Cuomo to strapped schools and municipalities: merge
BY MICHAEL GORMLEY The Associated Press
The state budget currently under negotiation may be remembered years from now as the beginning of the end for many small towns, cities and school districts.
   Gov. Andrew Cuomo had tough words Friday for local officials facing fiscal crises and seeking more help from Albany, telling them they should consolidate services or whole governments and school districts rather than looking for relief from Albany.
   “If it was really, really tough, you’d see that happen,” Cuomo said in his strongest comments yet on the local fiscal crises. “If you are a school district, or a city, or a town or a county, and you are looking for a fundamental financial reform, consolidation is one of the obvious ones.”
   Cuomo said he believes local politics is standing in the way of mergers and consolidations that would save taxpayers money and improve efficiency of services. He said deciding to consolidate should be easy, yet “politically, it’s difficult. … I get the politics.”
   Despite years of hard times, Cuomo said you can count “on one hand” the number of consolidations among 50,000 local governments, school districts, fire and library taxing districts and more.
   School districts and local governments say they are already consolidating and merging, but that’s not enough. They are asking for more laws than Cuomo has offered in his state budget proposal to cut labor costs, pension costs and more funding.
   “Talk of consolidation is just an avoidance action by the state so they can avoid the real problem of state mandates,” said Peter Baynes of the New York Conference of Mayors. “If you talk to any local government in New York state, they can rattle off the consolidations they’ve made and they are squeezing all the savings they can out of shared services.”
   Baynes said voters only agreed to dissolve three villages out of 20 that held votes within the last five years. But in most cases, the savings — if any — were seen as too low and the diminished services and cost of a lost hometown identity too high, he said.
   Local governments and school districts blame programs and costs required by Albany, often won by politically powerful public worker unions, for many of them facing insolvency.
   Cuomo has offered a way to cut current pension costs now by borrowing against projected future savings, but a growing number of local leaders consider that risky and unwise. Another would require arbitrators in labor disputes to consider local taxpayers’ ability to pay for a labor resolution, but that faces opposition in the Legislature.
   Despite layoffs and service cuts, these municipalities and school districts say they face insolvency within five years.
   “We know of 20 school districts that are currently considering mergers and are in various stages,” said David Albert of the New York State School Boards Association. But he said most in the past have ended as one did this week near Glens Falls, losing by a 4 to 1 margin in a vote of the residents.
   “The communities don’t want economics to drive every educational decision. They want a quality education for their children,” Albert said. “So we find a lot of mergers fail.”
   However, he said hundreds of schools and districts now share sports teams to cut costs. Others share academic program costs, business officers or even share a superintendent, often the highest paid school employee.
   Meanwhile, Cuomo and legislative leaders continue closed-door negotiations with the goal of agreeing to a $143 billion budget by Monday so it can be voted into law by March 21, well before the April 1 deadline.
   Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver has made raising the minimum wage to $9 an hour a major goal of his Democratic conference and has support from the Democratic governor and the Independent Democratic Conference in the Senate. Senate Republicans continue to seek up to $2 billion in tax cuts for small businesses and the middle class.
   Also in the mix, a second extension of the so-called temporary millionaire’s tax that raises $1.9 billion a year is also being discussed in a budget that was billed to have no tax increases, according to two state officials familiar with the talks. They spoke to The Associated Press on the condition of anonymity because they weren’t authorized to discuss issues in closed-door negotiations.
   The income tax increase is currently due to expire in 2014. Approval now would avoid taking up the dicey issue in an election year for Cuomo and lawmakers.

who kissed the godfather's ring after the speech?

Cuomo is an idiot.

Making something bigger doesn't necessarily make it cheaper. I think he is deliberately squeezing schools so he can gain more state control. This is a page out of Obama's book, cause real harm to get what you want in the end. More state control means more patronage. He really doesn't like all that money going from taxpayers' pockets to government employees (school districts) without elected officials having a say over it.
Look at the Thruway Authority. They have just proclaimed that they will not be abolishing the Authority and merging with DOT. The official in charge, on TV, said that they can't, it's too complicated, and at any rate, they won't, which is more like it. Of course the reporters let it go. The Authority is laying off some of the very employees that would be absorbed into DOT, or at least threatening to, while keeping all the higher up do nothing patronage appointees. Cuomo doesn't weigh in on this, but he criticizes the schools? What does he know about saving money and making things run better? So the schools should listen to him?

Quoted from Madam X

Making something bigger doesn't necessarily make it cheaper. I think he is deliberately squeezing schools so he can gain more state control. This is a page out of Obama's book, cause real harm to get what you want in the end. More state control means more patronage. He really doesn't like all that money going from taxpayers' pockets to government employees (school districts) without elected officials having a say over it.
Look at the Thruway Authority. They have just proclaimed that they will not be abolishing the Authority and merging with DOT. The official in charge, on TV, said that they can't, it's too complicated, and at any rate, they won't, which is more like it. Of course the reporters let it go. The Authority is laying off some of the very employees that would be absorbed into DOT, or at least threatening to, while keeping all the higher up do nothing patronage appointees. Cuomo doesn't weigh in on this, but he criticizes the schools? What does he know about saving money and making things run better? So the schools should listen to him?

BINGO!!!!! like making the military larger stops wars....hahahahahahahahahahahahahaha

Combining a school with a sound educational program with a school with a poor educational sucess rate will just drag the good school down not raise the level of the poor preforming school. Reduce/eliminate the mandates on the schools and let them make the decisions that best suit the school. When government gets involved it seems like failure follows.

Quoted from Shadow

Combining a school with a sound educational program with a school with a poor educational sucess rate will just drag the good school down not raise the level of the poor preforming school. Reduce/eliminate the mandates on the schools and let them make the decisions that best suit the school. When government gets involved it seems like failure follows.

JUST LIKE NATIONAL HEALTHCARE......

can everyone say CLINICS

It is just like national health care, because Obama is making something worse and making everyone suffer with an end goal in mind. That's what Cuomo is doing. Neither one knows how to run government well, but they want more government.

Quoted from Madam X

It is just like national health care, because Obama is making something worse and making everyone suffer with an end goal in mind. That's what Cuomo is doing. Neither one knows how to run government well, but they want more government.

the deck chairs on the titanic

Quoted from Madam X

It is just like national health care, because Obama is making something worse and making everyone suffer with an end goal in mind. That's what Cuomo is doing. Neither one knows how to run government well, but they want more government.

but the status quo remains the same for those at the 1% level because the rail laid from Atlas Shrugged all
lead to their driveways.....

we are the brick makers.....add some gumbas into the mix and there ya have it---the egyptian task masters.....

When Cuomo senior was in the Governor's mansion, there was a public school little Chris Cuomo could've attended just a short walk away. Of course it wasn't good enough. I know many Albanians who sent their kids to Albany public schools, and their kids had no problems getting into good colleges. So the excuses these people (Cuomo, Obama) use about the schools not offering enough don't wash. There are other reasons they don't like public schoolswhich they will never admit. So when they weigh in on education, at least government education, they don't know what they are talking about, at all.