Controlling New York State Spending

Nearly two months after the budget deadline, Governor Paterson and the Legislature still can’t agree on how to close a $9.2 billion deficit in the $136 billion budget. Instead, they continue to blame each other and desperately look for ways to postpone the problem until after the election. But it does not have to be that way. 

We are all in this mess together and to get out of it, we must all become part of the solution: shared sacrifice. When Westchester faced a fiscal crisis in the recession of 2003, I led the County Legislature in cutting $58 million from the budget. Public employees, county agencies, contractors, municipalities, schools, and a wide range of programs all shared the burden. We emerged from the crisis with a stronger local economy.

I am running for State Senate because I have both the financial expertise and the experience in cutting bloated budgets to help make New York work again. I'm a budget expert, a fiscal conservative, a small business owner and a local legislator. I'm a Certified Financial Planning Practitioner. That means that my life’s work is showing people how to get more for their money. I saved Westchester County over $110 million dollars in wasteful spending, and I helped preserve the county’s AAA bond rating, saving millions more in higher interest costs.

I am living proof that, in a crisis, a legislator must demand shared sacrifices and have the financial knowledge to challenge his own party with solid ideas, not empty words. Although a Democrat, I voted against Democratic tax increase proposals and against pay raises for myself and the other legislators. I even refused to take a government paid cell phone. In the current recession, I am working with the Republican County Executive on how to downsize and consolidate agencies and how to save money by sharing services.

New York doesn’t need massive spending to create and retain jobs. By helping to save the Westchester Medical Center from bankruptcy, I preserved jobs while taking a hospital costing taxpayers $35 million per year and making it viable and independent. There was no taxpayer subsidy this year.

As a small business owner, I know that the best way to help job-creating businesses is to stop raising taxes. It will take imaginative leadership, not more money, to make our State University a magnet to draw businesses here. Tax credits for hiring new workers can put many New Yorkers back to work, and we can pay for them with the revenues created when people receive salaries instead of unemployment checks.

As a budget expert, I know that New York needs an income-based cap on property taxes and to restore and strengthen the STAR program. I will protect property taxpayers by fighting to get Putnam, Dutchess and Westchester schools our fair share of state education funding. In the long run, as we downsize state government and reduce spending, we should use the savings to lower property taxes.

Here are some ways to spread the burden of cutting spending and downsizing state government:

• Stop Medicaid Fraud. Medicaid costs are out of control. We spend more on Medicaid than California and Texas combined.

• Reform Pensions and Benefits. I have proposed sweeping pension reforms including an end to the use of overtime to inflate the pensions of new employees.

• Freeze Hiring. Each year, 16,000 employees retire or leave state government. If we don’t replace many of them, we can save $800 million dollars.

• End Wasteful Work Rules. We must repeal the archaic laws that require unnecessary and expensive contracting rules. They benefit contractors but cost taxpayers millions of dollars.

Stop Unnecessary Borrowing. I will fight to reduce the more than $115 billion mountain of public debt. Albany has allowed borrowing without taxpayer approval through more than 500 public authorities. It's time to hold authorities and departments accountable, consolidate and downsize them, and establish an independent fiscal watchdog.

Democrats and Republicans in Albany are equally responsible for over-spending, over-taxing, and overborrowing. When they spend lavishly on themselves and pour our tax dollars down the drain, they steal the money we need to feed, clothe and educate our families.

To make New York work, we need a citizens' revolution at the polls to demand that all groups be part of the solution to our financial crisis. We need a taxpayers' revolt to elect truly independent and knowledgeable leaders. It will take all of us, working together and sacrificing together, to turn our state around and make New York work again!

Wetschester County legislator Michael Kaplowitz, a Democrat from Somers, is running for State Senator Vincent Leibell’s 40th district senate seat.