Pataki Slashes Budget

A Nightmare On Main Street

Governor Pataki has used his budget veto power for the first time to cut away the parts of the budget that he deems unacceptable. But the patient, we fear, may not be doing so well, and the patient is New York State.

 

All in all, Pataki's cuts for the coming year total $760 million in proposed spending and $840 million in proposed borrowing. Hardest hit are the schools: $500 million for school construction, $77.5 million for teacher support aid, $8.3 million to provide aid to CUNY and SUNY students for textbook purchases, $5.4 million for more faculty at CUNY, $2.5 million for additional faculty at SUNY, and $13 million for SUNY's community colleges.

 

Also cut were the nation's first cancer map, bonds for highway construction, AIDS programs, cleanups of hazardous substances not covered by the state's Superfund program, arts programs, and a cost of living adjustment for employees working in mental-health and mental-retardation.

 

He also vetoed a provision he said could have prevented the state from building a $180 million maximum-security prison in the Finger Lakes area. Rockefeller built colleges : Pataki builds prisons.

 

Aside from cutting schools to build prisons, he also vetoed $158 million in assistance to local organizations and projects (often called "pork") approved by the legislature, ranging from $500,000 for programs to enable senior citizens to continue to live in their homes, down to such small grants as $2,000 for the Little Neck-Douglaston Youth Group. The argument is that the members of the legislature use their leverage to help get reelected. However, many of these groups are organizations providing important services to children and seniors, and the pork-barrel legislation added by Republican Assemblymembers was left suspiciously untouched.

 

The huge cuts not only infuriated Speaker of the Assembly Sheldon Silver, but also disappointed Senate Majority Leader Joe Bruno, who was Pataki's close ally in the effort to end rent control, as well as other conservative goals. Both Silver and Bruno complained that Pataki cut into programs that had been promised to New Yorkers. The governor has overruled the consensus of the State Legislature to make his own decisions. Worse yet, the decisions he made seem short-sighted at best. Without good schools and social programs, it will be difficult to build a future for our children and our children's children.