ArcaMax

New Yorkers are getting robbed blind.

Gov. Kathy Hochul and the state's two legislative leaders announced a budget deal Monday night on how much to tax New Yorkers and how much the state government will spend in the coming fiscal year, which starts June 1.

From the smattering of information available, it's likely this deal will necessitate additional tax hikes months from now that could trigger an economic death spiral for the state and its largest city.

Here's the kicker. This is a backroom deal, done in secrecy. No press allowed, and none of the other 211 members of the legislature were permitted in the room.

New Yorkers are paying through the nose because of this backroom dealing. It allows the state to spend a staggering $254 billion in the coming year. That's more than it costs to run Florida and Texas combined, even though New York has 33 million fewer people to serve.

As lieutenant governor, I witnessed this backroom dealing 30 years ago. It prevented lawmakers from doing the right thing. They're still getting sidelined today. State Sen. Tom O'Mara considers the level of spending "reckless," but his voice isn't heard. In fact, there was no Republican in the room.

Now that the deal is announced, nine or more bills will be hurriedly printed and put on each lawmaker's desk, along with a "message of necessity" from the governor asking that it be voted on within hours, even in the middle of the night. Unread.

Lawmakers will vote with no debate. Like party puppets. This is not representative government.

The New York state Constitution requires three days to read a bill before voting on it. There is no justification for waiving that.

Americans fought a revolution against taxation without representation. New Yorkers should not put up with it in their own state capitol.

On her first day as governor, Hochul promised "a new era of transparency," but now she's going along with Albany's customary backroom horse trading.

She insists she doesn't negotiate "in public."

Sorry, but in public is how a budget affecting millions of New Yorkers should be negotiated.

Why elect 213 legislators and pay them the highest salary of state lawmakers anywhere in the U.S. -- a cool $142,000 a year -- only to lock them out, leaving them to wander the halls of the Capitol killing time.

Monday night, Hochul put out a press release boasting that the new budget deal doesn't "raise income or statewide business taxes" and reduces "the payroll mobility tax for small businesses." Those are half-truths at best.

The budget continues a tax hike on millionaires for five years that was scheduled to sunset, and increases the payroll mobility tax on most businesses in the Metropolitan Transit Authority region. New Yorkers would get a straight story if their reps and the press were allowed in the room.

One other state -- solidly blue California -- does backroom budget deals. Ironic that the Democratic Party styles itself the defender of democracy, but the two biggest Democratic-controlled states locked the people's reps out of the budgeting process.

Thirty years ago, there were complaints about "three men in a room" making the New York state budget. One of the three, then-state Senate Majority leader Joe Bruno, wrote a spirited defense of the backroom process in his memoir, claiming it worked pretty well.

Truth is, it doesn't work. New York state is one of the worst-governed states in the nation. New Yorkers pay the most in taxes, according to the Tax Foundation, but the state is rated 50 -- dead last -- in economic outlook, per Rich States Poor States.

More people are fleeing New York than any other state, turning the Empire State into the Exit State.

What's especially worrisome is that Hochul and her fellow dealmakers refuse to downsize the budget now to accommodate expected cuts in federal funding and possible downturns in tax revenue caused by financial market turmoil. Ed Ra, ranking Republican on the Assembly's Ways and Means Committee, said "Democrats keep warning about thunderstorms while driving with the top down."

An open budgeting process would invite more caveats like Ra's. Hochul's Budget Director Blake Washington says "we want to deal with the facts as they are today, not what could or could not be two months from now."

That's crazy. No sensible person managing their household budget would deliberately ignore risks ahead.

Count on the governor to come back in a month or two proposing tax hikes. Another nail in the coffin.

New Yorkers need to demand a real say in how their state is governed, tell their elected reps to do the same, and put an end to Three Stooges budget deals.

Betsy McCaughey is a former Lt. Governor of New York State and Chairman of the Committee to Reduce Infection Deaths at www.hospitalinfection.org. Follow her on Twitter @Betsy_McCaughey. To find out more about Betsy McCaughey and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate website at www.creators.com.

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