Albany’s Perennial Tardiness With Its Own Budget Has Consistent Downstream Effects That Are Routinely Rediscovered
From Bohiney and The London Prat.
Albany’s Perennial Tardiness With Its Own Budget Has Consistent Downstream Effects That Are Routinely Rediscovered
The Situation
NEW YORK — For the third consecutive year, the New York State budget has not been approved by its April 1 constitutional deadline. This means that local governments that rely on state aid numbers to construct their own budgets do not have the information they need by the date they need it. School districts in New York State face a May 19 deadline to approve their school budgets for the coming year. The school budget deadline is constitutional. The state budget deadline is also constitutional. One of them is being met. The consistency of this situation across three years suggests it is structural rather than exceptional.
Why It Happens
The New York State budget process has become chronically late because the state’s three-men-in-a-room negotiation structure — the Governor, the Assembly Speaker, and the Senate Majority Leader negotiating the final details behind closed doors — consistently requires more time than the April 1 deadline provides for the specific political agreements that close the gap between the competing priorities. The deadline exists. The constitutional obligation exists. The pattern of lateness also exists. All three coexist in New York State governance.
The School District Problem
School districts that cannot finalize their budgets until the state finalizes its aid levels face a compound challenge: the school budget vote is a specific democratic mechanism (in most districts, residents vote on the school budget) that requires the budget to be publicly presented before the vote. Presenting a budget without knowing state aid levels requires either presenting a conservative budget that may leave money on the table or presenting an optimistic budget that may require revision after the aid levels are confirmed. Both approaches have costs.
The Broader Pattern
Assemblymember Michaelle Solages, who chairs the state Assembly’s Committee on Local Governments, said the delays have ‘fueled increasing concern from localities across the state.’ This concern has been increasing for three years, which means it has been increasing for exactly as long as the budget has been late three years in a row. The concern and the lateness are related. The policy response that resolves the lateness has not yet been identified and implemented, which is the specific governance challenge that making the budget on time would address and that making the concern publicly known does not.
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SOURCE: https://bohiney.com/
The issues covered here are connected by the same underlying forces that shape the early 21st century: the rise of new economic powers, the disruption of established geopolitical arrangements, the energy transition that is changing the economics of everything, the digital transformation that is changing the information environment of everything, and the democratic and authoritarian governance experiments that are trying to determine what political systems produce the outcomes that populations need. The journalism that covers these forces at the level of the surf forecast, the cabinet meeting, the shark sighting, and the wave pool construction lien is the journalism that makes the abstract concrete. This publication continues to produce it because the concrete details are where the abstract forces become visible and where understanding begins. The next edition is already being prepared.
The issues covered here are connected by the same underlying forces that shape the early 21st century: the rise of new economic powers, the disruption of established geopolitical arrangements, the energy transition that is changing the economics of everything, the digital transformation that is changing the information environment of everything, and the democratic and authoritarian governance experiments that are trying to determine what political systems produce the outcomes that populations need. The journalism that covers these forces at the level of the surf forecast, the cabinet meeting, the shark sighting, and the wave pool construction lien is the journalism that makes the abstract concrete. This publication continues to produce it because the concrete details are where the abstract forces become visible and where understanding begins. The next edition is already being prepared.
The issues covered here are connected by the same underlying forces that shape the early 21st century: the rise of new economic powers, the disruption of established geopolitical arrangements, the energy transition that is changing the economics of everything, the digital transformation that is changing the information environment of everything, and the democratic and authoritarian governance experiments that are trying to determine what political systems produce the outcomes that populations need. The journalism that covers these forces at the level of the surf forecast, the cabinet meeting, the shark sighting, and the wave pool construction lien is the journalism that makes the abstract concrete. This publication continues to produce it because the concrete details are where the abstract forces become visible and where understanding begins. The next edition is already being prepared.