10. December 2011 by admin.

In 2010, I voted for Carl Paladino, the Republican candidate, in the New York gubernatorial election.  He was the Tea Party candidate, and a bit of a nut, but I couldn’t to bring myself to vote for Andrew Cuomo, the Democratic candidate, because he was just another politician.  (That, and his father had been governor before him.)

I doubted that Paladino would actually win, and I was right.

But I was pleasantly surprised with the first few months of Governor Cuomo.  He stood up to the rest of the government and was able to balance the budget with no new taxes.  Even though I didn’t vote for him, I was pleased to see him succeed.

Until this week.

In 2009, New York passed a temporary income tax surcharge on those earning over about $200k/year.  The surcharge is set to expire at the end of this year.  It’s the mirror image of the Federal ‘Bush tax cuts’ in that it’s a temporary increase in tax rates.

For the last few months, Governor Cuomo was insisting that he would not renew the surcharge.  But he’s apparently been worn down.  In the last two weeks, he has been talking about ‘using the tax code to create new jobs.’  I have no idea what that means.

And now this week, we have new income tax rates.  The highest rate is now 8.82%, well above the pre-surcharge rate of 6.85%, but below the surcharged rate of 8.97%.  For the rest of us, we get a 0.2% rate cut, or about 3-4% of the average New Yorker’s state income taxes.

Oh, goody: I got a tax cut.  It’s not enough to even pay for my daily newspaper, but I’m supposed to be all happy about it.

And if I earned millions, I could still say I got a tax cut, at least with respect to last year’s tax rates.

I still can’t see for the life of me how such tweakage will create one single job.

Posted in New York State, Dysfunctional Government | 1 Comment »

21. December 2010 by admin.

About two weeks ago, I received a request from New York State to participate in a survey about ‘green jobs.’  (Aren’t all jobs ‘green,’ if you get paid in real money?)  I filled in the survey over the Internet.

Yesterday, the mailman brought me a Second Notice: evidently I hadn’t filled the survey out fast enough.  This time, the package included a paper survey form for me to fill out, perhaps believing that the reason I didn’t respond the first time was because I didn’t have Internet access.

New York State is quite thoroughly broke.  The Legislature is still on its own little planet, sucking its thumbs and ignoring the billions of dollars by which tax receipts (including a nifty new tax on employers) fail to cover the state’s expenditures.  And yet, somehow, the Department of Labor has the funds for this exercise.

But it’s not just pointless surveys.  A while back, the State and City spent $4 million to rename the Triborough Bridge as the Robert F. Kennedy Bridge.  And now they want to rename the Queensboro Bridge as the Ed Koch Bridge.

I recognize that many of the things that government spends money on are fixed in law and cannot be readily changed.  Still, can’t we at least lay off the stupid stuff?

Posted in New York State, Dysfunctional Government | No Comments »

18. January 2010 by admin.

Sunday’s New York Post brought the story that Governor Paterson was seen in a New Jersey restaurant, being affectionate with a woman not his wife.  The governor asserted that it was a business meeting, but it didn’t appear that way to a reasonable observer.

I’m disappointed.  Not because the reporter didn’t get to the bottom of the governor’s relationship with the woman, nor because it’s yet another example of the stupidfication of the news.  Shortly after Governor Paterson replaced the previous governor, he reported, as a pre-emptive strike to the gossip columnists, that he had had affairs in the past, but the past was past, and he was now having a happy, or at least functional, marriage.  And now that seems in doubt.

But why should I care?

After all, if the governor cheats on his wife, she is the only real victim of the event, and it’s her decision as to how to handle it.  It really doesn’t affect the rest of us.

Well, maybe.

I expect my leaders to have integrity and a sense of personal honor.  Now I can’t follow the governor around and watch him make all his governmental decisions.  And even if I could, I wouldn’t necessarily be able to observe his actions and determine that he had handled every situation honorably.

But I can observe how he handles what is, for many of us, a deep personal commitment.  If he behaves honorably with respect to his marriage, I’m more willing to believe that he will handle his executive responsibilities with honor.  It’s not foolproof, of course, but it’s a useful indication.

But then again, he works in Albany.  What should I expect?

Posted in New York State, Navel-gazing | No Comments »

10. June 2009 by admin.

It’s long been my contention that the Blackberry device, with its instant ability to send and receive e-mail, is a detriment, rather than an asset, to one’s professional abilities.  I’ve known too many people who fire off an instant Blackberry response to an easy question or to good news, but disappear for weeks when asked something requiring actual thought.  And I’ve had too many instances of confusion over someone’s half-baked Blackberry answer.  (For my part, I have a cell phone with Windows that can send and receive e-mails.  But it will only do it when I ask: it won’t poke me in the ribs when a message comes in.  And I usually wait until I’m at my computer to answer the e-mails, unless it’s genuinely urgent or the phone is the only device at hand.)

Now the Blackberry has tripped up the apparently former Majority Leader of the New York State Senate, Malcolm Smith.  There are 32 Democrats and 30 Republicans in the State Senate, and Smith is the leader of the Democrats.

But this week, two Democratic state senators decided that they would caucus with the Republicans instead, tipping the balance of the Senate.

And how did this happen?  Apparently some time in the recent past, Smith had a meeting with Tom Golisano, one-time candidate for Governor, who recently moved to Florida, amid considerable publicity, to avoid heavy New York State taxes.  And at this meeting, Smith apparently offended Golisano by paying more attention to his Blackberry than his guest.  So Golisano set the wheels in motion for a Republican coup.

As far as my reaction to the coup itself, I have none.  The New York State Legislature is a nexus of evil in the modern world, and I don’t believe that it matters which party is in power.  I can’t say that the Republicans are better or worse than the Democrats (within the NY legislature), and I can’t say whether the coup was a blow for democracy or an exercise in corruption.

But it’s good to see a Blackberry addict get what he deserves.

Posted in New York State, Dysfunctional Government, PDA | No Comments »

10. May 2009 by admin.

I have been terribly busy the last few weeks, and haven’t had much time to write.  But while I’ve been out, I note that a number of… entities… have signed on as subscribers to this site.  The names and e-mails addresses seem strange: not strange enough to have been obviously generated by a computer, but not like people’s actual names.

I have to believe that it’s a new form of spam, although I can’t understand to what end: if someone writes a comment, I have to approve it before it appears on the site.  And so far, I haven’t received any comments.

In any case, I’ve deleted all of the subscribers that have signed on so far.  If you meant to be a subscriber, I’m sorry; you’ll have to go back and subscribe again.  But for those who would subscribe in the future: after you subscribe, you have one week to submit a cogent comment on one of the postings.  If I don’t see a comment (I don’t necessarily have to agree with it!), I’ll assume that you’re some kind of bot, and will delete your subscription.

*          *          *

Last week, the state legislature passed a plan to help the Metropolitan Transportation Authority.  The plan will raise about $1.5 billion through a new payroll tax and  a surcharge on taxi rides.  As a result, the Draconian service cuts that were contemplated a few weeks ago will not come to pass, although there will be some cuts and a modest fare increase.

I should be relieved: while the fare increase is not a big deal for me, the service cuts are a problem, and part of my income as an engineering consultant is derived from the MTA’s capital spending.  But I don’t like it.

One again, the state has papered over the problem with taxing and spending, rather than addressing the real problems.  Why does operating the MTA cost what it does?  Can it work more efficiently?  Given that the operation of the MTA is vital to the economic health of the region and the state, why didn’t the state face the problem squarely in the first place, instead of coming up with half-measures later?  State spending increased by $11 billion this year: what did they spend it on?  And what happens next year, expecially if the economy is still sagging?

But the answers to those questions require thought….

Posted in New York State, Dysfunctional Government, Blogging | No Comments »

5. April 2009 by admin.

This past week, the New York State Assembly passed, and the state Senate is contemplating, the state budget for the fiscal year that began… last Thursday.

At a time when the economy is reeling, and one would figure the need to cut back, the budget weighs in at $132 billion, up some $11 billion over last year, and $8 billion over the budget that Governor Paterson proposed.  The State Assembly news release indicated that the budget “closes a projected a $17.65 billion General Fund gap by implementing $5.1 billion in necessary spending cuts, raising $5.2 billion in revenue, utilizing $1.1 in non-recurring revenues and maximizing $6.2 billion in federal stimulus dollars.”

I’m afraid to ask how there can be a $5.1 billion dollar cut if spending is up by $11 billion, and I’m not sure how ‘maximizing’ Federal aid differs from spending it.

Somewhere in New York is $5 billion in State spending that is absolutely wasteful and stupid, and the State leadership was finally able to kill it.  But beyond that, it seems as if the State simply relied on Federal aid and tax increases to otherwise maintain the status quo.  What happens a couple of years down the road, when the economy has recovered and the Federal government is no longer handing out aid?

Meanwhile, the budget legislation also modifies the state drug laws to favor rehabilitation instead of prison.  The original Rockefeller laws from the 1970s were modified a few years ago to eliminate their supposed Draconian excesses, and it seemed to work: prison populations are down, and the streets are far safer now than 20 years ago.   Yet the state Legislature is changing them now, and allocating additional funding for drug treatment alternatives.

So the state has money to preserve the sacred cow of education, and can drop the pile of nuisance taxes that were part of Governor Paterson’s original plan, but they can’t come up with a way to provide funding for the MTA and deter fare hikes and service cuts.  (Perhaps the MTA was one of the stupid items that got cut.)

The distressing part of it is that there seems to be nothing that we as citizens can do to stop this madness.  The state election laws effectively favor incumbents by making it very difficult for newcomers to run for office.  Once in a while, someone makes it, gets sucked into the Albany machine, and turns into a Legislature droid.

And electing a new governor doesn’t seem to help, either.  A while back, we elected Eliot Spitzer on his promise to clean up Albany.  Within six months, he was in a pissing contest with Joe Bruno, leader of the State Senate.  Governor Spitzer had a legitimate question: was Bruno using State travel privileges for political gain?  But by pursuing the matter in a thoroughly inept manner, making it look as if he was using the State Police to spy on Bruno, Spitzer effectively shot himself in the foot.  Needless to say, no actual cleanup occurred.

And then Spitzer really imploded when it turned out that he was seeing prostitutes, and he left office, leaving us Governor Paterson, who has been a singular model of ineptitude.

What can we do (besides move to New Jersey)?

Posted in New York State, Dysfunctional Government, Money | No Comments »

29. March 2009 by admin.

Last week, the Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA), our local mass transit agency, voted to raise fares and cut service.  The price of a monthly MetroCard for the buses and subways will go from $81 to $103 per month, and fares and tolls for other MTA facilities (they’re also in charge of the commuter railroads, and toll bridges and tunnels) will similarly go up.

That, in and of itself, wouldn’t be too bad: public transportation in New York works pretty well, and would be a good value even with the fare increase.  But the plan also includes a series of service cuts, including dropping two subway lines and about 30 bus routes, and reducing late-night subway service by one-third.

In good times, financing the MTA is not a critical problem: the agency is financed with transfer taxes on real estate and other similar transations.  But since the economy went kablooie, tax revenues are way down.

Historically, New York State has subsidized the MTA to some extent, but that’s difficult right now because the state is broke.  It’s not as if we couldn’t see the problem coming: Richard Ravitch, who ran the MTA years ago, was tasked last year with coming up with a plan to help finance the MTA under the current circumstances.  However, none of his recommendations have gotten through the New York State Legislature.  The Ravitch report included a plan to charge tolls on the East and Harlem River bridges that are currently free, but somehow the Legislature first decided that the toll could only be $2 (not the $5 proposed in the Ravitch report) and then couldn’t be done at all.

The only thing that the Legislature has apparently done, and isn’t specific to the MTA, is to crank up the income tax on higher brackets (above $250,000/yr).  While such a tax increase is a necessary component of dealing with the problem,  it can’t be the entire solution: raise the taxes enough, and the people who pay them will go elsewhere.

But then the Legislature seems to be on its own little planet, where there’s a shortage of funds, but never any need to do anything about it, and the Governor is on his own little satellite, apparently sucking his thumb while the whole mess unfolds.

The thought is that the Legislature will get off its rump and ‘do something’ to help fund the MTA.  The newspapers have been suggesting that we should all call the Governor and our legislators to get them to do something.

It seems pointless: I’ll save my breath to cool my porridge.

But watch: sometime late in May they’ll put something together, and the fares will only go up by 10%.

They always do stuff like that.

They’ll come through.

Won’t they?

Posted in New York State, Dysfunctional Government, Money | No Comments »