State budget reductions are broad and, critics maintain, far too deep

by Rick Karlin

Hundreds of programs are sharing the pain of $427 million in cuts from the present state budget as Gov. David Paterson and legislative leaders Wednesday congratulated themselves on the effort.

A closer look at the numbers suggests that, just as lawmakers have said, the burden of reduced spending is being shared fairly equally across the state’s geographic and social landscape.

“I’m not going to minimize the gravity of this crisis. We are not celebrating. We are partnering,” Paterson said while announcing that they had reached agreement on the reductions.

The cuts come largely from a 6 percent across-the-board reduction in what lawmakers termed local assistance money, which covers hundreds of programs ranging from funds for “soft body armor” for law enforcement personnel to burial benefits for veterans, methadone programs to railroad infrastructure.

Other cuts come from unspent money, and in the larger context represent a slowing in the growth of spending more than dollar-for-dollar reductions.

The Assembly worked well into the predawn hours while the Senate came back later in the morning to approve the reductions.

Groups affected by the changes were predictably unhappy — if not resigned. There were no obvious or large-scale attempts Wednesday to fight the cuts.

Paterson initially wanted lawmakers to cut $600 million. But he said another $75 million in cuts is still under negotiation, although he refused to detail them.

Combined with $630 million that Paterson was able to cut on his own — through measures like a state agency hiring freeze — and other savings, the budget now stands at $120.9 billion, compared to almost $122 billion earlier in the year.

A spokesman for one of the groups affected by the cuts said there will be other costs — in lives.

“Fewer women will be able to get potentially life-saving mammograms, and fewer kids will get the message about the dangers of smoking,” said Peter Slocum, vice president of advocacy for the American Cancer Society of New York and New Jersey, referring to cuts in free mammograms and anti-smoking programs.

“To cut CUNY by $51 million and many other necessary programs serving vulnerable New Yorkers by 6 percent (and others by 50 percent) is the wrong move during an economic downturn,” stated Ron Deutsch, executive director of New Yorkers for Fiscal Fairness, in a release. Deutsch’s organization was one of several advocacy groups which, along with labor unions, are pushing to raise income taxes on high earners. The cut for City University of New York follows equivalent cuts sustained by the State University system earlier in the year.

Also reduced were Medicaid and other health care programs, which will lose almost $500 million over two years through tactics such as a reduction in the grants meant to cover the cost of inflation.

Among those that dodged the cuts were municipalities and counties, which had argued that reductions to their budgets would simply be passed along through higher local property taxes.

The original plan was to cut more than $33 million from unrestricted aid to communities, similar to block grants. “It would have poked a hole in our budgets immediately,” said Barbara Van Epps, deputy director of the Conference of Mayors.

Also spared were funds for “mandates,” or functions that counties are required by law to provide, such as running probation offices, providing workers to process welfare applications, and financial subsidies for children who adopt children with special needs.

“That’s why we were calling them cost shifts,” Mark Lavigne, a spokesman for the Association of Counties, said of earlier arguments that state cuts would simply translate to higher local taxes.