Whose budget is it, anyway?

What a fool I’ve been.

For all these years, thoughtless media types like myself have been blaming the New York State Legislature for failing to provide us with a timely state budget. The state’s fiscal year begins in April and the solons in Albany seldom produce a budget much before July or August.

Well, come to find out, in the last three years it’s not the Legislature’s doing at all. And you know, I’d still be in the dark if I hadn’t sat in on Senator John Bonacic’s remarks to the Lumberland Senior Citizens last week.

I still would have gone on blaming our selfless legislators when they’ve simply been taking the heat for the real villains in the piece. It’s the darn school superintendents who are responsible for much of this embarrassing mess.

You see, it all works like this. The governor comes up with his version of the budget in January and he plugs in numbers for school aid. Our Republican senator explained that our Republican governor’s numbers include conservative increases. History tells us that the Assembly, controlled by the Democrats, usually budgets more. But the governor usually balks at adding more and there’s the rub.

So the leaders of the Legislature get together with the school superintendents and give them the choice of a timely budget or holding out for more money. “They said hold out,” Bonacic revealed, so the Legislature is holding out.

Bonacic did not detail what exactly happens during the first three months of the holding out period, but he did say that “serious negotiations will start shortly,” because the whole business needs to be settled before August 15. In mid-August, the school districts have to prepare their tax warrants. If there’s no budget by the time they do that, the districts all have plug in last year’s (presumably lower than expected) aid numbers and send out bigger tax bills.

The down-state Democrats in the Assembly are doubly involved in the hold-up of the process, seeking more state aid for schools in New York City, Bonacic reported. A Supreme Court justice ruled that the state’s school aid formula shorted the City $1 billion in aid, so “[Assembly Speaker Sheldon] Silver is holding out.”

Of course, there’s still plenty of disagreement about who’s holding up what. Back in May, our Democratic Assemblyman Jacob Gunther was outraged that Governor Pataki took off on a political junket to California as the Assembly Democrats were preparing to sit down and talk turkey about the budget.

Regardless of who’s actually responsible, Bonacic and Gunther agree that the annual budget delays make them look bad. “I don’t like it. We all get stained with the same brush,” Bonacic said.

The process is a mess, Bonacic said. “In Albany, they do things half-ass backwards,” he told the seniors.

Most all of us have problems with deadlines in our lives. I know I do. I’ve been known to shop on Christmas Eve and start my taxes in the second week of April. So then, why pick on the Legislature for doing the same kind of things we all do?

In the end it’s a question of credibility. Unlike most of us, our legislators have positioned themselves so that their decisions and actions change the course of millions of people’s lives. Legislators have won our endorsement as leaders of the community at the polls, and with that endorsement comes a responsibility to act as examples for good citizenship. They are paid to create legal standards for our daily lives and, in doing so, they should be required to reflect the best of what we are and should be.

So legislators, if you want to speak to the finer points of society… talk about morality and social justice… first show us you’re responsible enough to get your bills paid on time.

David Hulse, News Editor