Even without knowing the precise final numbers in the state budget — figures that are still mostly a mystery even to most of the legislators poised to vote approval of the $150 billion behemoth — it seems clear that some key long-term state needs will be deferred.
New York’s leaders are whistling past the graveyard one more time, satisfied that we haven’t reached the crisis point of fiscal disaster zones like Illinois, New Jersey, Puerto Rico, Phoenix and Detroit — at least not yet.
But we’re traveling down the same path. Our state has huge and growing bills that are not being paid — notably, for the pensions of public workers and for the roads, bridges, sewers, airports, water mains, mass transit and other infrastructure that knit the state economy together.
Ask anybody in power in Albany how the bills will be paid, and you get coughing, paper-shuffling and double-talk. That signals what every poker player knows: The game always has a fool who’s eventually going to get fleeced — and if you can’t figure out who the fool is, then it’s you.
Let’s consider, one by one, the liabilities about to wind up in your mailbox — and your grandchildren’s.
The unwise and indefensible practice of allowing cities to meet pension obligations by borrowing continues. The many New York cities that can’t make legally required payments to support the retirement funds of their fire, police and other services are once again being permitted — indeed, encouraged — to skip the payments in exchange for a promise to make up the funds in the future with interest.
Last year, according to the City Journal, “139 cities and towns deferred $472 million in pension payments, while the state put off nearly $1 billion.” The accumulated total of unpaid pension funds since 2010 stands at $3.3 billion.
That is backdoor borrowing pure and simple — money that must be repaid by future taxpayers.
New Yorkers can also expect to pick up a future bill for the accumulated capital needs of the MTA, currently estimated at $15 billion. Some of that money will be paid in future fare increases; much of the rest of the deficit will be paid in the form of idled trains and other service interruptions. When you hear about a subway delay due to “signal problems,” that means another small piece of our aging transportation system has faltered or failed.
And don’t even get me started on that crumbling, disastrous embarrassment known as LaGuardia Airport, where a key renovation contract has been stalled for months.
The capital funding shortfalls aren’t just a New York City problem. Earlier this year, I spoke with Stephanie Miner, the mayor of Syracuse, who is battling a combination of high pension bills and infrastructure so stressed-out that the city averaged more than one water-main break every day in 2014.
“For so long, we have been taking what little extra money we had, and using them towards our skyrocketing pension bills and health care bills — bills that are almost exclusively out of our control — and taking that money away from maintaining and improving our infrastructure,” Miner told me. “And this last year, we finally saw our 100-year-old infrastructure system really give out en masse.”
She’s not alone.
“We have really significant budget challenges.” Kathy Sheehan, the mayor of Albany, told me in February. Her city, like Syracuse, faces ongoing costs that can’t be met by jacking up taxes in a city where 25% of the population lives in poverty.
Here in New York City, the Housing Authority — home to more than 400,000 New Yorkers — has been grappling with mold and failing systems estimated to require more than $14 billion to fix. The state budget deal throws an extra $100 million at the problem, which Mayor de Blasio described as “a step in the right direction.”
Pay $100 million for a $14 billion problem? I’d call it more like a glance in the right direction. More than one NYCHA insider has warned me that conditions in some developments could soon reach the point where buildings will simply be declared not fit for human habitation and emptied out.
The word in Albany is that a hefty chuck of the juiciest plum in the budget — more than $5 billion in one-time-only funds from banks that were fined for bad behavior — will go to cover a single infrastructure project: the expense of the new Tappan Zee Bridge. If only our state leaders were as dedicated to protecting the future benefits and current basic needs of this great state.
Louis is political anchor at NY1 News.
![In a narrow vote this week, the Federal Trade Commission approved a rule that will ban the vast majority of noncompete clauses by U.S. employers, which have long prevented workers from switching jobs or setting out on their own. In doing so, the agency did its duty to protect American economic dynamism and opportunity, nothing less, nothing more. We hope that’s the clear conclusion of the courts that will now rule on a lawsuit being brought by the Chamber of Commerce, which has strenuously supported this anticompetitive practice. Of the arguments that the business group and other opponents have rolled […]](https://www.nydailynews.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/GettyImages-1820955015.jpg?w=490 "In a narrow vote this week, the Federal Trade Commission approved a rule that will ban the vast majority of noncompete clauses by U.S. employers, which have long prevented workers from switching jobs or setting out on their own. In doing so, the agency did its duty to protect American economic dynamism and opportunity, nothing less, nothing more. We hope that’s the clear conclusion of the courts that will now rule on a lawsuit being brought by the Chamber of Commerce, which has strenuously supported this anticompetitive practice. Of the arguments that the business group and other opponents have rolled […]")
