Albany Must Remove Political Horse Trading from the State Budget Process

The New York State budget is over a month late, violating the state's own constitution. This is governmental malpractice plain and simple. 

Policymakers entrusted to administer the state's business at every level have failed all New Yorkers.

State workers continue to be paid only because a weekly resolution is passed so the state can meet its financial obligations.

Fiscally, this is irresponsible, and finalizing the budget process in New York State is severely affected. This Governor and legislative leaders have continued the foolish practice of including hundreds of policy decisions in the budget process.

A budget is a fiduciary record of expected spending and revenue. Including policy and politics in the budget process contradicts its very purpose. 

The state held budget hearings for a month, pausing all other legislative business. This allowed stakeholders, including the Supreme Court Officers Association, to help establish a funding plan record that will assist state agencies over the fiscal year.

Since then, the Governor and legislative leaders have held the budget hostage, trading deals back and forth under the guise of negotiations. 

Pension reform is what is at stake and what impacts our members the most during this delay. In early April, indications suggested substantial changes would be made to Tier 6, helping those members with contribution rates, overtime caps and potentially ending contributions after certain periods. Rollbacks on service time and retirement age were considered, but with less certainty.

These early whispers were followed by a New York Post article that intimated that the cost of the plan was exorbitant and untenable. There was not even a final plan to base those claims on, which apparently caused decision makers to step back from these proposed changes. 

The takeaway here is that there is no real leadership in Albany. If there was a plan to make meaningful pension changes, it should have been finalized and not altered based upon misleading press reports. 

This annual political charade hurts both the taxpayers and the essential workers who make many personal sacrifices to ensure New Yorkers receive the essential services they depend on every day.

 It's time to take politics out of the budget process and put the interests of all New Yorkers first.