New Yorkers are getting robbed blind — because state politicians are doing deals with taxpayers’ money in the dark.
On Monday Gov. Kathy Hochul announced that she and Albany’s top two legislative leaders had agreed on how much to tax New Yorkers and how much the state will spend this fiscal year, which started April 1.
From the smattering of information available — days later, the details have still not been publicly released — the deal will necessitate additional tax hikes months from now that could trigger an economic death spiral for the state and its largest city.
Here’s the kicker: This is a back-room deal, worked out in secrecy by an all-Democrat troika: Hochul, Senate Majority Leader Andrea Stewart-Cousins and Assembly Speaker Carl Heastie.
None of the other 211 members of the legislature was permitted to listen in, let alone participate.
The press? Locked out, perched uncomfortably on the state Capitol’s marble stairs.
Without the benefit of open debate, New Yorkers are paying through the nose: Albany will spend a staggering $254 billion in the coming year.
That’s more than it costs to run Florida and Texas combined, even though New York has 33 million fewer people to serve.
This is the way New York has managed its spending for decades. I witnessed it myself as lieutenant governor 30 years ago.
Then as now, it prevented our lawmakers from doing the right thing. They’re still getting sidelined today.
Spending in the budget is “reckless. It’s out of control,” Republican State Sen. Tom O’Mara wrote last month — but his voice isn’t heard.
In fact, no Republican was even allowed in the room.
At some point in the coming days, nine or more bills will be hurriedly printed and put on each lawmaker’s desk, along with a “message of necessity” from Hochul requiring it to be voted on within hours, even in the middle of the night. Unreal.
Lawmakers, no more than party puppets, will vote on the bills with no debate.
This is not representative government.
It’s not even constitutional: The New York state Constitution requires the Legislature to have three days to read a bill before voting on it.
And yet that rule gets waived, year after year, with no justification.
Americans fought a revolution against taxation without representation. New Yorkers should not put up with it in their own state Capitol.
On her first day as governor, taking over after Andrew Cuomo was chased out of office amid scandal, Hochul promised “a new era of transparency.”
Now? “We don’t negotiate in public,” she sniffs.
Why elect 213 legislators and pay them the highest salary of state lawmakers anywhere in America — a cool $142,000 a year — only to lock them out of the most important decisions, leaving them to wander the Capitol halls killing time?
Monday night, Hochul put out a press release boasting that her budget deal cuts taxes — a half-truth at best: It also hikes payroll mobility taxes on large employers, and extends an income-tax surcharge that had been scheduled to sunset.
An open budget process would allow New Yorkers to know the truth — in advance — instead of depending on politicians’ weasel words after it’s too late.
This warped budgeting is so entrenched that we used to call it by a nickname: “three men in a room.”
That phrase may no longer apply, but the reality of it remains.
Thirty years ago one of the “three men,” Senate Majority Leader Joe Bruno, wrote a spirited defense of the back-room process in his memoir, claiming it worked pretty well.
Truth is, it doesn’t work. New York is one of the worst-governed states in the nation.
New Yorkers pay the most in taxes, according to the Tax Foundation, but it’s number 50 — dead last — in terms of economic outlook, as calculated by the annual Rich States Poor States Economic Competitiveness Index.
More people are fleeing New York than any other state, turning the Empire State into the Exit State.
What’s especially worrisome is that Hochul and her fellow deal-makers refuse to downsize the budget now to accommodate expected cuts in federal funding and possible downturns in tax revenue caused by financial market turmoil.
“Democrats keep warning about the thunderstorms while driving with the top down,” as Ed Ra, ranking Republican on the Assembly’s Ways and Means Committee, put it.
An open budgeting process would invite more caveats like Ra’s, and more critics like O’Mara. It would force New York’s leadership to grapple with reality-based objections.
Instead, three top Democrats get to whistle in the dark.
Count on the governor to come back in a month or two proposing tax hikes — another nail in our state’s coffin.
New Yorkers need to demand a real say in how they are governed, and their elected representatives must find the courage do the same. Put an end to rule by the three stooges.
Betsy McCaughey served as lieutenant governor of New York from 1995 to 1998 and is co-founder of the Committee to Save Our City.
This story originally appeared on NYPost
