As big as it is, the state’s new budget fails to address a host of crises – and the lack of urgency is troubling.
Remember the opioid crisis? It never went away.
Remember lead and other toxins in drinking water? They’re still in there.
Remember worries about climate change, and concerns that future energy costs may rise more than some people can afford to pay? That issue hasn’t vanished, either.
But if there’s any urgency among New York leaders to deal with these crises, you wouldn’t know it from the just-approved state budget. The elected leaders may pay plenty of lip service to these issues, but their actions – which are, after all, what ultimately matter – don’t quite match their words.
The opioid crisis is a case in point. Overdose deaths nationwide have skyrocketed, from last decade’s peak of about 47,600 in 2017 to more than 80,400 in 2021, the most recent year for which the National Institutes of Health has comprehensive statistics.
Yet as the Times Union’s Raga Justin reports, this year’s budget features few new programs and policies on substance abuse. One excuse offered for this inertia: Projects using our $2.5 billion windfall of settlements from opioid manufacturers must filter through the Opioid Settlement Fund Advisory Board, which oversees how the money is spent. But the Hochul administration has rejected some of the board’s key recommendations, such as safe injection sites.
And this points to a persistent problem for state government: It’s pretty good at taxing people and reaching headline-grabbing legal settlements, but it can’t always spend all the money it rakes in. This, too, reflects a lack of urgency.
We’ve seen this pattern for years. Consider tobacco settlement funds, with billions coming in but relatively little spent on smoking prevention and cessation programs. Consider the check-off funds for a variety of causes that people can donate to on their tax forms; an audit found that two-thirds of the money that came in over the past six years has not been spent.
Another example: A recent report from the office of state Comptroller Thomas DiNapoli noted that billions of dollars’ worth of local water and sewer projects are backed up, so to speak, in part because of problems in the loan application process. This comes even as the new state budget added $500 million for these necessary upgrades.
Here’s another issue lacking urgency in the budget: the failure to pass the New York HEAT Act. Among other things, it would have limited energy costs for low- and moderate-income households to 6% of income, shielding them from potentially high costs of shifting from fossil fuel heating and cooking systems and appliances to electric ones. Nor was action taken on the Climate Change Superfund Act, which would have required companies that contributed significantly to global warming to bear a share of the costs of dealing with climate change. Those issues are now likely to remain unresolved for another year.
It’s a year that might be well spent not just resolving the differences on all these issues, but looking at what New York’s problem is when it comes to spending money. A state that has more money than it can spend is a state that’s either taking in way too much, or isn’t investing enough in the people and systems needed to get that money to where it’s supposed to go – that is, to the communities that need it.
What, New York Worry?
