Are we getting what we pay for in Albany?

By the time this goes to press, the State Legislature will most likely have adopted -- albeit a little late -- its record-breaking 2009-2010 budget: a $132 billion spending plan that raises total spending by more than $10 billion (8.5 percent) over last year.

The budget will include more than $170 million in so-called member items, most of which are and will remain unitemized in the budget documents. They will be doled out by members of the Senate and the Assembly, with little opportunity for advance public scrutiny, in proportion to the members' political muscle in the state capital. Basically, it's a $170 million slush fund for state legislators to use as they see fit.

This, quite understandably, has a lot of people oinking about "pork barrel spending" in Albany.

And while this practice is ripe for abuse by unscrupulous politicians (What? Unscrupulous politicians in Albany?), it's also something of a scapegoat and a distraction from what's really ailing the state's fiscal condition.

I'm certainly not defending the practice of legislators setting aside that kind of dough to be quietly divvied up behind closed doors in ways that reward supporters, spread good will on the home front and help ensure incumbents' re-election.

But -- time for a reality check, folks. That pretty much describes the entire budget process to a T, doesn't it? Closed-door meetings in which the state's power brokers divvy up the pot in ways that reward supporters and special interests, spread good will on the home front and help ensure incumbents' re-election. If this practice were limited to the $170 million in "member items," we taxpayers would have it made. Instead, Albany's long-standing budget-making tradition -- the practice of "three men in a room" brokering deals with millions -- uh, make that billions -- of our tax dollars, got worse instead of better under one-party rule in Albany this year, despite the Democrats' promises of open government, transparency and accountability. This year, now that Democrats have control of the Senate (tenuous as it may be) there was no counterbalance to Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver. The other two men in the room -- a weak and ineffectual Gov. David Paterson and a weak and ineffectual Senate Majority Leader Malcom Smith -- went along to get along. They both need Silver to survive, politically. He was calling the shots all the way. When the deal was done, it was, as usual, presented for the inevitable rubber-stamping by the full chambers. And inevitable it is.

The State Senate's Web site has the various budget documents posted for public inspection. That's a good thing, of course. But I dare you to go make sense -- real sense -- of any of it. Color me crazy. I tried. I scrolled through hundreds of pages of appropriations bills and budget schedules. Lots and lots of numbers for countless numbers of programs, agencies and budget lines. Numbers so big, they begin to lose meaning. A 100 million here, 200 million there, pretty soon you're talking real money. It's genuinely mind-boggling.

One thing that stuck with me following my attempt to understand the state budget deal: It costs New York taxpayers nearly $200 million just to fund the operations of the State Legislature. Member and staff salaries, stipends and fringe benefits, travel, supplies, printing and postage (to send us those attractive, well-timed "legislative reports" just before the biennial elections, boasting about what a fine job they're doing fighting to protect taxpayers). Then there's overhead, like utilities, "telephone and telegraph" -- telegraph? really? -- and millions in unspecified "contractual expenses." So many questions, so many numbers, so little time and opportunity for answers. For instance, since taxpayers are spending upwards of $145 million on member and staff salaries and benefits, why are we also spending $13 million on something called the legislative bill drafting commission? Isn't bill drafting part of the members' jobs? And what about more than $900,000 for the "legislative messenger service" or the $213,000 for the "legislative health service?" That's more than $1 million to run documents and dispense aspirin for our "representatives."

Why are we spending so much dough on 212 legislators, their staffs and all the bells and whistles that go along with it, when, in the end, it all comes down to what one man, Manhattan Democrat Sheldon Silver, wants, anyway? The rest is all window dressing. Very expensive window dressing.

So in a budget that eliminated STAR property tax rebates and failed to address inequities in state aid to education, I'll take those local member items, thank you very much. They represent a few crumbs relative to what we send to Albany, but at least it's something.

Ms. Civiletti invites you to join a discussion of this topic at civiletti.blogspot.com. Her e-mail address is denise@timesreview.com.

Long Island's death by taxes

Tallgrass The magnitude of it takes your breath away. Set in the context of the lot lines of surrounding properties and roadways, the Tallgrass PDD map makes your jaw drop. At least it did mine.

Three hundred seventy-eight homes, 175,000 square feet of retail space, and an 18-hole golf course set on 320 acres. High density but “smart” development, at least according to proponents who say the overall environmental and economic impacts of the 283 single-family homes the developer could build as-of-right under current zoning. A Hobsian choice.

Small wonder many Shoreham residents were clamoring for the government to buy the land for preservation, and why Shoreham Councilman Kevin McCarrick tried to maneuver a moratorium to give the preservation effort time to bear fruit.

Is preservation the right thing for Tallgrass? I’m not so sure. Public funds for preservation are scarce and must be spent according to a well-thought-out plan that prioritizes properties according to objective criteria — which, in the best of all worlds, shouldn’t include “not in my backyard.”

When it comes to development, we’ve gotten a lot wrong on Long Island. We’ve carved this place up into large lots and built big homes surrounded by a lot of lawn, kept green and pretty by high doses of fertilizer and pesticides. We’ve shunned public transportation, and made being a pedestrian a life-threatening endeavor. We’ve constructed “The American Dream” on this fragile spit of barrier beach, and we’re learning that the dream is, in some ways, more of a nightmare.

Astronomical property taxes stalk us in our nightmare. Taxes have driven businesses and people off Long Island. They’ve made it hard to hire qualified employees from other places. I speak from hard experience in this. I lost a great editor because he got fed up with his $12,000 annual property tax bill. In his new home in the Midwest, he’s got a bigger house and his property taxes are around $2,000. I lost the opportunity to hire, over the past couple of years, two great editors — one from Virginia and one from Missouri — because of Long Island’s property taxes. Both were flabbergasted by the amounts we have to shell out every month to pay property taxes around here. Their tax bills now, they told me, are under $2,000 a year, an amount that would at least triple if they came to work for me here on Long Island. As an employer, I’m struggling to be able to pay employees enough to afford to live here. And it hurts.

Taxes, taxes, taxes. They were the talk of the town at the Republican convention last week. The Republicans, who arrived at the convention in cars bearing “Hi-Tax Foley” bumper stickers, would have us believe that property taxes were invented by Brookhaven Democrats. But there isn’t a thoughtful person alive on Long Island who would buy into that oversimplified poppycock. (Advice to Brookhaven Republicans: Don’t insult the voters’ intelligence.)

Property taxes — along with electric rates — are indeed killing us. Most of the property tax burden (around two-thirds) is the tab for education. Developers, in recognition of this fact, have crafted proposals to limit impacts on our schools, and, therefore, on our tax bills. These are often ultra-high-density projects like Tallgrass, but the pitch — now a familiar refrain — is that the project won’t bring a lot of children into our schools, either because ownership is limited to the over-55 set or because the housing units contain fewer than three bedrooms. So a plan with 378 homes developed with (theoretically) child-limiting housing stock is “better” than one with fewer, bigger homes, a large retail development and a golf course.

I find this all very sad. For one thing, children are not one of the seven plagues (though as the mother of teenagers, sometimes I wonder). And housing developments that don’t “add” children to the schools are not, by definition, automatically wonderful. Senior citizen housing comes with its own burdens — ask hospital administrators and our volunteer ambulance squads about that. Besides all that, the health of our local economy depends, in large part, on young workers who need to be able to buy houses and raise families.

We need the right mix of housing; single-family homes, townhouses, condos and rental units are all an important part of the mix. Sometimes it requires biting the bullet on a gargantuan housing project, like Tallgrass or the one being planned for Yaphank. Sometimes it means tacking a TDR component onto an open space bond or transfer tax.

But we also desperately need tax relief, and it can’t come from limiting the child-bearing-age population. It must come, in part, from the frugal administration of governments at all levels, from Albany down to the local school districts. And it must come from a wholesale restructuring of how we fund public education, one that shifts the burden from property taxes to income taxes. Without such a shift, property taxes here have nowhere to go but up; let’s not allow ourselves to be fooled by shallow promises of politicians willing to cook the books to win elections. (Did somebody say “tax holiday?”)

We’re in trouble here, folks. Who has the chutzpah to admit it and the backbone to tackle the crisis head-on? That’s what we need. As County Executive Steve Levy, a scrappy Democrat and self-described fiscal conservative, told the Republican convention when he accepted their cross-endorsement last week, taxes are not a partisan issue. Quality of life is not a partisan issue. These things transcend party politics. They are the stuff of the American Dream, things that are important to all of us, regardless of which box we check off on the voter enrollment form.

“Hi-Tax Foley” may sound good to Republican campaign strategists, just as the refrain of government reform in “Crookhaven” was sweet music for Democratic operatives two years ago. But voters will be looking beyond campaign slogans to the meat-and-potatoes of candidates’ plans to control property taxes and their ability to make the tough decisions that need to be made — to deliver government services efficiently, protect the environment, preserve our quality of life and allow the next generation to pursue its dreams in the place we call home.