Buffalo News Editorial: A Call to Action: Contact Your Elected Officials to do Something About Your High Taxes

The Buffalo News

First, stop the bleeding.

New York State, especially upstate New York, is losing its lifeblood of jobs and, as the jobs drain away, its population. There are other consequences as well: Two more congressional seats are likely to be lost after the 2010 Census.
The most frustrating of the reasons for the decline is this: New York is killing itself through state government policy choices, dictated by elected officials, that pander to special interests and political powerhouses.

New York’s governor at least warns of the danger. The State Legislature ignores it, and is largely responsible for it.

The most dismaying aspect of that is that the members of the Senate and Assembly, particularly their leaders, refuse fully to acknowledge the problem, refuse to recognize that their failure to act responsibly deepened the problem and are singularly focused on what they always have done — taking care of themselves, the public sector unions and other vested interests that help them with cash to get re-elected.
The Legislature’s strategy has been to wait and see if the problem goes away. It won’t. Even if the recession is ending, experts foresee a “jobless recovery” and a retrenchment that will not return either New York or America to the unregulated euphoric expansion that was mistaken for sustainable prosperity.

Other states, most notably California, face the same fiscal problems and have reacted with necessary cuts. In the meantime, New York’s policies have been based far more on politics than on principles of good governance. The focus of lawmakers has centered on the preservation of political power rather than on doing what’s right for everyday New Yorkers. The advent of single-party control of both houses allowed that badly-rooted practice to bear rotten fruit.

On the extra editorial pages that follow these, we have outlined the problem. And we call on you to make your voice heard, by contacting the legislators who supposedly work for you but continue to raise your taxes. Tell them to do what’s right.

That starts with cutting spending, just like regular people do when facing money problems. It should not…must not…involve another round of new taxes and fees, because New Yorkers already lead the nation in state and local tax burden and the new taxes already imposed on high incomes are driving individuals, businesses and jobs from the state. And it should not involve more borrowing, because New Yorkers also already shoulder the heaviest state debt burden in the nation.
What’s called for is rolling back taxes and fees, rather than increasing them, to make New York more attractive to employers who have to decide whether to stay or move out of state.

During the past three years New York has added the equivalent of 12,990 new full-time positions in the state work force. Some 8,000 workers were hired after Gov. David A. Paterson called for a hiring freeze last fall. Lawmakers should roll back the state government work force to the levels of just a few years ago, saving billions of dollars. They could enact pension reforms that might have relatively small impacts now but provide major long-term relief for the state, for municipalities and for school districts � and the taxpayers who fund them.

They could enact structural reforms that would increase transparency in the way the state does business, fold off-budget state authorities back into the budget process to clarify what state costs really are, make state agencies and office-holders more accountable to the public and less open to special-interest influence.

They could consider benefit changes in the costly Medicaid programs � New York is the national leader in Medicaid spending � that would protect basic services for the poor but bring New York more in line with the national average in terms of the costly extra services covered here.

They could consider a property tax cap so that governments don’t repeatedly penalize those with the greatest ownership stakes in this region.

Everything costs more in New York, from health insurance to education to the cost of doing business. The only people who can fix that are the elected officials in Albany. If they won’t, or can’t, they should step aside and allow those who can to take charge. If the current Legislature doesn’t fix it, voters… who already have expressed their lack of confidence in them… should exercise their rights to set things back in order with an entirely new Legislature.

Your lawmakers will do nothing unless they’re told to.

http://www.buffalonews.com/opinion/editorials/story/854856.html