Syndicated Column 3-22-04
The number continues to have mythical meaning
by Alan Chartock

In Albany, they play the number. You may think that what you just read is a grammatical mistake, that the word "number," should have read "numbers." The truth is that when it comes to the budget the single word that holds things up, the politicians will tell you, is "the number."
The word has a mythical meaning in legislative politics, and while this story may bore you to death it shouldn't. After all, you're the one in the barrel. You're the one who is paying the tax bill and you're the one who watches the seasonal folly called "late budgets."
Let's face it. Most people don't know squat about Albany and could care less. This is dangerous because this is their state government. Since most people don't care and don't even know who their legislators are and since well more than half of the people are so uninformed that they don't even bother to vote, the politicians can pretty well do as they wish.
When it comes to the budget, it's really very simple. The Republicans always say that there is less money coming in so that they can argue that less money should be spent on things such as education and social services. The Democrats always say that there will be more tax money coming into the coffers so they can spend more money, sometimes in good ways like supporting the State University, where I teach, so every student may have equal opportunity to get ahead. The Democrats [as well as the Republicans] also support some bad things including jobs in state government that we can easily do without. There are, for example, public relations people throughout the government who seem to be there to perpetuate the political careers of some and the bureaucratic dreams of others. There are many millions of dollars of unneeded pork in the government that both the Republicans and the Democrats and the state's government give out with glee. The so-called public authorities in the state are nothing more than a disgrace, a pig trough of unaccountable bureaucrats with inflated salaries.
So every year there is a fight over exactly how much money is coming in. This figure is known as the number and it is the thing that our politicians can't seem to agree on. The Republicans have come up with a risky, but excellent, plan. They want to give the responsibility to the state comptroller to figure out what the revenues will be for the next year.
Will Wall Street do well and provide a fountain of green to support government? So far it has.
The Republicans must figure the comptroller usually will be a sensible sort who will not want to predict that more will be coming in than actually is. But it's a risk because now the comptroller is a Democrat, Alan Hevesi, who used to be both a college professor and a member of the Assembly.
Hevesi says that he is ready, willing and able to figure out the number. He used to do it, he says, when he was the comptroller in New York City. The Republicans, who thought up the plan may understand that the next governor is going to be a Democrat and that with some regularity, says Serphin Maltese, the conservative state senator, the voters pick people of the "other party" to keep their eye on the governor. In this case I suspect they are betting on a bad proposition since Hevesi has proven himself a fair, balanced and honorable man.
In any case, the Republicans think if the comptroller calls "the number," the budget may actually be brought in on time. That is nonsense of course, because if the folks in government are not fighting about the number they will be fighting about something else that will keep the budget from coming in on time. In fact, the late budget seems to be the one thing people do know about government and it is giving everyone a black eye. To be fair, there are a lot of things other than state government that needs to be fixed and the whole late budget thing may be no more than a convenient red herring to keep people's eyes off the real problems.
Don't get me wrong, it would be sensible to get the number behind us, but mark my words, it won't be the end of the bad way we do business in this state.







- posted by Alan @ 3/24/2004 06:15:00 AM