A massive budget with major flaws

Political leaders, never happier than when they are spending your money with wild abandon, were quick to pronounce the $212 billion state budget a great success. “This is the best state budget we’ve ever seen for New York City and the whole state of New York,” said Mayor de Blasio.

“This budget is certainly the most robust, most impactful, most important budget that we have done in this state, I believe, in modern history,” said Gov. Cuomo.

I beg to differ.

There are lots of good things the lawmakers agreed to, like $2.4 billion in rent and homeowner relief and tighter oversight of nursing homes. The $29 billion earmarked for green economy investments looks promising.

But side by side with the good stuff are some serious missteps.

The legalization of sports betting, like all state-sponsored gaming schemes, is a tax on the 1% of the population who happen to suffer from a particular illness called gambling disorder. These unfortunate New Yorkers are far more likely than the rest of us to spend beyond their means, bankrupting their families or ending up in dire situations that involve embezzlement or suicide.

There may be as many as 400,000 problem gamblers in our state — more than the number of alcohol abusers, according to one University of Buffalo study. The International Center for Responsible Gambling estimates that as much as 6% of all college students have the disorder, and warns that “teenagers and college-aged young adults are more impulsive and at higher risk for developing gambling disorders than adults.”

Given the state government’s deep involvement in gambling, from the daily sucker bets of the lottery to the hopeless odds offered at casinos around the state, Controller Tom DiNapoli has wisely suggested an annual assessment of the harm suffered by compulsive gamblers. We’ll see if that happens.

The state also plunged into the recreational marijuana business with scant concern for what might happen as this powerfully, addictive substance makes its way into general circulation. Dr. Yasmin Hurd, director of the Addiction Institute at Mount Sinai, has warned that the concentrations of THC in modern marijuana make it a much more potent substance than even 10 years ago.

Scores of businesses, many of them traded on Wall Street, are waiting in the wings to sell this stuff by the ton — to your kids, your neighbors, maybe the guy driving your cab.

Confronted with the important question of how to measure, detect and prevent impaired driving, the lawmakers punted, referring the question to a panel that will look into the matter. Legalization first, public safety later (we hope).

And then there’s the question of taxes. New York will now proudly hit high-income families with the highest rates in America, despite getting an unexpected windfall from President Biden’s federal relief bill.

I talked about it with Kathy Wylde, president of the Partnership for New York City, the association of major local corporations.

“I think raising taxes this year, when revenues have come in higher than anybody expected, when we’ve gotten $100 billion committed to New York by the federal government — thank you, Sen. Schumer — to raise taxes this year is pure venom,” Wylde told me.

The problem, she said, is that it has never been spelled out exactly how the state and city plan to revive businesses and get New York back on its feet as the pandemic subsides.

“If you had sat down with the leadership of the business community last year and said ‘What do we need to do for this city to recover? What are we going to invest in our travel and tourism industry, in our cultural institutions, in our small business? How are we going to bring this economy back?’ “she said. “That conversation would have led to agreement on what we would do, an agreement on what kind of revenues we needed to raise.”

Wylde said that, with a genuine dialogue, the big businesses wouldn’t necessarily have objected to a tax hike at all.

“After 9/11, we supported the increases in the real estate taxes,” she told me. “When the subways were falling apart, we supported the mobility tax. We supported the commuter tax. We supported Gov. Cuomo on extending the millionaire’s tax — and when he made it permanent in return for getting public pension reform, we supported it. But those conversations can’t take place when you start with an agenda coming from the advocates that they want $50 billion in new revenues, to do God knows what.”

So we go into the new fiscal year with a government that will spend more than $6,700 per second over the next year, more than $58 million each day. We will watch tens of thousands of New Yorkers fall into the trap of addiction and make money from their pain.

We could have done better. Maybe next year.

Louis is political anchor of NY1 News.