ALBANY — New York state is still at the top of the tax-and-spend heap and has a long way to go to tame its costly habits, a new analysis of the nation’s biggest states found.
Among six big states, New York cut fewer government jobs proportionately than New Jersey, California, Texas and Illinois over the last three years, with only Virginia adding jobs.
And New York was still spending the most on government while at the same time taxing the most as a portion of income in 2009, the report by former Federal Reserve Board Chairman Paul Volcker and ex-New York Lt. Gov. Richard Ravitch found.
New York and California enacted the biggest of 40 state tax or fee hikes during the global financial crisis between fiscal years 2009 and 2011, the “Report of the State Budget Crisis Task Force” found in warning that monetary woes are limiting states’ ability to deliver basic services.
New York nearly doubled its education spending per student from 1999 to 2009, boosting it to 68 percent above the national average.
And the Empire State’s Medicaid program spends more than Florida, Texas and Pennsylvania combined with 72 cents of every dollar going to optional medical services for the poor and disabled, the report found.
The task force, created to study state finances in the wake of the financial meltdown, did credit Gov. Cuomo for taking steps to rein in Medicaid spending.
But the report’s “unambiguous” conclusion about state governments stated, “The existing trajectory of state spending, taxation, and administrative practices cannot be sustained. The basic problem is not cyclical. It is structural.”
New York Budget Division spokesman Morris Peters said Cuomo has cut $77 billion from future projected deficits, pushed through pension benefit reductions forecast to save $80 billion over 30 years, and limited state spending growth to about 2 percent in each of his two years in office.
E.J. McMahon, director of the Empire Center for New York State Policy, said that with the exception of Cuomo’s property-tax cap, New York hasn’t made significant structural improvements.