Amazing isn’t it…. Not really seeing that Spitzer is determined to do nothing about the toll increase. This is exactly what we have been saying for years, the Thruway and other Authorities are a cash cow for Albany. Don’t they get enough of our tax dollars? One would think.

This should outrage everyone, continue reading.

taking for the general fund whatever money’s left over from state authorities that run the Thruway, New York City mass transit and other services.

Despite gloomy forecasts, NY’s budget poised for busting — again

ALBANY, N.Y. (AP) — Wall Street is wobbling. Tax revenue growth has slowed. Economic forecasts call for a chance of recession.

Gov. Eliot Spitzer, Senate Republican leader Joseph Bruno, Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver and Comptroller Thomas DiNapoli — who have agreed on almost nothing in months — agree on this: The economic outlook is more bleak than in years, and likely to get worse.

So, of course, New York’s state government is poised to spend like a drunken yachtsman.

Never mind the projected $4.3 billion deficit for the 2008-09 budget. Billions of dollars in new spending have already been committed, promised or threatened by one faction or the other. Oh, and one more thing: Next year is an election year for the Legislature.

“So far, the more talk we hear about the budget, the less things add up,” said E.J. McMahon, director of the Empire Center for New York State Policy, part of the conservative Manhattan Institute. “A lot of this is beginning to sound like the late ’80s and early ’90s, when the most disciplined player in the house was Mario Cuomo.”

Yikes.

Most New Yorkers — those who aren’t among the thousands who already fled to jobs in other states — remember those days as the heyday of the rising cost of being a New Yorker. That’s back when the state, in a flagging economy, resorted to gimmicks like trying to sell prisons to itself to feed its spending addiction.

Although New Yorkers won’t pay attention to the state budget process until its often elusive deadline of April 1, if at all, the bulk of the budget work quietly hits a sprint this week. Spitzer is preparing his budget proposal for Jan. 22 with a goal of holding spending to a 5.3 percent increase. That’s about $4.2 billion and well above the inflation rate.

Tough times indeed.

“There are warning signs out there that things could get worse,” Paul Francis, Spitzer’s budget director, told The Associated Press. “There will be significant cuts in spending really across almost every sector of the budget.”

Except not really. In Albany, a “cut” means less of an increase. And even that’s rare.

And Spitzer’s 5.3 percent target for increased spending is before the Legislature gets to it. By the time most fiscal years start, the Legislature usually adds another $1 billion or so. The result in the current budget was a $120 billion plan, including $80 billion in just state spending. Those figures are more than double the 1990-91 budget.

The current budget, Spitzer’s first after campaigning to rein in state spending, grew by about 8 percent.

The governor was quick to note that was still lower than any of the three previous years. He didn’t note that those previous three budgets grew by Rockefeller-era proportions of around 10 percent.

For the coming fiscal year, Francis said times are so tough he will have to resort to one-shot revenues, like the anticipated conversion of some nonprofit health care companies to for-profit, and taking for the general fund whatever money’s left over from state authorities that run the Thruway, New York City mass transit and other services. In addition, expect some “user fees” to increase. These are charges for various state services or programs such as for hunting or state beaches. Francis said the specific user fees to be raised haven’t yet been targeted. Also, expect a few more “loophole closers” that cost some businesses millions this year in what the Senate GOP insisted were new taxes.

Other ideas swirling around the Legislature include a greater tax on the richest New Yorkers, although Spitzer and Bruno promise no tax increases.

As governors have done in the past, the Legislature will be advised in January that it has to balance any of its own increases with spending with cuts. And as Legislatures have done in the past, the advice will be quickly and thoroughly ignored.

The Senate’s Republican majority, feuding with the Democratic governor since spring, is already worked up.

“Expecting us to comment on a target for spending in November is absurd,” said John McArdle, spokesman for the GOP majority. “If he proposes a budget with his priorities out of line as much as he did last year, we’re going to fix it.”

The Assembly’s Democratic majority has, uncharacteristically, an even more dire revenue forecast than the governor, but Speaker Sheldon Silver has made it clear that he’s not ready to back down on his priorities: “We face difficult challenges ahead, but we must meet the education, health care and job growth and economic development needs of New Yorkers.”

Even Spitzer’s target of holding spending to a 5.3 percent increase won’t be easy, given the developments of recent weeks:

_The State University of New York Board of Trustees on Tuesday asked for $287 million more and a 5-percent increase in tuition that the Assembly’s Democratic majority usually tries to avoid by tossing more state funds at the system.

_The state Board of Regents called for $1.94 billion more in school aid, much of which the state is already obligated pay under a court order. But Republican senators on Long Island, fighting to keep the GOP majority, are already screaming their districts are getting shortchanged.

_A week ago, Spitzer avoided a planned increase in the $2 base subway and bus fare in New York City, but key downstate Assembly members promise to try to tap the state budget to prevent other fare increases.

_That got upstate Republican senators promising to use state funds to stop or reduce planned increases in Thruway tolls.

_In October, the Spitzer administration started settling contracts with state worker unions that will provide 13 percent higher wages over the next three years.

In addition, Francis said the state’s debt will go up $3 billion in 2008-09, to $53 billion, mostly for road and bridge work and construction at public colleges. That debt, along with $52 billion in public authorities’ debt, makes New York not only one of the most heavily taxed states but among the most deeply in debt.

All of this matters to families, employers, retirees, and more young educated New Yorkers wondering whether to give this much-anticipated new New York under Spitzer another shot before heading out of state.

“Unfortunately,” said McMahon of the conservative think tank, “the message to business from everything that’s been said in Albany, is, `You better count the silverware.’”

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