NYS Budget

NYS Budget
As the New York State Budget process proceeds, the question that inevitably arises is how will this budget delay affect everyday lives and operations. Yesterdays approval of furloughs is just one of many impacts to come and in this circumstance, the state workforce is the victim. The question is who is next?

From a local government perspective, we can continue to operate for the next few months as most local governments (sans schools) are not having funds held up as opposed to last December when the Governor withheld our annual AIM funding (aka revenue sharing). The concern I have is that as the process continues and no hard decisions are made, the more the financial crisis will expand.

In the Governors budget, Cohoes is slated to see a $60,000 decrease in AIM funding, which is equivalent to about 1% in property taxes. This is not something that I can get excited about nor be inclined to support, especially since NYS has, except for the last three years prior, only started to make good on the chronic lack of revenue sharing with local governments. That being said, one cannot ignore the financial problems the state faces and therefore we have to hope for the best and prepare for the worst. As the budget process drags on, my concern is that the proposed cuts will grow. Worse yet is that as 2010 proceeds along, there is less and less opportunity to make plans to accommodate any enhanced loss of revenue.

Warren Buffet has a great comment regarding bad news – “If you have bad news to deliver, deliver it early”. From experience I have found that this concept makes sense. No one likes to deliver bad news and I can speak from experience as many times that opportunity has presented itself on local matters in the City of Cohoes. The decisions that the legislature faces are difficult and in many circumstances compromises the principles that entities or parties have cherished for generations. That being said, the lack of making a decision on the budget does not allow entities such as local governments, school districts, state agencies and their employees the ability to prepare for change.

Lets hope that those in the decision making process are able to gather support to close the budget process. Not doing so is just delaying the inevitable.