The following appeared on Monday, May 29, 2023, in the Blank Slate Media newspaper chain and on its website, theisland360.com:

With the ink barely dry on Gov. Kathy Hochul’s budgetary fiscal plan, newly released data reveals there are already flaws in her tax revenue assumptions.

A report made public by State Comptroller Tom DiNapoli in mid-May disclosed that tax receipts in April were $4 billion less than the governor’s budget division had projected.

Total personal income tax collections came in at $7.5 billion, not the expected $12 billion, while business taxes came in $300 million higher than anticipated—$1.5 billion vs. $1.2 billion.

“After the historic spike in tax receipts in April 2022 amid record-high capital gains” Ken Girardin of the Empire Center for Public Policy has written, “budget officials had expected PIT [personal income tax] receipts to fall by 17% from April 2022 to April 2023, but the actual drop appears to have been 49%.”

This means that budget deficits projected to be $5.1 billion in fiscal 2025 and $8.6 billion in fiscal 2026 are too low and will have to be significantly revised.

And growing operating deficits mean reserve funds will be consumed to balance the governor’s bloated, record-breaking $230 billion budget.

There are additional problems with the governor’s fiscal plan that have been identified in the “Enacted Budget Report” released by Comptroller DiNapoli on May 18.

While the amount deposited in the statutory rainy-day reserve funds has grown to $6.2 billion, those balances as a percentage of general fund spending are well under the national median.

DiNapoli quotes a Pew Charitable Trust analysis that determined New York’s statutory rainy-day reserves would fund the state for only 25.2 days, while the national median for the 50 states is 44.5 days.

Also, the bulk of the state’s additional reserves, which are projected to grow to $19.5 billion, are described as “informal reserves” as opposed to statutory ones, which “are governed by statutory requirements, including terms and conditions for withdrawals and mandatory repayment provisions.”

In other words, the “informal reserves” are legal slush funds that can be tapped into at any time by the governor to fund favored projects and programs.

Then there is in the budget the continued reliance on “backdoor borrowing” to pay for $21 billion in capital spending.

“Back door borrowing” evades voter approval at the ballot box. The debt is issued by public authorities, “further adding to the states already high debt burden and utilizing limited remaining capacity under the state’s debt caps.”

Total state-supported bonded debt authorizations will increase to an astounding $222 billion during the 2023–2024 fiscal year.

In recent years tens of billions of dollars spent on various vendor contracts were approved by the governor’s office without any oversight from the comptroller’s office whose job it is to “validate that a contract’s costs are reasonable and its terms are favorable to the state and … ensure a level playing field for vendors.”

Readers may recall that in 2022, Gov. Hochul gave a $650 million no-bid COVID home test contract to Digital Gadgets Incorporated, whose owners and family members had written checks to the Hochul campaign treasury totaling $330,000.

Although Gov. Hochul signed into law on December 30, 2022, legislation to restore Comptroller DiNapoli’s “independent oversight to review certain SUNY, CUNY and Office of Government Services contracts,” the budget continues to authorize state spending without protections, such as competitive bidding and state comptroller review and approval of contracts before they become effective.

Such unsupervised spending this year will be about $5 billion. This includes “a $4.2 billion Office for People with Developmental Disabilities appropriation”—whatever that is.

Finally, the comptroller notes that the governor’s budget “continues to include problematic provisions with respect to accounting standards that have the potential to distort the appearances of reported receipts, distributions, and liabilities; and obscure the picture of true spending growth.”

Gov. Hochul’s budget contains inaccurate tax revenue projections, borrowing abuses, accounting gimmicks, no bid contracts and lax oversight.

So much for Hochul’s promise that she would have the most transparent and straight-shooting administration in the state’s history.

The following appeared on Monday, May 15, 2023, in the Blank Slate Media newspaper chain and on its website, theisland360.com:

During Albany’s annual budget battle, a take-charge governor can exercise extraordinary power over the process.

In 2010, for example, when Gov. David Paterson and the state Legislature could not agree on a spending plan by the end of the fiscal year, the governor threatened to use the “nuclear option”— a short-term spending extension (aka a continuing resolution) to secure a balanced budget.

What is the “nuclear option”?

Here’s Gov. Paterson’s explanation: “The difference between the budget process and the extenders is that the governor writes the extenders, the legislature has to vote it up or down, there are no amendments, no changes, no rejections, or overriding the governor’s veto. It’s either take it or leave it…. We then put our cuts in the next week’s budget extender and the legislature either had to vote it into effect or shut down the government.”

The threat worked and the Legislature backed off and negotiated a budget to the governor’s satisfaction.

Patterson did not fear to use what then Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver called “naked political power” to impose his will on the Legislature.

Unfortunately, this year Gov. Kathy Hochul, fearful of exercising her budgetary authority, was steamrolled by the state Legislature.

In February, the governor, ignoring the signs of economic slowdown — particularly on Wall Street, which provides 22% of state income tax revenue—proposed a record-breaking $227 billion budget, up $7 billion from the previous year.

The release of the governor’s budget is only the opening gambit. The legislative branch, which has an insatiable appetite, always counters with even more spending.

Unable to agree on a budget plan, the state missed the March 31 deadline.

Refusing to use the “nuclear option” the governor surrendered in late April and agreed to a $229.8 billion budget, up $9 billion.

While the 3.7% increase may appear low — keep in mind this is on top of increases that totaled 22% over the past three years.

Most of the additional spending was allotted to school aid and Medicaid.

Education spending will hit an all-time high of $34 billion.

“School aid,” the Empire Center for Public Policy has reported will have “risen 76% since 2012 — while public school enrollment has fallen more than 5% during the same period.

Put another way, the state will be spending about $9 billion more on a smaller number of students than it would have if school aid had simply kept pace with inflation. Meanwhile, student achievement is declining on both state and national measures.”

As for Medicaid, the governor, who called for the state spending portion to increase by 9%, capitulated to the demands of the Legislature and healthcare unions and agreed to a 13% increase, up $4.2 billion.

“The state’s share,” healthcare expert Bill Hammond has noted, “is on track to be 53% higher in 2024 than it was in 2019.”

Total Medicaid spending for the fiscal year, which includes federal, state and local municipal contributions, is expected to top $100 billion.

New York, with 19.6 million people, will spend significantly more per capita on Medicaid than Florida (pop. 22.21 million) or Texas (pop. 30 million).

What did the governor get in return for knuckling under to the Legislature’s spending demands? Not much. Minor changes in the disastrous Progressive bail reforms.

New York’s spending trajectory is not sustainable.

The state’s budget division is already projecting major shortfalls in the out years; $5 billion in 2025, and in 2026, more than $8 billion.

Those dismal numbers do not, however, factor in an economic recession that will adversely affect tax revenue collections.

The governor, who holds a royal flush in the budgeting poker game, folded to the Legislature’s pair of deuces.

Hochul has proven to be a weak chief executive. And while that’s good news for legislators, unions, big government leeches, radical enviros, and various vendors—it does not bode well for overburdened taxpayers who get stuck paying the bills.