Former lawmaker blasts the RSA

In an essay in The New York Times, a former state senator—that's right, someone with the legislative perspective on state budget-making—joins the now-huge chorus of policy voices agreeing that state legislators should not gain new power in state budget-making that they are seeking through a proposed constitutional amendment.

With his essay, former state Sen. Seymour Lachman, who served as a Democrat from Brooklyn, joins the long list of policy wonks on the left and right, editorial pages on the left and right current and former state-government insiders, think tanks, business groups, and current, former, and potential governors in blasting the proposed constitutional amendment* to radically overhaul the state's budget-making process.

"This amendment would give greater budgetary authority to the Legislature, fundamentally altering the current budget process," Lachman writes. "It is one of the most sweeping and significant constitutional changes to be proposed in New York since the constitutional convention of 1967.
It's also a very bad idea. It would destroy one of the few parts of the budget process that is not, in fact, broken. To understand why voters should reject Proposal 1, look at the constitutional rules that now underlie budget making."

The piece reviews the important lessons from New York State history that prompted several titans of Twentieth Century New York State history to lead the effort that resulted in rejection of legislator-driven budgeting.

"The Senate and Assembly are not allowed to produce their own spending plan from scratch. Instead, they have to work from a template of appropriations supplied by the governor, in the form of his annual executive budget" the essay says. "New York is one of 43 states that permits the governor to have a line-item veto; the Legislature, however, has the power to override with a two-thirds vote of both houses."

"Why does the law give the governor the power to drive the budget-making process?" the essay says. "One of the best explanations was supplied by Henry Stimson, a United States attorney for the Southern District of New York in the early 20th century who later served under five presidents. 'We cannot expect economy' in the budget, he said, 'unless some one man will have to lie awake nights to accomplish it.'"

Lachman also argues that New York's runaway pork-barrel spending, driven by the Legislature, would grow even more as a result of Proposal One.

"But the real problem is not that the law gives the governor so much authority, it's that Mr. Bruno and Mr. Silver have developed the political weight to wield so much power of their own," Lachman writes. "It's their objectives and desire for pork that stall the budget year after year. And if the proposal passes, they'll have only more power. To deal with the myriad complex issues associated with writing a $106 billion state budget, legislators will be heavily dependent on the legislatures' fiscal staffs - whose members are mostly appointed by the Senate majority leader and the Assembly speaker."

'A bold step into quicksand.'

A column by Joyce Purnick of The New York Times, whom we've never seen described as a conservative, also blasts the proposed amendment, noting curtly that "one person's reform is another person's retrogression." Purnick echoes criticisms that many others have leveled: that the proposal would remove any incentive legislators have to produce a budget on time.

"The Legislature's profligately pork-happy ways were thwarted in 1927, when governors won the sole right to propose budgets," Purnick wrote. "The Legislature can only reduce or delete the governor's spending on items, or add new ones subject to his veto. It can refuse to pass the budget but cannot strike his proposals for its own."

"Why would the budget ever be on time if all the Legislature had to do was wait to get control?" Purnick asks. She quotes Charles M. Brecner, the research director of the Citizens Budget Commission saying "All the pressure is on the Legislature to to make it late. It would be pretty dreadful."

"The fundamental question about Proposal 1 is whether placing an obscure question on an Election Day ballot is the way to engineer a fundamental shift in the balance of power in New York," the essay says. "California has noisy debates about ballot initiatives, but New York doesn't have that tradition, and with the election approaching, there's little time to separate the facts from the promise. "'Voters shouldn't take the bait,' advised Gerald Benjamin, a political science professor at the State University at New Paltz. 'Going from a bad situation to another is no remedy.'"

Eleven new business groups join Stop the Amendment

Eleven New York business associations have joined Stop the Amendment, the coalition of think tanks, fiscal-policy experts, good-government groups, former state budget officials, and business groups chaired by former Governor Hugh Carey. The coalition is united in its opposition to a proposed constitutional amendment that would radically change New York’s budget-making process.

The business groups that have joined the coalition include the Chautauqua County Chamber of Commerce; Greater Binghamton Chamber of Commerce; the Chamber of Southern Saratoga County; the Orange County Chamber of Commerce; the Manufacturers Association of Central New York (MACNY); the Business Council of Westchester; the Greater Syracuse Chamber of Commerce; the Mohawk Valley Chamber of Commerce; the Orchard Park Chamber of Commerce; the Plattsburgh-North Country Chamber; and The Otsego County Chamber.

For more information on the newest coalition members, visit www.bcnys.org/whatsnew/2005/coalitionrel/1024newcoalitionmembers.htm and www.bcnys.org/whatsnew/2005/coalitionrel/1026newcoalitionmembers.htm.

Reminder: The Business Council has created a Web site, www.hightaxesnewyork.com, to track news coverage, editorial commentary and other developments related to the proposed constitutional amendment. Daily email updates from hightaxesnewyork.com are available. To receive the updates, email info@hightaxesnewyork.com and put the word "subscribe" in the subject field.