Joe Bruno is up to his old tricks, it seems.
Spending tricks, that is: How else to explain his remarks yesterday to Post State Editor Fredric U. Dicker about plugging a $4.3 billion hole in next year’s budget?
Bruno talked about new ways to bolster state revenues – like stepping up efforts to collect unpaid taxes. He cited a one-time $2 billion to $3 billion cash infusion from letting a nonprofit health insurer switch to for-profit, with Albany keeping the proceeds of the initial stock offering.
Hello? How about just not spending so much money?
That barely came up. It just wasn’t a major blip on Bruno’s radar screen.
Even though he’s the highest-ranking Republican in elected office in New York – and Republicans are supposed to care about holding down government spending and taxes.
Instead, Bruno talked about New Yorkers’ many needs – i.e., wants – and how best to address them – i.e., by spending money Albany doesn’t have.
Which must have been music to the ears of the public-sector unions, which benefit most from government spending.
But get this: Even Senate Minority Leader Malcolm Smith – a liberal Democrat – floated an idea to contain the budget. Smith suggested not replacing some 4,000 state workers of the 12,000 expected to retire next year.
Is “Republican” Bruno to the left of Democrat Smith? Perhaps.
But wait: Shouldn’t Bruno feel a little emboldened by the good will he’s gotten as the ostensible victim of Team Spitzer’s Dirty Tricks Campaign? (That’s the project, recall, by Gov. Spitzer‘s office to use the State Police to gather dirt on Bruno.)
Well, as much as that scandal has hurt Spitzer, it doesn’t seem to have empowered Bruno one bit. Not if he’s still in full drunken-sailor mode, anyway.
And if Bruno can’t restrain himself now, when will he?
No wonder New York never gets any relief from its heaviest-in-the-nation tax burden. Pathetic is hardly the word for it.