The Sobering Morning After from the Financial Hangover

The Governor delivered his message of financial reality last night and to read the full context of the message, click here. It was somewhat of a simple message, characterized by some as gloom and doom, but it is better described as reality.  The Governor will call the legislature back into session in August to begin work on restoring financial order in New York State.

Of course, the solutions will be anything but simple or easy. Hopefully, the Governor will lead the way and demonstrate to all at every level in government what needs to be done, CUT SPENDING, do not mask solutions by passing items down to local governments to foot the bill for or raise hidden fees or borrow our way out and go further into debt. The following piece lifted from his five minute speech is some evidence the Governor gets it.

The fact is we confront harsh times. Let me be honest, this situation will get worse before it gets better.

Now government will do what families have done when their incomes have fallen: we will cut spending. Government will learn to do more with less.

It is time for New York and other governments to cut up our credit cards. The era of buy now, pay later and later is over. The faster we address this crisis, the faster and stronger we will emerge from it. That is the path to a better and more prosperous New York.

Reactions from leaders:

Comptroller Thomas DiNapoli, Democrat: “The Governor plans to turn this around. He’s set a course toward financial stability. It’s not an easy course. There will be pain and it will take time. It took us years to get here and it will take us years to get back. Delay only increases the degree of difficulty.”

Assemblyman James Tedisco, R-Schenectady: “Now that the Governor has brought this fiscal crisis to the public’s attention, the hard work – and the tough choices – must begin. More than ever, we need this Governor to lead and make the tough choices. If making those choices and standing up to the special interests results in his being a one-term Governor, then he would likely go down in history as the person who righted New York’s ship of state and we would owe him a debt of gratitude.”

E.J McMahon, of New York’s Empire Center,

The state funds portion of the budget has grown about 75 percent in the last 10 years, and by about 45 percent in the last five.

“What we need to do now is undo that (excessive spending), because the $5 billion budget gap that was being projected in May, which the Governor no doubt will announce today is worse, that gap was entirely due, almost entirely due, to projected increases in base-line spending.”

More on McMahon

This process will clearly be a battle of ideology, with people from the left like Silver warning about cuts, the Working Families Party wants to tax more in order to keep spending up and unions such as CSEA called potential cuts in the state workforce "nothing but a shame" while some from the right like McMahon want to address the true problem - cut spending.