Several flaws in New York’s ‘Robin Hood budget’

New York state took a beating from the coronavirus. The record-setting $212 billion state budget enacted last week, fattened with billions in federal relief, will go a long way to repairing the damage to education, small businesses, restaurants, the arts, renters, landlords and local governments.

A once-a-century pandemic merits a robust response. A 10 percent increase in spending, some of it based on one-shot revenues from the feds, is not sustainable.

Lawmakers and Gov. Andrew Cuomo missed a chance to put the state on a firmer financial footing once the federal money runs out. They had $22 billion more to spend over the next two years than when Cuomo proposed the budget in January. Yet they still raised $4 billion in taxes on businesses and the wealthiest New Yorkers. That decision will make our state less competitive and easier to leave.

Lawmakers also legalized mobile sports betting and, in separate legislation, recreational marijuana. We supported both policies but are skeptical of Cuomo’s revenue estimates. In a fit of progressive largesse, legislators showered $2 billion on immigrants without legal status who were excluded from previous pandemic relief programs. That was double the relief provided to small businesses, Assembly Minority Leader Will Barclay, R-pulaski, pointed out.

A few words about the budget process. It was uglier than usual.

Even in the best of times, three-way budget negotiations among the governor, Assembly Speaker Carl Heastie and Senate Majority Leader Andrea Stewart-cousins are opaque. In COVID times, with media and the public barred from the Capitol, budget deals were struck in total secrecy and after the April 1 deadline. Legislators had little or no time to vet them before voting into the wee hours Thursday. Journalists and policy wonks are still combing through the bills to figure out what’s in them. So much for transparency.

We’ve barely scratched the surface of this “Robin Hood budget” that takes from the rich and gives to government agencies. So much money sloshing around state and local governments and school districts raises New Yorkers’ expectations that things will get significantly better. Unless they waste it, that is. The windfall can lift New York out of its pandemic troubles only if it’s spent wisely and well.