ALBANY — New York liberals who saw last year’s state elections as a sign that a new progressive golden age was at hand were delivered a gut punch on Sunday by the passage of a budget that fell far short of their expectations.
While Democrats now control both chambers of the New York legislature, their fiscal blueprint doesn’t include several priorities of the party’s left wing, including a higher tax on income over $1 million.
“This year’s budget is one of dashed hopes and deferred dreams,” said the Alliance for Quality Education’s Jasmine Gripper. “This time we cannot blame the Republicans. The reality is that the triple blue state leadership took the route of protecting millionaires over transforming education opportunity in the state.”
But education funding and the lack of an increased millionaire’s tax were just two of several issues that disappointed progressives. Marijuana legalization disappeared from the budget, a real estate tax was abandoned in favor of a less ambitious tax, and most prominently, a compromise on campaign finance reform that delegated the decision-making to a commission enraged the groups that played a major role in obliterating the Independent Democratic Conference last September.
To be sure, lawmakers and Gov. Andrew Cuomo have already acted on a slew of major liberal priorities this year. In arguably the most productive January in New York’s political history, they passed major measures on abortion, gun control, and election reform.
These measures were widely described by Democrats as the “low-hanging fruit” that would be relatively easy to pass as soon as their party gained a solid legislative majority. The state’s spending plan was in many ways their first test on more complex issues.
And in the end, the budget didn’t look terribly different from many of the budgets that passed when Republicans controlled the Senate. The final product contained a host of progressive priorities, but that has been the case more often than not during the Andrew Cuomo era.
Consider the budget from the first year of the last two-year session compared to this year’s. The 2019 version included significant criminal justice reforms, but so did the one in 2017, when the Senate, led by a coalition of Republicans and the IDC, agreed to raise the age of criminal responsibility. There was an environmental victory in the ban on plastic bags this year; two years ago, the budget agreement included $2.5 billion for clean water.
Both this year’s budget and the one passed at the start of the previous two-year session contained a wide number of other progressive measures. The one approved by Senate Republicans contained a free college tuition program that Bernie Sanders described as “a model for the rest of the nation.” This year’s included items like an extension of online voter registration to people who aren’t DMV customers.
But it might be difficult to characterize many of the other pieces in this year’s budget as evidence that Democrats have suddenly overcome Republican inertia. What about the “database of deals,” the most significant economic development reform measure to pass after years during which the state’s job creation program have come under unprecedented criticism? It’s a watered-down version of a bill that Senate Republicans passed last year.
Making the property tax cap permanent? The Senate passed that measure nearly every session during the eight years of Republican control. And while the political landscape around congestion pricing has changed over the last 12 years, it’s worth nothing that former Senate Republican leader Joe Bruno was Albany’s most vocal advocate the last time the issue was seriously on the table.
And the $618 million increase in Foundation Aid for schools? Despite the hype around a “Cynthia Nixon Effect” after a long-time advocate for more school aid ran for governor last year, that’s exactly the same as the $618 million increase in last year’s budget.
But the issues that fell out of the budget are what upset the left the most.
Gripper’s reference to “protecting millionaires” summarizes a lot of the liberal discontent. An increase in the millionaire’s tax that could be used to fund things like education was presented to last year’s voters as a fait accompli if the IDC was ousted. But it was rejected by the new Democratic majority and never seriously entered the budget conversation.
For a few weeks, legislators seemed poised to create a pied-à-terre on New York City’s wealthiest properties. But after ferocious lobbying by the real estate industry, they decided it was too complicated. They abandoned the issue and replaced it with a transfer tax.
If that issue is too complicated, New Yorkers shouldn’t hold their breaths that the Legislature will reach agreement anytime soon on single-payer health care, which was supposedly one new Democrat away from passage before last year’s elections.
And marijuana legalization was abandoned after the Legislature’s liberal and moderate members failed to come to an agreement. In a sense, that’s a sign that the Senate Democratic conference is poised to function better than it has in the past. On nearly every other occasion when the party has had a majority, it was slim due to the relatively small size of the chamber. That’s presented an opening for insurgents from Franklin Roosevelt through Pedro Espada and Jeff Klein to wreak havoc by breaking ranks to obtain their own goals, whether that be reform or power.
This year, however, Democrats have remained laser focused on unity. While it may be a way to avoid the chaos that has reigned during times like the summer of 2009, it does naturally create a limit on what members can achieve. And that could pose a problem for members pushing ambitious social agendas ranging from driver’s licenses for undocumented immigrants to decriminalized prostitution that are unlikely to play well in places like Long Island where the party needs to win races in moderate districts in order to stay in power.
But it’s the campaign finance question that angered liberals the most. For many, it was the predominant issue that explained all the other disappointments.
“This is why we were fighting so hard for campaign finance reform, because even if you elect new people into the system, money still dominates,” said Citizen Action of New York’s Jessica Wisneski. “And until you can begin to erode the power of big money entirely, move that aside, the newcomers, the new energy, the people who want to change this place won’t have a chance.”
But the budget ultimately handed off the powers to a commission that will ultimately create a system with no parameters. That commission also may have been given the power to end fusion voting, which was widely seen as shot Gov. Andrew Cuomo directed at the Working Families Party after it organized liberal opposition against him last year.
Both the WFP and other groups that helped lead last year’s liberal uprising lambasted the measure. Any Democrat “who considers themselves an advocate of small-d democracy AND ending income/ wealth inequality MUST VOTE NO ON THIS BUDGET,” tweeted True Blue NY, which was created to defeat the IDC.
But in the end, the question of campaign finance reform followed a similar pattern this year as it did the last time it was on the table. In the run-up to the 2014 push, the IDC held a hearing on public financing and promised it was among their top priorities, only to vote in favor of a budget that included a compromise despised by reform groups. The same pattern happened this year, but it involved the members who ousted most of the IDC.
During the floor debate, several Democrats raised the valid criticism that the Legislature’s ability to shape the budget was limited by the governor’s outsized role in the product, and argued that this led to a document that was less than they wanted.
But while the members who disagreed with the end results could have feasibly derailed the bill had they stuck together, they all voted for it while sticking with the idea of unity.
“I will be voting yes, but with reservations,” said Sen. Robert Jackson (D-Manhattan), who explained he was doing so because of “the unity of our Democratic conference and to support all of the positive things that we have done.”
“I reluctantly vote yes because I know our conference is stronger,” said Sen. Julia Salazar (D-Brooklyn).
Article originally published on POLITICO Magazine
Source: http://subscriber.politicopro.com/article/2019/04/01/new-york-budget-provides-a-reality-check-for-albanys-progressives-942450
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The Article Was Written/Published By: billmahoney@politico.com (Bill Mahoney)
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