Sun, 04 May 2008

Why do they put up with it?

The House of Representatives last week approved the Governor's supplemental budget for this current year. They approved of the plan to take back $12.5 million from all the cities and towns before the end of June, throwing 39 municipal budgets into chaos. This plan also cuts 2700 immigrant children from RIte Care -- including more than a thousand who are here legally -- and forces state employees to take six furlough days. There are some minor deviations from the Governor's original proposal, but they are nothing compared to the agreement.

My favorite: cutting $26 million from Rhode Island Housing. This agency gets its money from federal housing grants and from borrowing. Using their money to balance the budget means we are using either borrowed money or federal housing grants. I report, you decide which is worse.

The sad truth is that the Governor and the leadership of both houses of the Assembly are reading from the same script. The Assembly leadership team call themselves Democrats, but so what? They are for slashing pensions and health care for state and municipal workers and ending important (and cost-saving) social programs. All the while, they are cutting taxes for rich people, while the upward pressure on local property taxes remains as bad as ever. In what meaningful way is this a Democratic agenda? Maybe they mean that the program cuts cause them more pain than they cause Republicans.

Here's an interesting detail from the supplemental budget. The Governor proposed to add a tax on cases of bottled water for the next fiscal year. (I know he promised not to add any taxes, but the only people who believed him are bad at arithmetic.) It's a tiny tax, only four cents per case of water, but it's a tax nonetheless, and it was the Governor's suggestion. It is projected to earn about $600,000 next year. The Assembly decided that he was right, and this should be taxed, but they voted to start it in May instead of July, so we'll get some of the proceeds this fiscal year. So remember, from now on, each time you buy a bottle of Poland Spring you're helping pay for tax cuts to the wealthy people. Thirsty?

But honestly, the people to pity are the rank and file Democratic legislators. For the most part, these people did not run for office in order to disassemble the state government and to upset the budgets of the cities and towns that sent them to the state house. They did not run to suddenly end health benefits for state retirees, causing thousands of state workers to retire prematurely -- a decision that will cost us valuable expertise in the work force, drive up pension costs, and ultimately save us only a few dimes, if that. How many of them think they ran for office in order to ratify tax cuts in a time of fiscal crisis? Their special tragedy is that they signed on to support a leadership team that has spent the last several years cooperating with the Governor to lead our state into a fiscal hole in the ground, and now that we're here, all the choices are bad. One can only wonder why they put up with it.

To their credit, about two dozen legislators voted against the worst parts of this travesty of a budget last Friday, but it wasn't enough to stop it. But this isn't so far from enough votes to select another leadership team, a fact presumably not lost on the people in charge, though there is no obvious candidate.

Truthfully, the Assembly leadership is worth some compassion, too. After all, they have largely turned on contituencies that originally put them in office, but few of them are going to be embraced by their new allies. The Governor is still going to blame his deficits on Assembly Democrats, for example, and it's positively funny how many people think that the Handy/Moura tax reform legislation has the backing of the Assembly leadership. (It emphatically does not.)

These people have little to fear from voters. Most have plenty of campaign money on hand, and few opponents in sight. A Democratic opponent to Speaker Murphy, for example, would be opposed by the state party, while a Republican would find it difficult to draw a distinction with him: a winning strategy. Murphy and his team will continue to hold power and influence until the legislators who made him Speaker decide that the state needs an opposition party that, well, opposes. Until then, look for more cuts, more delayed maintenance, more shuttered programs and less effective government. Meanwhile, because the real causes of rising costs haven't been identified, taxes will still rise.

The problems are two: an unwillingness to acknowledge the expensive spending decisions we've made -- unnecessary bridges, crazy borrowing nonexistent maintenance schedules, to name three -- and an inability to see that all taxes are not the same. Some taxes fall on one group and other taxes fall on another. Some taxes discourage one kind of activity and others discourage something different. When you hear someone say they don't care which tax gets cut, that's someone who doesn't care what your government can do, and who richly deserves the still-expensive, less-effective government we are all going to get.

02:37 - 04 May 2008 [/y8/cols] link

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