In Governor Andrew Cuomo’s state of the state address, he “outlined an Emergency Financial Plan that closes the $10 billion deficit in the 2010-11 budget without raising taxes or borrowing.”<\/p>\n
Still missing is the very simple question of How?<\/p>\n
His one specific budget-cutting proposal, imposing a one-year salary freeze on public employees, is a drop in the bucket.<\/p>\n
His next proposal, “holding the line on taxes” could actually make the deficit bigger.\u00a0 So would his plan to publicly fund political campaigns.\u00a0 As would his plan to allow a surtax on millionaires to expire.<\/p>\n
A plan to impose “a State spending cap limiting growth to the rate of inflation” is a long-term tweak that doesn’t begin to stop the flood of red ink we’re facing now.<\/p>\n
It’s troubling that the new commission he created to “reinvent” state government — called the Spending and Government Efficiency Commission — won’t make its first report until May 1st.<\/p>\n
That’s a full month after the April 1st budget deadline.\u00a0\u00a0 How will that help close next year’s deficit?<\/p>\n
Gov. Cuomo also called for a full-scale overhaul of the Medicaid program.\u00a0 But once again there are no specific ideas as to how.\u00a0 Again he creates a new commission, this time called the “Medicaid Redesign Team.”<\/p>\n
He says he’ll first get “findings and recommendations” by March 1st.\u00a0 Will the governor’s office craft specific legislative proposals between then and the budget deadline?<\/p>\n
He appointed yet another commission to review unfunded mandates — this one called the “Mandate Relief Redesign Team.”<\/p>\n
Put bluntly, the creation of a list of new commissions is not the concrete, specific set of plans that I was expecting in this speech.<\/p>\n
Andrew Cuomo has known for the better part of a year that he would be New York state’s next governor.<\/p>\n
He’s had months to watch his predecessor, David Paterson, who pushed concrete (and deeply unpopular) plans for cutting the state budget.<\/p>\n
But so far, this governor’s budget agenda remains largely a blank slate.\u00a0 Does he see more another big wave of job cuts coming?\u00a0 He hasn’t said.<\/p>\n
Once again, this new governor outlined where he wants to take us,\u00a0 cutting $10 billion from the state’s budget without raising taxes.\u00a0 We’re still waiting for a road map for how he hopes to get us there.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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