Townsend: 'Legislature's raiding party shows deficit of leadership'

April 9, 2010 -- A Legislative Column by Assemblyman Dave Townsend (R,WF-Sylvan Beach).

If New York’s capital city claimed a signature dance it would be the shuffle. For the past several years, the shuffle has been performed around April 1, rearranging budget items, raiding dedicated funds, and establishing phony “savings” through back-door borrowing. The shuffle plugs budget gaps, temporarily; it gives increasingly unaccountable legislative leaders a reprieve from public criticism. Last week New York State Comptroller Thomas DiNapoli identified the Albany shuffle for what it is: a consistent gimmick that creates long-term budget crises like the nearly $10 billion deficit New York now faces. This year’s spending plan must put a stop to gimmicks, sweeps, transfers, and dedicated-fund raids if we are to fix the structural problems plaguing our economy and get Upstate New Yorkers back to work. The comptroller’s report is an arresting and useful account of what has gone wrong.

According to DiNapoli, last year’s budget-gap closing continued years of Albany mismanagement. For example, in the fiscal year that ended on March 31, New York took approximately $6.4 billion in fund sweeps and transfers from other accounts to deal with the accumulated red ink. When a sizable debt remained, the “three men in a room” in charge of Albany’s coffers simply rolled those bills into this current fiscal year, adding about $3 billion in expenses we cannot afford. Meanwhile they continue to use funds for purposes other than those for which they were designed. The Environmental Protection Fund, part of the state government’s commitment to keeping our wild places free, has routinely been raided along with other so-called “special revenue accounts” in recent years. According to the comptroller’s report, New York has increased the number of these funds since 1985, from 205 to 720, for the express purpose of spending taxpayer dollars without oversight. Only 40 percent of the 2009-10 budget was paid for using the general fund, the standard operating fund New York is supposed to use to pay its bills.

By raiding special account funds to maintain temporary balanced budgets, these lawmakers decrease transparency and add to the size and complexity of future deficits. Our present debt load is already three times the national average, according to DiNapoli, and the debt bill is expected to exceed $67 billion by 2015. Unless Governor Paterson and his New York City allies can use methods other than gimmicks to close these budget gaps, their actions will be worse than doing nothing at all. This means cutting the cost of recurring spending responsibly and paying down our future debts. My colleagues and I in the Assembly Minority have offered our own plan to close the current budget deficit, cut record levels of spending, and get New Yorkers back to work. It reduces the state’s reliance on budget gimmicks like sweeps and transfers, and uses the general fund rather than draining special accounts. The Albany shuffle has gotten the state into this mess. As lawmakers we must not allow those responsible to dance around their obligations to the hard-working taxpayers of the Empire State.