New York’s political class is not a breed known for candor. But one upstate Democrat is speaking out in a way seldom seen.
By now all Albany has read the bracing New York Times op-ed by Stephanie Miner. In it, the mayor of Syracuse scores Gov. Cuomo’s budget for “an accounting gimmick” that would “let municipalities push payment of today’s ballooning pension costs into the future” by borrowing more money.
“Borrowing makes sense when you’re building schools or roads,” she writes. “Using it to pay for recurring costs like retiree benefits is a path to insolvency.”
How rare it is to hear a New York politician speak so forthrightly about the eroding property-tax base, the vanishing middle class and the skyrocketing cost of public pensions upstate. What gives her words their special sting is that the mayor is also co-chair of the state Democratic Party — hand-picked for that job by Cuomo.
Alas, the reaction reveals as much about New York politics as anything she wrote. Far from encouraging others to speak up (even Republicans have been largely silent), the focus has been on whether Miner will now lose her position in the party.
The good news is that Miner says she has no plans to step aside and has doubled down on her criticism. “By the measure of the governor’s own budget division, 437 local governments are defined as ‘distressed,’” she notes. “This is not an acceptable situation.”
Make no mistake: Stephanie Miner still wants Cuomo to win re-election as governor. All she’s asking for, she says, is an “honest conversation” about the multiple fiscal pressures facing New York’s cities. We’ll soon learn if if it’s possible to have both.