Politics
The Democratic primary for
governor, as predicted, has become at least partly a contest to see who can talk
a better game on reform.
Both of the Democratic
candidates have said plenty about reform. (Republican John Faso has raised the
topic too, but he seems more interested in discussing taxes, at least up to
this point.)
Yet for all the talk of
reform, the campaigns tend to lack specifics. This is particularly true of the part
of government these men want to run: the executive branch. On a page titled “Reform”
on his campaign website, Eliot Spitzer devotes much of the space to important
improvements — in things like redistricting and selecting judges— that involve
the legislature and the judiciary.
Tom Suozzi’s site contains
similar ideas. Both men support campaign-finance reform. Both oppose the
redistricting system that results in the re-election of 98 percent of
legislative incumbents.
But what about stuff a
governor can actually control? Well, then things get a little trickier. Both
men trumpet the importance of “efficiency.” Both say they’ll wring waste, fraud,
and abuse out of the Medicaid system. Spitzer says he’ll end the pay-to-play
atmosphere in Albany. Suozzi brags about his Fix Albany campaign. And
that’s about it.
Maybe it’s just that
websites aren’t conducive to complicated policy pieces. But neither are TV soundbites.
The result is that both Democratic candidates have gotten away mostly with vague
promises that require the cooperation of another branch of government. That
builds in an excuse, should they fail.
But excuses are endemic to
politics. That’s why, when the BrennanCenter issued its report condemning the state legislature’s dysfunction, it
focused on reforms like changing the procedural rules that govern the Senate
and Assembly’s day-to-day operations. Unlike inaction on legislation, if the
legislators fail to enact rules changes (and for the most part they have; see “New York’s Lej: Still Dysfunctional, August 16) they have no
one to blame but themselves.
No corresponding report to
the BrennanCenter’s has been issued for New York’s executive branch. But that doesn’t mean that reform
ideas don’t exist. They do, according to Elizabeth Lynam.
As deputy research director
at the New York City-based Citizens Budget Commission, Lynam has a front-row
seat for observing state government in action. And it’s not surprising that the
reforms she identifies concentrate on the annual budget process.
First, there’s the balance of power. Court cases during George Pataki’s 12-year
tenure have established that the governor has pretty broad powers, particularly
when it comes to the budget.
And, says, Lynam says,
Pataki has used the powers those courts have given him “quite aggressively,”
dictating not only how much money is spent, but how and under what conditions.
A new governor could decide
not to do that, but instead include the legislature more fully in decision making,
“just out of his own willingness to restore good relations,” says Lynam.
That would amount to a
governor limiting his own authority. Why would any governor want to do that?
Lynam says it would likely
mean the budget process is “done with less animosity.”
Why should the average New
Yorker care whether the budget is done in a collegial manner or it’s done with kicking
and screaming, as long as it’s done?
“Well, they should care
about it,” says Lynam, “because it’s not just about collegiality. These are
huge matters of public policy that are being decided, and the balance of power
as it stands right now is distorting the decision-making abilities of their
government. And the policies that are being made as a result are distorted.”
As an example, she cites the
wrangling over a property-tax relief package, which was to include a tax rebate
for taxpayers. The plan was to be part of an expansion of the STAR program (which
gives school-tax breaks to seniors), but the governor added language that set a
spending cap for school districts. The legislature changed the language to get
rid of the cap. That prompted the governor to refuse to spend any of the money allocated
for rebates, since the legislature isn’t constitutionally permitted to change
the budget language. The legislature then introduced separate legislation to
enact the rebate through the income tax instead.
“That has a very real impact
on state taxpayers,” says Lynam, “because first they were going to have a tax
break; then they weren’t. Then their school districts were going to have to
live under a spending cap; then they weren’t. And now they’re getting a tax-relief
program designed on the income tax — not because that was the best policy for
the state,” but because that was only way the legislature could achieve its
goal without caving in to the governor.
All this drama took several
months to unfold, with schools budgets and the pocketbooks of individual
taxpayers in limbo.
A similar drama played out
as the governor tangled with the legislature over Medicaid cost containment, Lynam
says. Hospitals, nursing homes, doctors, and home-care aides all had to wait on
the sidelines without knowing how they’d be affected.
“It has a very real effect,
and that decision went back and forth like a ping pong ball for three or four
months,” she says.
One particularly popular target for reform is public authorities. The New York constitution requires voter approval of all “general
obligation” debt. But that’s not required for state authorities like the
Thruway Authority. So they have given the state a backdoor way to spend or
borrow money that it thinks might be unpopular — off the books and out of the
public eye.
The authorities’ bad rap is
partially deserved, as a few recent, well-publicized events demonstrate. Making
them more transparent would be an improvement, but authorities are probably
here to stay. And that may not be a bad thing: they’re vital to the day-to-day operations
of the state.
“There are things that the
state government needs to do that the public is just never going to vote for,”
says Lynam — things like prisons or housing projects.
A governor could decide to
put all borrowing before the voters and cease using the authorities for that. “That
would be a difficult thing to do and would certainly limit what the state is
able to do in its capital spending, but it’s an option,” Lynam says.
In an e-mail response to
City Newspaper, Kent Gardner, president and chief economist at Rochester’s Center for Governmental Research, cites the kind
of borrowing for infrastructure that Lynam mentions as a reason to keep using
authorities as we have.
“Public authorities serve an
important purpose, provided that they aren’t used as a personal piggy bank or a
place for patronage,” he writes. “We grumble about the debt held by public
authorities, but I would argue that revenue debt, debt taken out against bridge
revenue and used to maintain bridges, is appropriate and shouldn’t be subject
to a statewide referendum.”
Lynam also singles out two other small but meaningful changes a governor
could bring about administratively — changes that would go a long way toward
improving government.
First, just say no to pork-barrel
spending.
Right now, a lot of state
spending gets divvied up informally, rather than by going through the
legislative process. This means no one in particular is responsible for
spending the money, which usually winds up as member items, funds earmarked for
specific projects that serve to increase a politicians’ popularity — Little
League fields, neighborhood association programs, and the like.
“That could be something the
governor as an executive could take a stand on,” says Lynam. “Having someone
who adopts a good position on that would make quite a difference in that whole
debate.”
Finally: The governor “could
refuse to send in Messages of Necessity to the legislature,” says Lynam. Messages
of Necessity allow the budget — or anything else included in a Message of Necessity
— to bypass the usual legislative process of committee reviews, public
hearings, and amendments.
“He could say: ‘We’re not going
to do an emergency passage or anything else; we’re going to sit down and
negotiate and not send in a Message of Necessity that allows the legislature to
pass a budget midnight before the session closes on June 26th or whatever,'” Lynam
says. That would be very helpful.”
But almost all of these reforms would require a new governor to sacrifice some of his
newly won power. That conflict between power and good governance can be a
serious obstacle to reform.
“I think that the mindset of
many people in power is that power is a good thing as long as it is wielded for
righteous purposes,” says CGR’s Kent Gardner in an e-mail comment. “And as I’m
a righteous guy, more power for me is a good thing.”
“And,” adds Gardner, “I believe (until mugged by reality at some future
juncture) that all three of the candidates really want to do the right thing.
That they all want to use the public authorities to achieve good things for the
state’s citizens. That they intend to appoint professionals, not political
hacks, to key positions in the executive agencies and the authorities. But then
we get back to Lord Acton’s point about power.” (It was Acton who in 19th-century
Britain wrote, “Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power
corrupts absolutely.”)
And anyway, there are limits
to what can be achieved by even the most well-intentioned governors acting on their
own. The answer to these quandaries, if there is one, comes in a whole
different level of reforms — those on which a new governor and the legislature
will have to cooperate to enact.
“The most important reforms
are the ones that reduce the influence of special interests and increase the
power of the common interest,” says Erika Rosenberg, a research associate and
former statehouse reporter in Albany for Gannett News Service. “And those would be
nonpartisan redistricting and campaign finance reforms.”
This article appears in Aug 23-29, 2006.
