The good news out of Albany last week was that the 66,000-member Civil Service Employees Association, the state’s largest public-employee union, voted to accept a five-year contract that provides no wage increases during the first three years, hikes health-care contributions and imposes two furlough periods, one of them unpaid.
The agreement, which spares the CSEA from thousands of threatened layoffs, went a long way toward cutting state workforce costs by $450 million during the current fiscal year, now in its fifth month.
Which brings us to the bad news — for Gov. Cuomo, the Legislature and, potentially, all New York taxpayers — that came from state Comptroller Tom DiNapoli just two days after the CSEA contract was approved.
Noting that July receipts were nearly $352 million below financial-plan estimates, DiNapoli concluded, “New York’s recovering economy is struggling to reach cruising altitude, and the turbulence from volatile financial markets, a lackluster job market, a struggling housing sector and political brinksmanship in Washington is creating additional drag.’’
To say the least.
As everyone knows, the national economy is bordering on a double-dip recession and Wall Street, whose bonuses provide 20 percent of New York’s personal-income taxes, is in turmoil.
Cuomo for months has hoped that much of the $2.5 billion projected deficit for the fiscal year that starts next April 1 would be wiped out by a recovering economy.
DiNapoli’s report indicates that’s not going to happen.
State lawmakers, all 212 of whom are up for re-election next year, had hoped the new fiscal year would bring new opportunities for politically favored spending — including the restart of the widely criticized pork-barrel “member item’’ system of earmarks, which was suspended amid a financial meltdown two years ago.
DiNapoli’s report indicates that’s not going to happen, either.
Finally, overburdened taxpayers hoping that Cuomo’s success this year in cutting state spending and holding the line on taxes would finally produce some actual tax cuts next year are almost certain to be disappointed once again — if the warnings in DiNapoli’s report hold true.
Bottom line: Until the national and New York economies really begin to improve, hard-nosed austerity must be the first imperative guiding spending in the state.