By Steve Levy
The New York State legislature and the governor are looking to finalize a budget that will easily exceed $260 billion that the governor proposed.
This is a remarkable $81 billion increase over the past five years, with last year being the largest year-to-year increase since the Great Recession. Equally alarming is that, in this very year, when Covid is long in the rearview mirror, the legislature is looking to increase the state operating budget by more than 5%. More concerning is that spending on Medicaid is increasing by more than 11%.
This is exactly why State Legislators must implement a state spending cap. They imposed a cap on schools, counties and local governments in 2011. But they exempted themselves. Time is up.
As we stated in our Center for Cost Effective Government white paper, had the state imposed a cap on itself when it did for other levels of government, the budget today would be tens of billions of dollars lower.
What are they waiting for? Perhaps for us to fall off the fiscal cliff?