After three long weeks, New York State has a budget, late again. The average business owner would find this kind of slip-up unacceptable, but to the members of the legislature, it has become a common occurrence.
If you are a fan of legislative history, this is not the latest budget adoption in the record books. Gov. David Patterson gets the prize for signing the latest of the budget bills in August 2010. There have been many on-time budgets according to available records, but they were on time for different reasons.
Prior to 1990, most budgets were passed and signed into law on April 1, or in a few cases, days earlier. The state’s fiscal year required New York to do its “spring borrowing,” over a one-week period in April. New York was competing with many other local governments and had to beat the competition to get the best interest rate for its bonds.
Once the state fiscal year changed, the legislators were under no pressure, with the exception of the eight years under Gov. Andrew Cuomo. He promised to end “Albany dysfunction” and produced eight timely budgets.
Why you may ask can’t a bunch of elected officials get a timely budget with over 90 days to put the bills together and passed? It is because the current budgets do not resemble any real budget you have ever seen. Once upon a time, the state budget was a bunch of numbers showing revenues in and expenditures out. Today it is anything but a numbers game.
The budget just adopted isn’t like a typical corporate money document. The new 2025 budget contains such items as tougher penalties for retail theft, new powers to shut down illegal cannabis storefronts and harsher penalties for subway crime. Members may want to vote for more school aid for Long Island, but they also have to vote for a bill that gives tenants and squatters rights that could delay their eviction. By combining dozens upon dozens of these non-fiscal items into one bill, the process becomes “a take it or leave it” situation.
Why must legislators always be faced with an up or down situation? Many of the items that are crammed into the budget reflect the wishes of numerous legislators or groups of legislators. There are quite a few add-ons that if brought to the floor as separate bills, couldn’t get the required votes to pass.
Every day that the April 1 deadline is missed creates an opportunity for the leadership, under pressure from its members or the governor, to insist that some new item be added to the final document. Is there any chance that future state budgets will look like a typical corporate budget? Don’t count on it.
Arthur “Jerry” Kremer served 12 terms in the New York State Assembly and was chair of the Ways and Means Committee for 12 years. He is chairman of Empire Government Strategies, a government affairs company, and partner at Ruskin Moscou Faltischek P.C.
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