By Steve Levy
I’m happy to report that a bill has been submitted in Albany that follows through on the suggestion of Long Island Life and Politics and the Center for Cost Effective Government that a spending cap be imposed on the New York State budget. https://www.centerforcosteffectivegovernment.org/spending-cap-white-paper/
In 2021, the Center published a white paper on how spending caps have been successful in limiting spending and taxes in various states, counties and schools.
We exposed as well that the state legislature was being quite hypocritical by imposing tax and spending caps on schools and local governments, while exempting themselves from these controls.
We noted that had the state been forced to comply with the same spending cap placed on other jurisdictions, the state budget would be $80 billion less than the one proposed by Governor Hochul this year.
Our white paper prompted state Senator Mario Mattera (R-Smithtown) to cosponsor a bill to cap spending and to write an oped that was published in Newsday last week. https://www.newsday.com/opinion/commentary/guest-essays/state-spending-cap-2-tax-cap-hochul-affordability-yte5q4zn
Our analysis stressed that prior to the spending cap, school district taxes were increasing at a clip of 6% a year, while after the 2012 cap was implemented, that figure dropped precipitously to approximately 2%.
Had a cap been in place during the COVID years, state spending would not have increased by an astonishing 30% from 2020 to 2024. The one-shot grants that came flowing in from the federal government was spent eagerly by the state legislature, which they thereupon incorporated into the base. That higher spending became the new normal.
However, even before COVID, spending by the legislature was out of control. While inflation was rising well under 2% a year from 2014 to 2018, state spending surged by 19.1% during that period.
We noted as well that Florida, which has 4 million more people than New York and no state income tax, is able to deliver better services and higher test scores than New York with a budget that is half of that of the Empire State.
If that’s not reason enough for a spending cap, we don’t know what is.
Steve Levy is Executive Director of the Center for Cost Effective Government, a fiscally conservative think tank. He served as Suffolk County Executive, as a NYS Assemblyman, and host of “The Steve Levy Radio Show.”