Let there be light — on New York state budgeting!
Good-government groups left and right have banded together to urge the Legislature to release financial-plan tables with their one-house budget bills and the eventual state budget.
They outline some bare-minimum steps to move budget negotiations with Gov. Hochul out of the dark.
The one-house budget plans traditionally offer scant details on projected topline and program spending, year-to-year growth rates and major fiscal actions.
Since the budget allocates more than $230 billion in taxpayer money, New Yorkers deserve to know more about what their elected representatives are proposing: Outside experts, including the good-government crowd, can’t flag problems when everything’s kept secret (or at least too vague to mean much).
The proverbial “three men in a room” (and their staffs) shouldn’t be the only ones who know the details and fiscal implications of what’s on the table.
When she succeeded disgraced Gov. Andrew Cuomo, Hochul vowed to make “transparency” her hallmark; embracing the “goo-goo” recommendations would be a major step toward delivering on that.
Heck, transparency would empower not just the outsiders, but the rank-and-file lawmakers who regularly get kept in the dark until they’re handed huge budget bills to vote on with little time to read them.
It’d also reduce the influence and “expertise” of special interests and lobbyists.
Failing to offer such basic transparency would only be a confession of who truly holds the loyalty of Albany’s powerbrokers.
This story originally appeared on NYPost
