NYS Budget Mess

Hi Everyone:

Well NYS is at it again, another late budget. Our state budget was due on 4/1/10. To date the infamous legislators are not even close to agreeing on one yet. Mind you that presently the Democrats control the Congress, Senate and Governorship. When the Republicans were in control they were also late. Even though I have written about this before, the current financial situation is vastly worse. Thanks to the Great Recession, NYS finds itself with a record $9.6 billion deficit for the 2010-2011 budget year. NYS is not the only state with financial difficulties. Unfortunately, there are lots of other states with lessor and greater financial problems. I believe that California has a budget deficit that is about 3 times greater then NYS's.

When this state is in a deficit, again it doesn't matter which political party was or is in control because they both come up with similar ways to try to trim the budget. Let's look at what both parties have done previously and what they are doing or trying to do presently:

Ways to trim the budget Result

-Decrease school funding -Increase in school taxes

-Eliminate Property tax refunds -Increase in property taxes

-Increase state sale taxes -Increase in everything purchased except food

-Start a soda and water tax -Increase in food budgets

-Increase DMV fees -Increase in DMV fees

I could go on and on but the results are always the same. When the state has a budget deficit, the residents end up paying dearly. Taxes and fees can not continue to increase indefinitely as they have for decades. Soon there will be a lot of people taxed out of living in NY and will be forced to move to another state. Then only the very rich would be able to afford living here, if they are willing to pay.

So what can be done? NYS state needs to be really run like a business and not just lip service. Here are my simple common sense ways to trim the budget:

1) Cut waste.

2) Cut waste.

3) Cut waste.

4) Yearly audits of each department to find more waste that needs to be eliminated.

5) If all of the above fail to trim the budget enough, then unfortunately lay offs are needed.

6) Even with all of the above applied and there still is a deficit, let's decrease the legislators highly inflated pay. Let it hurt them as much as their actions hurt everyone in the state financially.

Every Governor since Rockefeller has grown the number of state employees to the point where there isn't enough money (income) to support having them all on the payroll. Businesses would have laid off employees a long time ago and managed the number of employees much better. Neither political party, when in control, wants to do lay offs. That's because they are always thinking about their re-election and not the residents who pay their salaries. Lay offs are an unfortunate consequence in these very troubling economic times.

If the politicians can't get the budget under control and without any new tax increases, which includes massive lay offs this year, I think that each and every politician should be voted out of office and maybe their replacements will have a better understanding of what fiduciary responsibility really means!

Til next week.