn’t note that those previous three budgets grew by Rockefeller-era proportions of around 10 percent.
   For the coming fiscal year, Francis said times are so tough he will have to resort to one-shot revenues, like the anticipated conversion of some nonprofit health care companies to for-profit, and taking for the general fund whatever money’s left over from state authorities that run the Thruway, New York City mass transit and other services. In addition, expect some “user fees” to increase.
   These are charges for various state services or programs such as for hunting or state beaches. Francis said the specific user fees to be raised haven’t yet been targeted.
   Also, expect a few more “loophole closers” that cost some businesses millions this year in what the Senate GOP insisted were new taxes.
   Other ideas swirling around the Legislature include a greater tax on the richest New Yorkers, although Spitzer and Bruno promise no tax increases.
   As governors have done in the past, the Legislature will be advised in January that it has to balance any of its own increases with spending with cuts. And as Legislatures have done in the past, the advice will be quickly and thoroughly ignored.
   The Senate’s Republican majority, feuding with the Democratic governor since spring, is already worked up.
   “Expecting us to comment on a target for spending in November is absurd,” said John McArdle, spokesman for the GOP majority. “If he proposes a budget with his priorities out of line as much as he did last year, we’re going to fix it.”
   The Assembly’s Democratic majority has, uncharacteristically, an even more dire revenue forecast than the governor, but Silver has made it clear that he’s not ready to back down on his priorities: “We face difficult challenges ahead, but we must meet the education, health care and job growth and economic development needs of New Yorkers.”
   Even Spitzer’s target of holding spending to a 5.3 percent increase won’t be easy, given the developments of recent weeks:
   The State University of New York Board of Trustees on Tuesday asked for $287 million more and a 5 percent increase in tuition that the Assembly’s Democratic majority usually tries to avoid by tossing more state funds at the system.
   The state Board of Regents called for $1.94 billion more in school aid, much of which the state is already obligated pay under a court order. But Republican senators on Long Island, fighting to keep the GOP majority, are already screaming their districts are getting shortchanged.
   A week ago, Spitzer avoided a planned increase in the $2 base subway and bus fare in New York City, but key downstate Assembly members promise to try to tap the state budget to prevent other fare increases.
   That got upstate Republican senators promising to use state funds to stop or reduce planned increases in Thruway tolls.
   In October, the Spitzer administration started settling contracts with state worker unions that will provide 13 percent higher wages over the next three years.  

  
  
  

NYS has to raise taxes because there are businesses and residents leaving the state because of too high taxes so lets raise the taxes and force the rest of the residents to leave too. I really don't think that this state realizes what a problem it has to overcome in the very near future, much lower income in the form of taxes and higher costs to run the state. Their solution is to tax us into nonexistence to meet their goals.

Businesses have been fleeing New York state because of exorbitant taxes, high utility costs, and state regulations for many years.  Property owners are also departing because of the high costs of government and the lack of high paying and permanent career positions.  Our educated young people are chosing to establish residence, to work, and to start families in other states that offer opportunity.

Meanwhile, governments at all levels in New York State continue to spend without restraint, grow the ranks of government employment, create high paying patronage positions and increase entitlement program benefits all with disregard for the sustainability of this rampant spending.

New York State has an increasing percentage of its population who receive some form of public assistance.  The exodus of businesses and individuals with high paying jobs will continue to result in decreases to tax revenues.  Our elected "leaders" respond by increasing tax rates which in turn forces more businesses to relocate operations.

It is unfortunate that in a state that offers a landscape of unparalleled majesty and diversity, that the ineptitude of our
elected "representatives"  is turning it into a wasteland of poverty and crime.

Brad, very well put and right on! Again we must say, 'where are the good candidates?" Where are the people with a passion to SERVE the people and reform the political system? Is it true that our government is just a reflection of its people or is it that there are no more great candidates to choose from? Are we doomed to a political society of over spending and self serving?

There are leeches all over us......and the welfare system is not the cause......those leeches are friends of Bruno and the rest of our legislators.....