New York Chief Judge Jonathan Lippman still doesn’t get it: The state continues to face difficult economic times.
Sure, he says he understands the “extraordinary fiscal challenges” confronting Albany. But he apparently believes that he and his court system are exempt from having to do their part by sacrificing.
Or should be exempt, anyway.
Lippman last week told court employees via webcast that many of their jobs are in peril because of the $170 million that was cut from his proposed $2.7 billion budget by Gov. Cuomo and the Legislature.
“Let there be no mistake,” he said. “The impact of our reduced budget will hurt our ability to serve all New Yorkers, and in particular those who come to our courts seeking justice.”
Now, pretty much every agency is singing the same tune.
But only Lippman dared to draw a line in the sand, having threatened earlier that the $100 million he’d already offered was “the maximum we can do without fatally wounding my branch of government.”
The odd possessive pronoun aside (his branch of government?), that $100 million offer was Lippman’s grudging concession to the governor’s insistence on a 10% across-the-board cut in all agencies.
At first, Lippman actually demanded a 5% increase over last year’s spending.
And even the final figure of $170 million amounts to a 6.3% reduction — far less than executive-branch agencies.
The cut in court funding, he whined, is “dramatically larger” than any seen over the past 15 years.
That’s for sure: In just the five years before this one, court budgets were up a staggering 28.8% — versus an inflation rate of just 11.4%.
And since Lippman took office in 2009, the figure is 12.7% — against just 1.2% inflation.
Lippman, in other words, is used to treating the public fisc as his and agency’s personal ATM — with an unlimited line of credit.
Which no doubt explains why the Court of Appeals is spending more than $23 million to convert an old office building into a set of subsidized luxury suites for the justices — who spend barely 60 days a year in Albany.
Time for Judge Lippman to man up and make do with less — like everyone else.