The first time I visited the Albany YMCA was about 40 years ago. My friend Matt was a member, and invited me along to play some basketball and shoot some pool. It’s never been a glamorous facility, especially compared to some of the big and beautiful new Y facilities in some of the suburbs. But the old building on Washington Avenue in Albany is still an important part of the community for a lot of city residents, both young and not-so-young.

Now, the future of the Washington Avenue Y hangs in the balance. Like many urban YMCAs around the country, the old Albany facility has been losing members, and losing money, in recent years. At some point, that trend becomes unsustainable. The Capital District YMCA, of which the Albany Y is one part, has determined that the Washington Avenue facility will have to close down in March or April unless some major increase in membership or independent financial support develops very soon.

One way to look at this is that the closing of an old YMCA is inevitable, given the broader changes taking place in Albany and other older cities. When I went to the Y as a kid back in the 1960s, Albany was home to about 125,000 people. Since then, the population has declined by 30,000 or so. The neighborhoods closest to the downtown Y have grown poorer. Families, in particular, are more likely to live in the suburbs.

In some ways, all of this is a vicious cycle – one that you can see in every city in Upstate New York, as well as in many urban centers elsewhere in the country. Middle-class residents move out of the central city, or out of the region altogether. Those who remain are, on average, poorer than was the case a generation ago. The concentration of family and social problems increases. Then, still more people decide to move away. How do we change that cycle?

Institutions like the YMCA are precisely the kinds of anchors we need to keep cities from drifting further into decline. From that perspective, closing the Albany is exactly the wrong decision. At the same time, the management and the volunteer board members of any nonprofit organization have to act as responsible fiduciaries for the donors and members whose dollars make everything possible. When the financial losses at a facility such as the Washington Avenue Y mount higher and higher, with no end in sight, what choices do they have?

A few hundred people gathered at the Albany Public Library earlier this week to try to answer that question. One of those was a 19-year-old who talked about how important the Y’s programs are in keeping young men like himself from joining gangs and contributing to the criminal activity that too often haunts the poorer neighborhoods of our cities. If anyone needed a good reminder that the Y means more than a swimming pool and treadmills for the middle class, the young gentleman provided just that.

So is there a way for Albany to keep one of its longtime social anchors? The easiest answer is that in the capital city, the state should step in with new funding. But that’s not likely to happen – New York State’s own revenues are down by billions of dollars because of the recession, and state leaders are looking for ways to cut the budget rather than add to it. More importantly, a community-based service should rely on support from the community, rather than grow dependent on outside funding that may prove unreliable in the future.

The best hope is that hundreds of new members will join the Albany Y, and soon. Personally, I recommend it highly. The exercise facilities are good, the locker rooms are clean, the people who work there are helpful and dedicated. If you’re a runner, Washington Park and other good routes are nearby.

It’s true that parking at the Washington Avenue Y is limited. The City of Albany might be able to help with that. There are a couple of public parking lots nearby. If Y members were allowed to use the lots, it could make an important difference to the stability of the center of the capital city.

If you’re looking to make a financial contribution to a worthy organization in the Capital Region, the YMCA is one to consider. You can find out more at their website, cdymca.org.

Maybe it’s too late to save the old Y on Washington Avenue. But maybe not. Maybe this could be an occasion when things get turned around… the community responds…and we save something worth keeping. Maybe.

Robert Ward is deputy director of the Nelson A. Rockefeller Institute of Government, the public-policy research arm of the State University of New York. He is also author of New York State Government: Second Edition, published by the Rockefeller Institute Press.

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What comes to your mind when you hear the words "politics" and "politician"? If your first thoughts on those subjects are less than flattering, you're not alone. Surveys show popular opinions regarding Congress, the New York State Legislature and politicians generally are at historically low levels.

But at its best, politics represents the art of bringing people together to serve the greatest good. That was the case with Green Island’s Jack McNulty.

Like many urban areas in New York, Green Island was once a major industrial center. Henry Ford visited the community around a century ago and decided the availability of hydropower and hard-working local men made it the perfect spot for one of his factories. Other big manufacturers located there, as well. Later in the 20th Century, as American manufacturing went into decline, Green Island lost most of the factories and hundreds of good jobs. The big blow came in the late 1980s, when the Ford plant finally closed after years of downsizing.

Now, that story is all too typical of older communities throughout the northeastern United States. But while the decline of manufacturing left only blight in many urban centers, that didn’t happen in Green Island. Jack McNulty’s leadership was one major reason.

He was a traditional, organization Democrat in the best meaning of those terms. As mayor of Green Island and in other elected offices, his approach was always the same. He took care of people. He looked for those who needed help, and did his best to see that they got it. The voters responded by keeping Jack in office for half a century and supporting members of his family when they entered public service. Jack was able to help his son, Mike, get elected first to local office, then to the state Assembly, and finally to Congress in 1988. It was a proud time for Jack and the entire family. Another high moment came in 2002 when his daughter, Ellen, was elected to succeed him as mayor.

I had the opportunity to work on Mike McNulty’s first congressional campaign, and the pleasure to meet his father Jack in that context. What a gentleman. He made you feel like you were a special friend of his and of the family. There were hundreds – more likely, thousands – of such friends.

Jack McNulty went about his work quietly and effectively. His son Mike and daughter Ellen have taken the same approach to politics. It’s often said that in Congress there are some who are showhorses, and others who are workhorses. True to his family roots, Congressman McNulty was always known as a workhorse.

The Democratic party came to power in Albany County in the early 1920s. By the late 1960s, under party Chairman Dan O’Connell and Albany Mayor Erastus Corning, much of the party was stagnating. Albany’s representative in the state Assembly had risen to become chairman of the powerful Ways and Means Committee in the state Legislature. But in 1968, despite the Democrats’ overwhelming advantage in enrollment, the incumbent Assemblyman lost to a hardworking young Republican named Fred Field. Jack McNulty said years later it shouldn’t have been a surprise. The Democratic incumbent had grown complacent, and didn’t spend much time with the party and with the people. Some politicians forget that, in a democracy, the people choose their leaders. Jack McNulty was not one to forget something as important as that.

Much of the public debate in New York State today revolves around the troubling decline we’ve seen relative to the rest of the nation, economically and politically, for half a century now. The nationwide Census being taken in a few months will result in the Empire State losing more clout in Congress. We once had 45 seats in the House of Representatives. Now we’re at 29, and still headed down.

But if people voting with their feet is a measure of political health, things are good in Green Island. Its population is up by more than 10 percent in the last few years. New housing developments and new jobs are making the little village a popular place. Many of those new jobs are attracted by the low utility rates that the Green Island Power Authority offers from its hydropower plant on the Hudson. Created in 1986, the power authority was the first such local entity in New York. Jack McNulty saw to that.

In an obituary, his family wrote, “Jack represented everything that is good and honest about public service.” The many friends who came to honor Jack in the days after his passing away certainly would agree. Isn’t it good to know that, in a cynical age, there are still some political leaders who have earned such a tribute?

Robert Ward is deputy director of the Nelson A. Rockefeller Institute of Government, the public-policy research arm of the State University of New York. He is also author of New York State Government: Second Edition, published by the Rockefeller Institute Press.

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What do we want for Christmas this year? Your list might differ from mine - you may be hoping for one of the latest smartphones, while I could use a new sweater vest. For Christmas dessert, maybe some warm mince pie. Or do you prefer a couple of bourbon balls?

Some things on our lists are more universal. If we really could have all our Christmas wishes come true, we'd make sure every kid gets presents under the tree, and a happy home. We wish all the soldiers around the world could return to their families, for good. If nothing else, we hope the day will bring a little peace to our own immediate world, and to the world around us. And so we generally try to make our own contribution, in ways that vary from one to another just like our Christmas lists. Maybe it’s a special donation to the church, the Salvation Army, or a favorite community group. Caroling at a nursing home. Maybe even something as simple as being the first to say I'm sorry after a family fight.

As Linus reminds us in the Charlie Brown Christmas special, the real meaning of the day is to celebrate not only the birth of a child a couple of thousand years ago, but the broader promise of new life for all. And that promise isn't limited to faithful Christians. Each religion and every culture has its own tradition of celebrating life and new birth.

My friend Father Peter Young, who dedicates his own life to helping others, often says that unless someone offers a friendly smile, a helping hand, a caring word, or a listening ear, someone somewhere loses the courage to live. This is an especially good time to act on that wise thought.

All the rushing and the noise of the modern holiday can make Christmas sometimes feel…not so Christmasy. Maybe we know that the gift we want, or want to give, just isn't affordable this year. Maybe we're not surrounded by the kind of family we think we want. Maybe we just wish we could reclaim Christmas magic we remember from childhood.

A few years ago, around this time, our family had dinner with an older couple who have been very generous with their love and gifts to our children over the years. We were reminiscing about Christmas. The husband, who grew up not far from here during the Depression, told us about one Christmas he remembered. His mother had to work very hard to support him and his sister. For a while she was living away from her children to be near her job. On Christmas Day, all alone, the only thing that Joe and his sister had in the way of presents was one orange shared between the two of them.

Joe told the story with no self pity, just a sort of quiet amazement at the difference between then and now. How lucky we've been, he said. How lucky we’ve been.

Recalling Joe’s Christmas story is near the top of our list every year. We have a bowl full of oranges and of course take them for granted. How lucky we’ve been.

What’s on your list this year?

Robert Ward is deputy director of the Nelson A. Rockefeller Institute of Government, the public-policy research arm of the State University of New York. He is also author of New York State Government: Second Edition, published by the Rockefeller Institute Press.

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It looks as though New York’s Legislature may be moving, in fits and starts, toward approving some form of Governor Paterson’s plan to eliminate the budget gap for the rest of this year. Such a move would eliminate any danger that the state might run out of cash, or have to delay payments to local governments and school districts, within the next few weeks.

The precise nature of the Legislature’s approach to closing the gap is still unclear. It’s likely to include some fairly modest scaling back of the education budget, leaving local school districts with more assistance than they received from Albany last year but with a smaller increase than they expected. There may be higher taxes on health coverage, which can allow the state to draw down more federal funding. Almost certainly, there will be some budgetary gimmicks of the sort that don’t solve any long-term problems but do allow the state to muddle through the rest of the year.

Let’s consider a quick review of how the state arrived at this point. Across the country, every state is having trouble making ends meet because any recession drives down tax revenues, and this latest downturn in the national economy is the worst since the Great Depression of the 1930s. In that context, it would be surprising if New York and other states did not have serious problems. We’ve lost more than 250,000 jobs in New York over the past year, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. When people lose their jobs, they cut back on their spending, so the sales tax revenue that the state and county governments collect goes down. With payrolls shrinking, the state sees income tax payments shrink, as well.

The most important element in terms of the state budget and our overall regional economy is Wall Street. The bankers and financial wizards are not especially popular right now. But the taxes they pay support an awful lot of the funding that New York State provides to local schools, public transportation and nonprofit agencies that care for the disabled. State Comptroller Tom DiNapoli estimates that tax revenues from the financial markets will be down by three to four billion dollars this year. It’s not a coincidence that three to four billion dollars represents the amount of the budget gap that Governor Paterson is asking the Legislature to help manage.

This week’s news reminded us of two other factors that New Yorkers and their elected leaders will need to think about.

First, at the national level, is the possibility of action in Washington on health-care reform. If President Obama and Congress do enact a major expansion of publicly supported health care, it’s likely that one result will be significant additional costs for New York and other states. All of the competing health-care plans that have any chance of passage include coverage for more Americans under the Medicaid program. That’s a good thing, in many ways. But there’s no getting around the fact that our state and local governments share in the cost of Medicaid. So once the new national plan is in effect, some of the costs will likely show up in our state and county tax bills.

The second relevant news item this week, more long-term in nature, is what we saw happen when President Obama visited China. The President went to talk about a number of issues, ranging from sanctions against Iran and human rights, to currency values and other economic concerns. The visit had some positive outcomes. But Chinese leaders refused to budge on most of the major issues. And that reality reflected a dramatic change in the two nations’ relative positions in the global economy. Here’s the way the New York Times characterized it:

“This is no longer the United States-China relationship of old but an encounter between a weakened giant and a comer with a bit of its own swagger. Washington’s comparative advantage in past meetings is now diminished, a fact clearly not lost on the Chinese.”

What does that have to do with the New York State budget? Well, perhaps more than any other state, New York has reaped the benefits of more than a century of global economic dominance by the United States. That leadership position has been especially clear on Wall Street, and has paid off in uncounted billions of dollars flowing into the state treasury and then back out to school districts, hospitals and other public services. A change in the global economic balance is likely to mean a new budget reality for New York – an unwelcome one.

Robert Ward is deputy director of the Nelson A. Rockefeller Institute of Government, the public-policy research arm of the State University of New York. He is also author of New York State Government: Second Edition, published by the Rockefeller Institute Press.

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Robert Ward is deputy director of the Nelson A. Rockefeller Institute of Government, the public-policy research arm of the State University of New York. He is also author of New York State Government: Second Edition, published by the Rockefeller Institute Press.

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Next time you drive over a bridge, think about the budget discussions Governor Paterson and the Legislature are having at the state Capitol these days.

What’s the connection? Well, let’s take the Lake Champlain Bridge that connects New York and Vermont. The bridge is a basic part of the public infrastructure for thousands of people who live and work in the North Country, carrying some 3,400 vehicles on an average day. State engineers decided last week that the bridge is too dangerous to keep open, after years of freezing and thawing lake water had damaged the concrete piers that keep the structure standing.

There are two crises going on here. One is the urgent problem of finding a way to restore something approaching normal business for people who use the bridge to get to work, to keep a farm business going, to see a doctor or otherwise go about day-to-day life. The much bigger issue is whether New York, or other states for that matter, can manage the budget well enough to take care of the things that we’ve come to consider basic necessities.

If you look back in history, let’s say to a century ago, keeping the roads safe for public use was one of the two basic services of state and local governments – the other being education. Nothing else came close. Now, transportation is a relatively small part of the state/local budget picture that’s increasingly dominated by health care and education. And so, while New York’s funding for public schools and the Medicaid program has risen sharply in recent years, the Department of Transportation has not had the funding to rebuild the bridge over Lake Champlain.

Here’s one small example of how the state’s current budget problems make it harder to deal with the Champlain bridge closure: The state Department of Transportation has created a toll-free hotline you can call if you need updated information or have questions you want to ask. The number is 888-769-7243. But the hotline is only open from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. weekdays, the normal schedule for state workers. State agencies have been allowing staff levels to fall by attrition as one way of addressing the state’s overall budget gap. That makes it harder to reassign folks to cover an emergency hotline on nights or weekends, when some of the affected residents might find it useful to make a call.

Now, if you don’t near Lake Champlain, this is still worth attention. You can think of the Champlain bridge as one early warning of what may be coming if the state’s fiscal picture continues to deteriorate in coming years. There’s another bridge, a couple hundred miles to the south, that is also deteriorating. There’s no indication that the Tappan Zee Bridge is unsafe, but state officials have known for years it will need to be replaced at some point in the not-too-distant future. The problem is, they have no good way to pay the multiple hundreds of millions of dollars that a new bridge over the lower Hudson River would require. Even a partial closure of the Tappan Zee Bridge, if it ever came to that, could mean major disruption for tens of thousands of New Yorkers and real harm to the state’s economy.

Ideally, as state leaders look for ways to balance the budget this year and next, they’ll be able to find ways to reduce costs or bring in new revenue rather than reducing services or postponing essential things such as bridge maintenance. The State University of New York, for example, is facing another round of budget cuts that will hurt its ability to educate the next generation and contribute to the state’s economic growth. But there are ideas out there that could help avert real harm. For example, the Commission on Higher Education proposed last year to allow campuses to lease or transfer property for economic development projects more easily. That would require the Legislature to give up some control of SUNY, but could bring in new revenue and jobs.

Governor Paterson is right that the more tough choices are punted to the future, the worse the ultimate damage will be. We’ll see more poorly planned cuts in spending. The result of that will be more crises like the closure of the Lake Champlain Bridge. The earlier the state addresses its budget problems in a serious way, the more we might be able to avoid the worst of the possible impacts.

Robert Ward is deputy director of the Nelson A. Rockefeller Institute of Government, the public-policy research arm of the State University of New York. He is also author of New York State Government: Second Edition, published by the Rockefeller Institute Press.

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Community colleges used to be the Rodney Dangerfields of our education system – they got no respect. When I was a kid growing up in Albany, teenagers would often refer to Hudson Valley Community College as Harvard on the Hudson, dismissively – as though it was worth a laugh just to mention the local two-year college in the same breath as the Ivy League.

Now, community colleges are finally getting the respect they’ve long deserved. And of course nothing shows that more clearly than a tip of the hat from the President of the United States. President Obama’s visit to Hudson Valley a few days ago was noteworthy for many reasons. Among the most important is the renewed attention it focuses on what may be the most underappreciated and overachieving segment of American public education.

David Shaffer, a senior fellow at the Rockefeller Institute, writes that community colleges are the grab-bag, or handymen, of our public higher education system. In fact, Shaffer says, they’re expected to do so many things that there’s reason to worry about them doing the most important things well.

One example of the many responsibilities we assign to community colleges is the remedial education they must provide to thousands of high-school graduates who arrive each year simply lacking the writing, math and other skills that a high-school diploma once guaranteed. Talk with educators and administrators at community colleges, and this is one of the common concerns you’re likely to hear. From one perspective, remedial programs – or developmental education courses as they’re often known – are a natural extension of community colleges’ important focus on providing access to students who otherwise would find it hard to obtain a higher education. But do these courses really represent higher education? Or are they more an effort to provide basic skills that ideally would have been learned in middle school or high school?

These questions are worth raising because, as President Obama said during his visit to Troy, community colleges are increasingly taking on a new role: they’re preparing students for the high-technology jobs of the 21st Century, and in the process are preparing America for the 21st Century global economy.

“This is a place,” the President told his audience at HVCC, “this is a place where anyone with the desire to take their career to a new level or start a new career altogether has the opportunity to pursue that dream. This is a place,” he said, “where people of all ages and backgrounds – even in the face of obstacles, even in the face of very difficult personal challenges – can take a chance on a brighter future for themselves and for their family.”

And the president went further. He pointed out that the role community colleges can play in economic development is especially important in Upstate New York. He noted that this region has been dealing for years with what amounts almost to a permanent recession: an economic downturn that’s driven more and more young people from their hometowns, forcing them to go elsewhere in search of opportunity.

This is where the future of community colleges, and all of our higher education system, becomes more important than ever. We can see the promise of new jobs and new investment generated here by world-class enterprises – among them IBM, GE Energy and the new semiconductor factory that Global Foundries is building in Saratoga County. Don’t forget that those jobs and investments will produce new tax revenues to help the state, local governments and school districts continue to provide essential services. And they all depend, in some fashion, on the education that New Yorkers receive at Hudson Valley and other community colleges.

Until the middle of the 20th century, higher education in New York was very much dominated by private colleges and universities. Other states, many in the West, embraced the two-year public college long before New York did so. That changed largely because of the leadership of Nelson Rockefeller, who nearly tripled the number of community colleges in the state and expanded their role generally within our higher education system. Now, New York’s two-year colleges are widely regarded as among the best in the country. The President’s visit to Hudson Valley Community College is the latest indication that we are likely to depend even more heavily on these institutions, as we prepare the future workforce and build a new economy in the years ahead.

Robert Ward is deputy director of the Nelson A. Rockefeller Institute of Government, the public-policy research arm of the State University of New York. He is also author of New York State Government: Second Edition, published by the Rockefeller Institute Press.

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If you know anyone who can't afford health insurance, or if you're a small business owner who can't afford to provide coverage for employees, chances are you've been paying close attention to the national debate over reform of the health insurance marketplace. And if you are simply an average taxpayer concerned about the nation's balance sheet and the debt piling up for our children, you're probably watching closely as well.

The release of a new proposal by Senate Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus moves the debate a big step closer to the endgame. The outlines of the competing plans – five major proposals now on the table in Congress – are largely complete. Now we'll find out whether there can be negotiation among the widely varying opinions in the House and Senate, and whether President Obama can overcome strong resistance and a lot of apathy to enact the most significant new government program in more than four decades.

In past debates over health care, the question was often whether the government and the taxpayers would do more, in terms of direct subsidies, to help lower-income Americans afford coverage. That question is less controversial now than some of the other issues, such as whether the government should create its own plan to compete with private insurers. The Senate Finance proposal does not include the so-called public plan, and Senator Baucus said that’s partly because he simply does not believe a government-sponsored plan would pass in the Senate.

One of the truisms of American politics is that we remain a somewhat conservative nation – conservative in the sense that it’s hard to build a majority for dramatic change in a short time. You can see this on the issue of gay marriage. There, public opinion has been moving steadily in the direction of changing the traditional definition of marriage, but not yet enough to convince most elected officials. And while most Americans believe we all should have access to decent health care, millions of voters are still cautious about the possibility of going too far and spending too much.

Like it or not, that’s why the Senate Finance Committee plan is the most promising of the proposals now on the table to serve as an outline for final legislation that might reach President Obama’s desk. The president himself has all but admitted that the public plan is unlikely to survive. If anything is to pass Congress this year, it may be some expansion of health-care assistance for lower-income workers, new federal mandates as to minimum services that must be included in any health-insurance plan, other regulations on insurers, and new taxes and fees.

So then the question becomes, what does all of this mean for the future of health care? Let’s admit we don’t really know. When Massachusetts adopted its version of health-care reform three years ago, no one was really sure what would happen as a result of the new legal mandate on individuals to obtain health insurance. In fact, we’re still trying to figure out exactly what the impact of that mandate and other changes have been. We know the number of uninsured in Massachusetts has gone down, and that the cost has gone up more than expected. But it will be years before we fully understand why, and what lessons other states and Congress should draw from the Massachusetts experiment.

Here in New York, Governor Paterson is trying to persuade the Legislature to deal with an estimated $2 billion budget gap for this year, and a much bigger problem facing the state in the next two years. Medicaid and other health-care costs are among the big drivers of the state’s perpetual budget problems. If there is action in Washington on health-care reform, how will that affect New York and other states? Again, we don’t really know. James Knickman, president of the New York State Health Foundation, says the unique size and nature of New York’s hospital sector means that the state may suffer if the President’s efforts to control costs require new limits on funding for hospitals. And if the solution in Washington includes expansion of Medicaid, that could mean millions of dollars in new costs for Governor Paterson to deal with.

All of this could give you a headache just thinking about it. Try picturing the health-care debate as a playoff game in the National Basketball Association. In the NBA, all the important action takes place in the final quarter, or even the last couple of minutes. If you’re interested in the debate over health care, now is the time to really pay attention.

Robert Ward is deputy director of the Nelson A. Rockefeller Institute of Government, the public-policy research arm of the State University of New York. He is also author of New York State Government: Second Edition, published by the Rockefeller Institute Press.

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If you’ve attended one of the 64 campuses that make up the State University of New York, or if you have a family member at SUNY, you already know what an important role the State University plays in advancing the economy and quality of life of the Empire State. But not all New Yorkers fully appreciate SUNY’s contribution. Nancy Zimpher, the new chancellor of the university, is working to change that.

Chancellor Zimpher has just completed a tour of all the 64 campuses in the SUNY system – research university centers in Albany, Buffalo, Binghamton and Stony Brook; four-year colleges from Long Island to the shores of Lake Erie; community and technology colleges serving students young and old all around the state. SUNY, in fact, is the largest comprehensive university system in the United States, enrolling some 440,000 students this year.

In the Capital Region, the economic impact of the State University is obvious. A combination of world-class academic talent, state financing, and investment from major corporations has built the College of Nanoscale Science and Engineering into a powerful generator of jobs and income. In Upstate areas from Plattsburgh to the lower Hudson Valley, SUNY campuses are not only important employers but serve as social anchors that give young people good reason to stay and raise their families in the local community.

The arrival of a dynamic new leader gives any institution a chance to engage in new thinking about its mission and the strategies necessary to accomplish that mission. Chancellor Zimpher promises to do just that, and has already begun a strategic planning process that will rely heavily on the expertise of the people who make things happen at every individual campus. The final product, a vision for SUNY, should emerge by next spring.

Inevitably, the issues that arise in planning for SUNY’s future include questions about resources. New York, like almost every other state, has seen tax revenues drop sharply during the recession. Most of the state agencies have seen their budget allocations reduced over the past year. The university leadership makes a good case that SUNY has taken a disproportionate reduction. At the same time, aid to K-12 education is up strongly this year. Perhaps there’s a more fair way to balance the way those dollars are distributed.

Leaders at the campus level have asked the Legislature for more freedom to manage their own affairs. That could allow campuses to adopt new efficiencies, and to bring in new revenue that does not depend on the weakening state budget. A blue-ribbon Commission on Higher Education, appointed by former Governor Eliot Spitzer, recommended greater authority and autonomy for campus leaders in its final report just over a year ago. And the commission suggested that the SUNY Board of Trustees should have more flexibility to make decisions about individual campuses without going through the time-consuming and sometimes politicized process of seeking approval from the Legislature. A year later, unfortunately, there’s been little action in the Legislature on the commission’s recommendations.

But now, as a new academic year begins, there is a sense of excitement and challenge throughout the State University. It’s been a while since SUNY was charged up with the kind of energy and initiative that Chancellor Zimpher has displayed throughout her first 100 days. Already a major force in New York, it seems likely the State University will be making an even more important contribution to the Empire State’s economic vitality and quality of life in the months and years ahead. Keep an eye on SUNY. It’s going to be well worth watching.

Robert Ward is deputy director of the Nelson A. Rockefeller Institute of Government, the public-policy research arm of the State University of New York. He is also author of New York State Government: Second Edition, published by the Rockefeller Institute Press.

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You could like Ted Kennedy’s politics or dislike them, admire him as a man or not. Whatever you might think, if you care at all about the way we make the rules in this country, the one thing you couldn’t do was to ignore him.

There are many definitions of what it means to live a political life. One is that you get along by going along. Ted Kennedy didn’t do that. To be sure, when he arrived in the world’s most important political body at the young age of 30, he paid appropriate deference to those with more maturity and experience. But just two years later, he launched a fight against the leaders of his own Democratic party to outlaw the poll taxes that kept many African-Americans from voting in Southern communities.

Today, the smaller-minded political advisers, pundits and single-issue advocates who increasingly shape American politics seem to have convinced many Democrats and Republicans that they can’t work with each other – that anyone in the other party is immoral, stupid or both. Ted Kennedy said frequently that the best way to get things done was to work with those whose thinking differs from your own. His colleagues of both parties called him the Senate’s greatest master of achieving big things by forging compromise.

Working with people of different ideologies certainly didn’t mean he abandoned his own. In fact, he was a rare liberal Democrat who didn’t mind being called one. Jack McEneny, the state assemblyman from Albany, said of Senator Kennedy: “He was a liberal to the core, to the end, what cowards call ‘progressive’ these days. Ted was proud to be called a liberal.”

And if the most influential Kennedy wasn’t inclined to mask his political ideology, he wasn’t embarrassed about his religion either. This is one of the things that often set his family apart from others in the world of politics. When his sister Eunice died earlier this month, the senator said: “Eunice is now with God in heaven. I know that our parents and brothers and sisters who have gone before are filled with joy to have her by their side again.“

It’s commonplace, after the death of a notable figure, for political leaders to say that, “our thoughts and prayers are with the family.” None of that sort of anodyne remark for Ted Kennedy. When his friend and longtime colleague Claiborne Pell died earlier this year, Senator Kennedy paid tribute by recalling Pell’s service in the Coast Guard and then reciting from the Coast Guard prayer, which asks “Almighty and Everlasting God … to bless the keepers of the lights and be their close friend in lonely watches.” He wouldn’t try to impose his own faith tradition on anyone – but didn’t see any reason to hide it, either.

He wrote dozens of laws that expanded the power of government. Yet he also knew that public service goes beyond the public sector. In an interview a couple of years ago, he said of his sister Eunice: “If the test is what you’re doing that’s been helpful for humanity, you’d be hard pressed to find another member of the family who’s done more.” While her brother enacted major laws protecting the rights of the disabled, Eunice Kennedy Shriver improved the way we think about individuals with intellectual disabilities through her founding of the Special Olympics and related work.

Striking the right balance between the proper roles of the private and public sectors becomes increasingly complicated as time goes on. Early in his career, Senator Kennedy pushed for federal funding to expand community health centers across the country. Millions of Americans now receive their primary health care in these centers. But that policy decision was much easier and more straightforward than creating a new system that redirects billions of dollars so we can guarantee basic health coverage for all. In his final push for major legislation, Senator Kennedy won committee approval of his Affordable Health Choices Act last month. It builds on the existing system of health care and contains many of the provisions liberal advocates have sought, including the optional public plan. But because Ted Kennedy believed the ideas from his side weren’t the only good ones, it reflected some opinions from Republicans as well.

To the end, he wanted to get things done in a system that’s built for compromise. Some don’t like the system we have. Ted Kennedy loved it.

Robert Ward is deputy director of the Nelson A. Rockefeller Institute of Government, the public-policy research arm of the State University of New York. He is also author of New York State Government: Second Edition, published by the Rockefeller Institute Press.

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When I was a freshman in college, many years ago, the university sent parents a notice that a few students on campus had contracted hepatitis. My mother, being a mother, immediately brought me to the nearest hospital’s emergency room and asked that I be treated with an antibiotic. The doctor in charge said an antibiotic wasn’t a good idea unless there was an indication I’d actually been exposed to the virus. But my mom insisted, they gave me the shot, and that was that.

My mother overruling the doctor comes to mind when I listen to President Obama talking about the need to reform our health-care system. This is an enormously complex undertaking that raises all kinds of important questions. Here’s just one big question: Who makes the decisions?

Who decides whether I get an antibiotic, or any other medical treatment, when I think I need it? Do I have the right to demand that; does my doctor make the call; or do both of us look at rules handed down from a governmental authority?

This question came to prominence in the 1990s, when millions of employers moved their health insurance plans into managed care. Managed care is an effort to eliminate wasteful treatments so that we have more dollars to spend on things that are truly necessary. Everyone agrees that we need to slow the growth of health-care spending or it will become more and more unaffordable. There are only two basic ways to do that. One is to create financial incentives for each of us, as consumers, to spend less on health care. The other is to empower some external authority, probably in the government, to decide that some forms of treatment will be covered and others will not – in effect, managed care for the entire country.

The easiest thing in the world is to say that you’re in favor of more of a good thing – such as guaranteed health care for all. In Massachusetts, and now in Connecticut, state governments are promising to make health coverage universal. But neither state has figured out how to pay for it. That means they’re giving citizens a false promise. And already in Massachusetts, we’re seeing state leaders having to pull back on their commitment – to break their promise, if you will – at least in some important respects. Some health centers have closed, mental health and substance abuse services have been cut, and with overall costs still rising, the Legislature had to eliminate some funding in other areas including education, public safety and the environment.

We don’t want these things to happen nationally. So the question of how to pay for a new national health plan requires an answer.

President Obama says the answer may include new revenues, but that it also has to include real limits on spending. In other words, more bumper stickers saying “Tax The Rich” aren’t going to solve the problem. So again the question is – who will decide how to limit the growth in health-care spending?

The basic thing to keep in mind here is that the more you distribute political decision-making power, the more rapidly spending will go up. If we want Congress to be in charge of making health care more affordable, we can expect some progress, but probably not a lot. Members of Congress find it a lot easier to tell voters they’re giving them something for free, than to announce that they’re taking something away. President Obama’s administration is asking Congress right now to give the president more power to limit Medicare spending. Another big idea under discussion in Washington is to create a kind of medical finance board that would decide which treatments are medically most effective, and thus have to be covered by insurance – as well as which treatments are not essential and do not have to be made available. That may be the most effective way to impose controls on costs, but it would produce the painful reality of patients being told they can’t have certain kinds of medical care. Would it fulfill the President’s promise that if you already have insurance, you can keep the plan you have? Technically, it might. But the way that plan works may change significantly.

The President said a few weeks ago, “There are no neat or easy answers here.” That’s for sure. If a new national health plan is going to be enacted this year, leaving room for flexibility – room for both consumers and elected officials to make choices in the future – may be the best answer.

Robert Ward is deputy director of the Nelson A. Rockefeller Institute of Government, the public-policy research arm of the State University of New York. He is also author of New York State Government: Second Edition, published by the Rockefeller Institute Press.

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A crisis can be a good thing, if it forces us to rethink old assumptions and see what we might learn from changing times and circumstances. That’s one useful way to think about the complicated mess that we see at the New York State Capitol these days.

Governor David Paterson certainly is challenging longstanding assumptions with his appointment of Richard Ravitch as lieutenant governor. For decades, political leaders and constitutional scholars have agreed that the governor of the state has no power to make such an appointment. The Constitution says very clearly that if there is a vacancy in the office of lieutenant governor, the temporary president of the state Senate, quote, “shall perform all the duties of lieutenant-governor during such vacancy.”

But right now, we don’t have a temporary president of the Senate, either. At least, we don’t have common agreement on who holds that office. The Democrats in the Senate say it’s Malcolm Smith, who was elected temporary president back in January. The Republicans say it’s Pedro Espada, whom they advanced during the disputed coup back on June 8.

So Governor Paterson essentially says, if we have no legitimately recognized leader in the Senate, we still have to have a lieutenant governor just in case something happens to the Governor. Probably the overwhelming majority of New Yorkers would agree with that. But we are still left with the question: Does the law allow the governor to make such an appointment?

Most legal and academic scholars would say no, it does not. Attorney General Andrew Cuomo, whose office gives him special standing to interpret the state Constitution, is among those who say such an appointment is not constitutional. But the supporters of Governor Paterson’s move include some highly regarded legal experts as well. Their views can’t be dismissed out of hand.

Over the past few weeks, members of the state Senate have tried to get the courts to decide the controversy of who is now in charge of the Senate. A state Supreme Court justice ruled that the courts should not get involved in that question. That was probably for the best. But this new question, on whether the governor can appoint a lieutenant governor, is different. The courts may very well agree to hear that case. If so, we may end up with welcome new clarity on an important question.

Keep in mind, though, that whatever happens in court will not be the final answer.

If the courts rule against Governor Paterson, we are back to square one. But even if the Court of Appeals upholds the appointment of Lieutenant Governor Ravitch, a lot of questions are still unanswered.

The lieutenant governor presides over the Senate, but is not a member for purposes of achieving a quorum. So the two different coalitions in the Senate, which are now evenly divided 31 to 31, will still have to work out some agreement on how to do legislative business each day. In other words, it is still the individual members of the Senate who have the power and the responsibility – who owe it to the voters – to get their house in order.

And that implies the need for more thoughtful attention from the voters. From what I can tell, this latest imbroglio at the Capitol has voters more disgusted with Albany than ever. What impact will that have over the coming months and on Election Day in 2010? What impact should it have?

A crisis can be a useful thing, if we look for the opportunities it creates. More and more voices are suggesting that the big answer to gridlock and dysfunction at the Capitol would be a constitutional convention. The rules for succession to the top state offices are one issue deserving such attention. The budget process, the balance of power between the governor and the Legislature, an archaic and inefficient court system are others. If the current crisis helps lead us to focus on issues such as those, it could be worth all the trouble.

Robert Ward is deputy director of the Nelson A. Rockefeller Institute of Government, the public-policy research arm of the State University of New York. He is also author of New York State Government: Second Edition, published by the Rockefeller Institute Press.

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Can things at the state Capitol in Albany get any worse? For some time now, people who pay close attention to New York State government have said each year seems to bring a new low. It’s now clear that 2009 will go into the history books as keeping that lamentable streak very much alive.

We’ve known for some time that disreputable things go on at our state Capitol. It’s not that these things don’t happen elsewhere – of course they do, from small backwater towns to the halls of the United Nations. But in Albany we have more legislators indicted and convicted of crimes than most other states. We see elected leaders engaging in self-promotion paid for by the taxpayers, ranging from their own television studios to sports facilities named after sitting legislators. We have an extraordinarily large and well-funded lobbying industry that supports an exorbitantly expensive campaign system, which in turn is designed to eliminate competitive elections as much as possible. We observe lawmakers who seem to prosper in office by directing taxpayer dollars to supposedly nonprofit organizations that they or their family members control.

All of these things are symptoms of a political culture that folks in a lot of other states would never tolerate. The nature of the individuals holding office, the interest groups that work so effectively to influence them, and the state’s laws – including the Constitution – all shape the environment. But the element that drives events and behavior within that environment is political culture. One definition of political culture is that it defines the boundaries of what is or is not acceptable in political activity. And of course ultimately it’s voters who determine that.

What we’ve seen at the Capitol in Albany these past few days might be thought of as the culmination of a long-term degradation in New York’s political culture. What could be a more minimal standard for representative government than to expect that the elected representatives actually meet to debate the issues of the day? But not in Albany, at least not this week.

The disruption in the Senate came about because members from both political parties decided that gaining or keeping power was more important than dealing with legislative proposals or the state’s chronic budget crisis. The recent developments are really only a more intensive display of what we’ve seen before in other ways. Take a small example, the special grants – pork-barrel funding, if you will – that legislators provide to programs and groups in their communities. Some years ago, legislators started delivering checks of a few thousand dollars each to Little Leagues back home. The net effect in many cases is simply that Little Leaguers no longer have to spend any time selling raffle tickets to help fund the program that benefits them. But it buys the legislator a little more popularity.

Of course there have been much bigger steps along the way to a degraded political culture at the Capitol. Powerful lobbying groups are more and more focused on narrow interests rather than the broad public interest. Unions pressure elected leaders to spend tax dollars in ways that benefit a relative few, rather than working people generally. Businesses ask for Empire Zone tax incentives and other individualized benefits rather than demanding improvement in the overall business climate. There’s a general attitude that if some controversial issue is important to you, it’s always better to work as hard as you can making sure that nothing happens, than it is to talk to people on the other side and see if there is any common ground.

But sometimes big disruptions, like the one that’s taken place in Albany this week, can change the landscape. Maybe when the dust settles, elected leaders will see a need to rehabilitate their image by coming together to work on the problems facing the state. If the voters make it clear that’s what they want in the political culture of New York, it just might happen. Political candidates sense very well what voters want. Ultimately, they act on it.

Robert Ward is deputy director of the Nelson A. Rockefeller Institute of Government, the public-policy research arm of the State University of New York. He is also author of New York State Government: Second Edition, published by the Rockefeller Institute Press.

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California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger came to office in 2003 promising to fix the mess in the state's capital of Sacramento. He said he would do that by forcing the “girlie men” in the California Legislature to make some tough decisions for a change. For a while it worked. Governor Arnold did persuade legislators to balance the state's budget by limiting the growth of spending in his first year. And he had the benefit of new revenues, largely the result of a strong economy.

But now, California is in deep budget trouble once again. When tax revenues were rising sharply, Governor Schwarzenegger and the Legislature enacted big expansions of after-school programs, health care and other services. The resulting budget growth turned out to be unaffordable when the national recession hit California hard last year. By early 2009, Sacramento was facing massive budget deficits. Right now, the state that is home to one of the largest economies in the entire world is not far from running out of cash. Schwarzenegger and the Legislature asked voters for approval to get through the immediate crisis by raising taxes, reducing spending growth, and borrowing billions of dollars. The voters overwhelmingly said no this week. Now, state leaders have no choice but to make sharp cuts in funding for education, health and other programs, and to make those cuts quickly with little planning. Many schools will eliminate summer classes and a week or more from next year’s regular academic calendar. Services for the mentally ill and developmentally disabled are likely to be reduced; police and firefighters may be laid off.

California’s budget problems are extreme, but by no means unique. Three thousand miles to the east, New York is facing its own chronic budget nightmare. Here, Governor Paterson announced that the state budget adopted just six weeks ago may already be out of balance by $3 billion. Even in a high-spending state like New York, that's serious money. Massachusetts, Connecticut, Vermont – pretty much every state is confronting the same problem.

What can we learn from all of this?

Most obvious is the lesson that the economy goes in cycles. Revenue to the government – whether federal, state or local – goes up and down in conjunction with those cycles. When Wall Street is booming, corporations are making big profits, employment is growing and consumers are spending, New York and other states will see the money rolling in. But the good times don’t last forever. It’s important to be prepared for times when the flow of tax dollars is more a trickle than a flood. New York and California both have well-earned reputations as states that aren’t as careful as they should be during periods of strong economic growth. That helps to explain why both states consistently have real trouble dealing with tough times.

Right now, every one of the 50 states is suffering, to greater or lesser degrees. A Rockefeller Institute study released earlier this month found that state tax revenues across the country dropped by more than 12 percent in the first quarter of 2009. That was the sharpest decline in at least 20 years. But most states do not have budget gaps as large as New York’s and California’s – in large part because other states tend to be more careful about adopting a “let the good times roll” mentality of making big new commitments when the economy is strong.

So lesson Number One for New York and other states is to pay closer attention to the future impact of budget choices, on both the spending and revenue sides of the financial plan. When Governor Schwarzenegger in California and Governor Eliot Spitzer in New York expanded school funding, everyone applauded. There may have been too little attention to the tough question of whether those promises could be kept. Today, some of the fundamental services that both states provide to their residents will be cut as a result of inadequate planning. In New York, even with $7 billion of tax increases in this year’s budget, there simply are not enough dollars to go around. The resulting reductions in services will hurt needy families and individuals the most.

Fortunately, New York is not California. State leaders here have some time to address the new budget shortfall in ways that do not require drastic reductions in programs. If that doesn’t happen, however, we may soon be singing a new tune: California, here we come.

Robert Ward is deputy director of the Nelson A. Rockefeller Institute of Government, the public-policy research arm of the State University of New York. He is also author of New York State Government: Second Edition, published by the Rockefeller Institute Press.

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A little more than seven and a half million New Yorkers voted for either Barack Obama, John McCain or another candidate for president last November. The number voting was just over half the state population of individuals aged 18 or more. In other words, roughly another 7 million New Yorkers made the choice not to take part in the presidential election.

Voters in the Empire State also elected 212 members of the Legislature in November. The proportion of eligible voters who took part in those decisions was, as usual, even lower than the number who voted for president.

When you talk to people who don’t vote, you’ll often hear that it doesn’t really matter – all the politicians are the same. Well, it seems clear that President Obama is doing things a President McCain likely would not have done. But let’s bring the discussion closer to home, and think about the New York Legislature. For the first time in more than 30 years, Democrats took control of the state Senate from Republicans as a result of last November’s elections. Democrats were already in the majority in the Assembly, so this means that they now control both houses of the Legislature. And of course Governor Paterson is a Democrat as well. Has this made any difference?

It sure has. Here’s one example: Democrats talked for years about expanding the container deposit law that now applies to soda and beer purchases, so that it would cover things like bottled water and iced tea drinks. When the Republicans controlled the Senate, they blocked that proposal, saying it would drive up costs for consumers. As a result of action on this year’s budget, the expanded deposits are now law. We’ll be paying the extra nickels – and hoping for the environmental benefits, such as fewer plastic bottles in our landfills – within just a few weeks.

Many of the interest groups that make up the Democratic coalition in New York have said for years that upper-income taxpayers ought to pay more, so the state could increase expenditures on education, health care and other programs. Republicans in the Senate disagreed, saying that raising the income tax would make it harder to keep businesses and jobs in the state. Again, that proposal is now law. Individuals with taxable income above $200,000 will pay more, and those above $500,000 will pay a lot more.

Then there’s the issue of property taxes. Republicans in the Senate pushed through an expansion of the STAR school-tax relief program in 2006. Over the last three years, eligible homeowners received rebate checks, generally ranging from $300 to $500, to help ease the burden of rising property taxes. Those rebates were eliminated from this year’s budget. There’s some talk at the Capitol about trying to reinstate them, but Governor Paterson says the money probably isn’t there to pay for another year of STAR rebate checks.

And of course there are important areas other than taxes where the Democrats who now control the Senate differ from the Republicans who used to be in charge. For example, this year’s budget included major changes to the Rockefeller drug laws, giving judges more discretion in sentencing and expanding the use of alternatives such as drug treatment programs.

Gay marriage may be the next big change. Again, many of the Democrats who control the Senate now are pushing for a vote that would likely result in redefinition of marriage to include same-sex couples. It’s not yet clear whether the proposal will come to the floor this session, but the question is probably when, rather than whether, the legislation will be considered. Such a vote would likely not be on the agenda if the Republicans still held the Senate majority.

Different voters have different opinions on all of these questions. That’s what you’d expect in a democracy. But keep these issues in mind next time you hear someone say it doesn’t matter who gets elected. It sure does matter.

Robert Ward is deputy director of the Nelson A. Rockefeller Institute of Government, the public-policy research arm of the State University of New York. He is also author of New York State Government: Second Edition, published by the Rockefeller Institute Press.

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Governor David Paterson is asking the Legislature to approve a law allowing same-sex couples in New York to marry and to share in the legal and social benefits that men and women have enjoyed for centuries. It seems likely that New York’s legislature will join Vermont and Iowa in approving same-sex marriage. The only question may be: How soon?

It was only five months ago that supporters of gay marriage were despondent over the decision by voters in California to approve a referendum limiting marriage to the traditional definition of husband and wife. But the California vote shouldn’t have come as a surprise. People generally aren’t ready to turn away quickly from centuries of tradition, especially on something so basic to human society as the nature of the family. And surveys tend to show that majorities of voters in most of the country still aren’t ready to accept gay marriage, although the proportion who are in favor is rising. If you’re skeptical of polls, consider the public positions of President Obama and other leaders. Obama said during last year’s campaign he did not support making same-sex marriage legal. Hillary Clinton and many other Democrats said the same thing. On the other hand, Senator Chuck Schumer announced recently he now favors gay marriage, and Senator Kirsten Gillibrand also endorses such a change.

As recently as a year or two ago, even most Democratic political figures favored legislation to allow civil unions, which allow most of the same legal benefits, rather than same-sex marriage itself. The trend toward support for gay marriage, I think, reflects two things.

First, social attitudes are changing. Talk to political figures on either side of the ideological spectrum, and they will tell you that younger voters tend to take a view you could characterize as based in libertarian thought or a concern for social equality – however you describe it, younger Americans are more likely than older generations to see traditional views of marriage as needlessly restrictive, unjust or punitive. Meanwhile, middle-aged and older Americans who may have strongly resisted the idea of same-sex marriage a few years ago see more examples of gay and lesbian couples whom they can only perceive as, well, pretty normal people.

In addition to the change in social attitudes, the rising popularity of gay marriage among elected leaders reflects a determined and effective campaign by the gay community to gain political power. The influence of gay-rights groups in New York goes back to the late 1980s and early 1990s, when AIDS was killing thousands of individuals in New York alone. Groups such as Housing Works and the Gay Men’s Health Crisis successfully organized and lobbied the Legislature to provide support for homeless individuals with AIDS, to expand health care, and to provide other services.

Twenty years or so later, the gay community now plays a particularly important role in the Democratic party. The New York Daily News reported that, when Governor Paterson held his press conference to announce introduction of legislation allowing same-sex marriage, Democratic elected leaders were competing to stand near the podium to make sure they could be in the news photos. It seems likely the movement will have increasing influence within the Republican party as well, as social attitudes change further.

In 1996, Congress approved a law called the Defense of Marriage Act to define marriage as only between a man and a woman. President Clinton signed the bill into law. Critics of the Defense of Marriage Act included those who said that laws relating to marriage should be made by the states, not by Congress. The primary reason we have a federalist system that shares power between Washington and the states is to allow people who live in different areas of the country to make different decisions on controversial issues. On the issue of gay marriage, we’re seeing that happen right now.

Robert Ward is deputy director of the Nelson A. Rockefeller Institute of Government, the public-policy research arm of the State University of New York. He is also author of New York State Government: Second Edition, published by the Rockefeller Institute Press.

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April 9, 2009 - New York’s Budget: How can an 8 percent spending increase bring layoffs?

New Yorkers who pay attention to the ongoing debate over the new state budget may be scratching their heads these days. On the one hand, the financial plan adopted by the Legislature increases overall spending by more than 8 percent. On the other hand, Governor Paterson is warning that he may have to lay off thousands of state workers to keep spending in line with available revenues. At first glance, these two things don’t seem to compute. How is it possible that an 8 percent spending increase doesn’t provide enough dollars to keep the state payroll from shrinking?

The answer mostly comes down to two things: health care, and education. Those pieces add up to two-thirds of the overall budget pie. And in recent years, education and health care have tended to win the lion’s share of annual spending increases.

A couple of quick numbers: Over the five years ending in 2008, New York’s state-funded spending on public schools was up by 46 percent. Spending on Medicaid was up by 40 percent. Both of those increases were more than twice the pace of consumer inflation, which was 17 percent.

So, the state’s budgets for both health care and education have been rising sharply. As a result, there are fewer dollars left over for all the rest of the state budget. Funding for environmental programs and recreation was up over the same period by 18 percent, and for transportation, 22 percent. General assistance for local governments over those five years rose by less than 12 percent.

The bottom line is this: More and more, when the dollars are handed out in Albany, two areas of the budget dominate everything else. And perhaps it’s no surprise that health care and education are the most powerful lobbying interests at the Capitol. The health-care workers and teacher unions stand alone in having the resources to pay for million-dollar advertising campaigns, along with thousands of members who write or visit their legislators to ask for more funding.

When Governor Paterson announced the potential layoffs of state workers, the biggest numbers were in correctional services, mental health, and mental retardation. Those are the largest state agencies in terms of payrolls. But they also are less politically influential than health care and education. It may be useful to think about these other important commitments the state has, next time you hear those campaign-style ads for more spending on health care or education. Our neighbors who are developmentally disabled or suffer from mental illness don’t have advertising campaigns or political action committees. That doesn’t mean their needs are any less real.

Besides the issue of political influence, state agencies often take the hit when times are tough because they are directly under the governor’s control. Whether he wants to single them out or not, Governor Paterson has the power to control expenditures in the state agencies. Education and Medicaid are entirely different. Once the governor and the Legislature enact the budget, he cannot change those areas unless the Legislature agrees.

There’s one other area of the state budget that has been growing rapidly. The cost of employee benefits, including pensions and health coverage, is up by more than $2 billion in recent years. Along with ordinary increases in wages, that means the average cost of each state employee has been growing. The same is true with local governments and school districts. The result is that any given level of revenues does not pay for as many workers as it once did. To put it another way, there’s less bang for each buck in terms of public services.

That’s the backdrop for Governor Paterson’s warning about potential layoffs. The Governor says state worker unions can help him avoid any layoffs by helping the state deal with the rising cost of health care and other expenditures. Most political observers think some sort of deal, to reduce the number of layoffs if not eliminate them entirely, may emerge in the next few weeks. Only time will tell.

Robert Ward is deputy director of the Nelson A. Rockefeller Institute of Government, the public-policy research arm of the State University of New York. He is also author of New York State Government: Second Edition, published by the Rockefeller Institute Press.

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March 19, 2009 - New York State’s budget: When, and what?

A few months back, I made a bet with a friend that the Legislature would complete action on the New York state budget on time, or at least close to it, this year. Call it a case of hope triumphing over experience.

The state’s new fiscal year starts April 1, less than two weeks away. Governor Paterson sent the Legislature this year’s budget proposal earlier than usual, back in December. The level of public cynicism about government in Albany is high, and neither the Governor nor the Legislature enjoy high ratings in the polls. So there is a good political argument, to say nothing of good policy reasons, for delivering the budget on time.

Almost since taking office a year ago, Governor Paterson has been warning that the national recession would knock billions of dollars off the state’s revenue projections. We know now that the Governor was right. And he’s warned that the automatic, built-in level of spending increases for programs such as Medicaid and education would be unaffordable, even if the Legislature agrees to enact new taxes. It turns out the Governor was right about that, too.

We can gain a useful perspective on the problems confronting New York and other states by considering similar problems at the national level. The Peter G. Peterson Foundation is a think tank based in New York City that analyzes economic challenges facing the United States, including the long-term national budget deficit. Gene Steuerle, a budget expert at the Peterson Foundation, says we are now confronting a third historical turning point in the nation’s fiscal policy. The first was just after the Revolutionary War, when the Articles of Confederation had established a national government that did not have the power to raise enough revenue to pay its bills. This led to adoption of the Constitution, establishing a stronger central government, along with a federal takeover of state debts and other major financial innovations. Steuerle says the second major “fiscal turning” in U.S. history was in the early 20th Century, when once again a major expansion of government was needed to respond to the demands of a new industrial age and rising international threats. The results of that second fiscal turning included creation of the Federal Reserve System to regulate monetary policy, and a constitutional amendment to allow a federal income tax to pay the bills.

Now, many experts tell us, there must be another major turning point in our approach to the government’s finances. Steuerle says we find now that we can’t move forward on priorities such as modernizing our health and education systems because of the extraordinary level of commitments we have already made, and the increasing difficulty in slowing the growth of those commitments. Entitlements such as Social Security and Medicare are at the top of the list.

We see a similar picture in the problems New York and other states confront in their Medicaid programs and other big-ticket items in the budget. Governor Paterson is proposing changes to Medicaid that are very similar to those previously advanced by his predecessors Eliot Spitzer, George Pataki and Mario Cuomo. These governors, both Democrat and Republican, recognize that we have become locked into funding health-care, education and other programs that are not flexible enough, and not cost-effective enough, to deliver the services New Yorkers need at a cost they can afford. The institutional forces defending the status quo seem more powerful than ever. Think about the millions of dollars that the health-care unions and others are spending on advertising campaigns to inflict political pain on Governor Paterson, and you have a good picture of why it’s hard to change things in Albany.

A lot of big decisions will be made at the state Capitol in these coming days and weeks – decisions on whether to raise the income tax, whether to approve higher fees on utility bills, whether to reduce the growth in Medicaid and education spending, and so on. The budget that results will almost certainly contain a lot of things that aren’t very pretty. One thing it probably will not do is to address the long-term, structural imbalance between growth in the state’s tax revenues and growth in spending. There’s no question we need another turning point. We may have to wait a while to see that happen. Meanwhile, the problem just keeps growing, and growing.

Robert Ward is deputy director of the Nelson A. Rockefeller Institute of Government, the public-policy research arm of the State University of New York. He is also author of New York State Government: Second Edition, published by the Rockefeller Institute Press.

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A few months back, I made a bet with a friend that the Legislature would complete action on the New York state budget on time, or at least close to it, this year. Call it a case of hope triumphing over experience.

The state’s new fiscal year starts April 1, less than two weeks away. Governor Paterson sent the Legislature this year’s budget proposal earlier than usual, back in December. The level of public cynicism about government in Albany is high, and neither the Governor nor the Legislature enjoy high ratings in the polls. So there is a good political argument, to say nothing of good policy reasons, for delivering the budget on time.

Almost since taking office a year ago, Governor Paterson has been warning that the national recession would knock billions of dollars off the state’s revenue projections. We know now that the Governor was right. And he’s warned that the automatic, built-in level of spending increases for programs such as Medicaid and education would be unaffordable, even if the Legislature agrees to enact new taxes. It turns out the Governor was right about that, too.

We can gain a useful perspective on the problems confronting New York and other states by considering similar problems at the national level. The Peter G. Peterson Foundation is a think tank based in New York City that analyzes economic challenges facing the United States, including the long-term national budget deficit. Gene Steuerle, a budget expert at the Peterson Foundation, says we are now confronting a third historical turning point in the nation’s fiscal policy. The first was just after the Revolutionary War, when the Articles of Confederation had established a national government that did not have the power to raise enough revenue to pay its bills. This led to adoption of the Constitution, establishing a stronger central government, along with a federal takeover of state debts and other major financial innovations. Steuerle says the second major “fiscal turning” in U.S. history was in the early 20th Century, when once again a major expansion of government was needed to respond to the demands of a new industrial age and rising international threats. The results of that second fiscal turning included creation of the Federal Reserve System to regulate monetary policy, and a constitutional amendment to allow a federal income tax to pay the bills.

Now, many experts tell us, there must be another major turning point in our approach to the government’s finances. Steuerle says we find now that we can’t move forward on priorities such as modernizing our health and education systems because of the extraordinary level of commitments we have already made, and the increasing difficulty in slowing the growth of those commitments. Entitlements such as Social Security and Medicare are at the top of the list.

We see a similar picture in the problems New York and other states confront in their Medicaid programs and other big-ticket items in the budget. Governor Paterson is proposing changes to Medicaid that are very similar to those previously advanced by his predecessors Eliot Spitzer, George Pataki and Mario Cuomo. These governors, both Democrat and Republican, recognize that we have become locked into funding health-care, education and other programs that are not flexible enough, and not cost-effective enough, to deliver the services New Yorkers need at a cost they can afford. The institutional forces defending the status quo seem more powerful than ever. Think about the millions of dollars that the health-care unions and others are spending on advertising campaigns to inflict political pain on Governor Paterson, and you have a good picture of why it’s hard to change things in Albany.

A lot of big decisions will be made at the state Capitol in these coming days and weeks – decisions on whether to raise the income tax, whether to approve higher fees on utility bills, whether to reduce the growth in Medicaid and education spending, and so on. The budget that results will almost certainly contain a lot of things that aren’t very pretty. One thing it probably will not do is to address the long-term, structural imbalance between growth in the state’s tax revenues and growth in spending. There’s no question we need another turning point. We may have to wait a while to see that happen. Meanwhile, the problem just keeps growing, and growing.

Robert Ward is deputy director of the Nelson A. Rockefeller Institute of Government, the public-policy research arm of the State University of New York. He is also author of New York State Government: Second Edition, published by the Rockefeller Institute Press.

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President Obama delivered a major address on education this week. “The future belongs to the nation that best educates its citizens,” the president reminded us. He said the United States has all the tools to do exactly that – the best universities, innovative school leaders, passionate teachers, and parents whose top priority is their child's education. At the same time, the president said, despite resources that are unmatched anywhere in the world, we've let our grades slip, our schools crumble, our teacher quality fall short, and other nations get ahead of us in educational achievement.

What can we do about that? The president listed a number of key steps: Spend more on early education. Reward good teachers, and stop making excuses for bad ones. Focus not only on new investments, but new approaches to education. And if you want to look for innovation in our public schools, the president said, you may want to look at the charter schools that have blossomed all over the country in recent years, including those here in New York.

While there is sometimes tension between charter schools and traditional public school districts, the president reminded us that charter schools are public schools. They are schools founded by community organizations, parents, teachers and sometimes school districts – schools that are freed from many of the old bureaucratic rules but are subjected to higher standards of accountability.

The day after President Obama delivered his address on education, the Rockefeller Institute of Government held a Public Policy Forum here in Albany with Jonas Chartock, the executive director of the State University of New York’s Charter Schools Institute. Today, 10 years after Governor Pataki and the state Legislature enacted the law allowing charter schools in New York, there are 115 of these new schools across the state. Most are in New York City, but there are 10 in the Capital Region, including those in Albany, Schenectady and Troy.

All in all, according to the SUNY Charter Schools Institute, charter schools in New York are performing well. Students in charter schools on average achieve at higher academic levels than those in traditional public schools in the same district. Whether you look at math scores, or language arts, three-quarters or more of the charter schools around the state show better results than the traditional public schools, according to the institute’s data.

Clearly, though, some charter schools fail in their mission. The New Covenant Charter School in Albany is one example where measures of student achievement lag far behind. Charter schools that fail to deliver a good education are, at least in some cases, held to the ultimate level of accountability by having their charter removed. At least seven charter schools in New York have already closed their doors for this reason. The same may happen at the New Covenant school in Albany, if student performance does not improve.

Ten years after charter schools began operating in New York, what lessons have we learned? According to Jonas Chartock, we’ve learned some things that all public schools should keep in mind. First, the issue of time on task: Many charter schools have longer days, and longer school years, than traditional schools. Not surprisingly, that seems to make a difference. There is the issue of size: Smaller schools often provide a better learning environment than larger schools. Using data to improve performance is another important lesson – when teachers can see exactly how well individual students are doing throughout the year, they may be able to target remedial efforts more quickly and more effectively.

Charter schools represent an interesting array of political support. Conservative Republicans were among the earliest supporters of the idea. President Obama made it clear that he wants to see more charter schools across the country – he called on states to lift some of the restrictions on creation of new charter schools. In New York and elsewhere, elected leaders from minority communities are often among the strongest supporters of charter schools, because they and their constituents are frustrated with what they see as the failure of traditional public schools to deliver the quality education every child deserves.

Now in their 10th year of operating in New York, charter schools are here to stay. Maybe soon we’ll reach the point where we can stop the acrimony between these newer schools and the traditional school districts. Maybe we can look for ways that all schools can learn from each other, so kids can benefit from a better education no matter what kind of school they attend.

Robert Ward is deputy director of the Nelson A. Rockefeller Institute of Government, the public-policy research arm of the State University of New York. He is also author of New York State Government: Second Edition, published by the Rockefeller Institute Press.

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It’s never a good sign when Congress or the state Legislature passes an important, wide-ranging law one year, and then has to rewrite major parts of it a year or two later. That’s what happened back in the 1970s, when the New York Legislature adopted what became known as the Rockefeller drug laws – the toughest anti-narcotic penalties in the nation.

Thirty-six years after their enactment, the Rockefeller drug laws are under increasing attack. Speaker Sheldon Silver and other leaders in the state Assembly point out there appears to be little, if any, connection between tough drug laws and changes in crime rates since the laws went on the books. Violent crime rates rose throughout New York and nationally through most of the 1970s and 1980s, after the laws took effect. Crime rates fell sharply through most of the 1990s, a period when there was no significant change to the drug laws. Tougher punishment for drug crimes doesn’t seem to have reduced drug abuse, either. But there has been one clear result – a sharp increase in the number of individuals imprisoned for drug crimes. And there’s no question that incarceration has a strong racial element: Rates of drug use are fairly similar among whites, African Americans and Hispanics. But those who end up in prison on drug charges are far more likely to be black or Latino than white.

Then there are the questions about costs for taxpayers. Public safety may be the state’s fundamental responsibility. But when the state faces a huge budget gap, it’s worth asking if the dollars we spend on prison cells are worthwhile. If the tough drug laws don’t reduce crime, why do we want to spend hundreds of millions of dollars enforcing them?

Critics of Nelson Rockefeller sometimes forget that, while he initiated the drug laws that bear his name, he also developed the nation’s largest system of drug treatment programs. Over time, though, New York put far more dollars into its prison system than into addiction treatment and alternatives to incarceration. One result of the state’s current budget crisis has been the closing of halfway houses and other programs that help inmates make a successful transition from the highly structured world inside prison walls to the very different society outside those walls. Meanwhile, we continue to pay more every year for prisons, even though the system now holds 8,000 fewer inmates than it did a decade ago.

Speaker Silver, Assemblyman Jack McEneny and some of their colleagues paid a visit this week to the Eleanor Young addiction treatment clinic in the South End neighborhood of Albany. The clinic is part of Father Peter Young’s organization, which provides drug treatment, job training, and a clean, sober place to live for men and women who otherwise might be homeless or back in prison. Programs like Father Young’s can’t guarantee success. But the proportion of individuals who go through such programs and return to the criminal justice system is a small fraction of those who do not have the benefit of rehabilitation. Father Young was a chaplain in the prison system for more than 20 years and saw the difference that addiction treatment and job training can make. He says his mission is “creating taxpayers” – taking individuals who otherwise would be dependent or a drain on society, and helping them create productive lives instead.

Speaking of taxpayers, it’s clear that the current budget crisis facing New York will not go away any time soon. New money from Washington will help close the gaps, but only for the next year or two. The long-term picture is disturbing: More growth in the cost of health care and education, and an economy that historically has depended far too much on Wall Street. With rising costs and stagnant revenues, the only options are imposing higher taxes on working people, shifting expenses to our children with more borrowing, or undertaking some radical rethinking of the ways that we structure major programs.

Something tells me if Nelson Rockefeller were alive today, he’d be among the first to say the time has come for big new thinking . The drug laws that bear his name may be the perfect place to start.

Robert Ward is deputy director of the Nelson A. Rockefeller Institute of Government, the public-policy research arm of the State University of New York. He is also author of New York State Government: Second Edition, published by the Rockefeller Institute Press.

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If you remember the musical phenomenon known as the British Invasion back in the 1960s, you may recall a group called Herman’s Hermits. One of their big hits was a simple song called “I’m Henry the 8th I Am.” The first verse started like this:

I’m Henry the 8th I am,
Henry the 8th I am, I am,
I got married to the widow next door,
She’s been married seven times before.

Robert Ward is deputy director of the Nelson A. Rockefeller Institute of Government, the public-policy research arm of the State University of New York. He is also author of New York State Government: Second Edition, published by the Rockefeller Institute Press.

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New York State Attorney General Andrew Cuomo is drawing renewed attention to the thousands of overlapping pieces of local government in the Empire State. The attorney general is, of course, a Democrat and the son of Governor Mario Cuomo, who established a national reputation as a leading spokesman for liberalism – or, as Governor Cuomo called his philosophy, progressive pragmatism. But despite any differences in ideology, the attorney general drew rave reviews when he spoke to the New York State Conservative Party a few days ago about his proposals for scaling back the number of local government entities. In other words, this is not an ideological issue – it’s a practical one that has important implications for the cost of government, the taxes that working people and businesses pay, and for the quality of public services.

Over the last century, two overarching changes took place in the nature of government throughout America. First, the role and responsibilities of government grew dramatically. In 1902, the first time the Census Bureau made a full count, expenditures by the federal government, states and localities added up to a grand total of $1.7 billion. Let me repeat that -- $1.7 billion. Today most states, and many counties and cities, spend more than that amount just by themselves. Total spending now by all levels of government in the United States is around $3.5 trillion. That’s up by a factor of well over 1,000 from a century ago. Of course, our population and the size of the overall economy have grown as well. But not nearly as much as the size and responsibilities of government. In 1929, around the start of the Great Depression, all the expenditures by the federal, state and local governments represented about one in every 12 dollars in the gross domestic product. Today that figure is over 30 percent of GDP, or close to one dollar in every three in the overall economy.

So the size of government, as well as the importance of the services it provides, grew sharply during the 21st Century. That was one major change. At the same time, additional changes took place in the complexity of government. In some ways, things became more centralized. The most obvious example is school districts. A century ago, we had more than 10,000 school districts in New York State. Today we have fewer than 700. And at the same time, control over our tax dollars generally moved upward and farther away – from local governments to states and Washington.. A century ago, the federal and state governments were small and didn’t do very much. Local governments, especially cities, did most of the work. The rise of the social services safety net brought a big new responsibility with some costs for counties and municipalities, but mostly new costs for states. In the 1960s, the federal government got into the game in a big way with President Johnson’s Great Society. New welfare dollars and the Medicaid program went through the states, and since then states have been – for the most part – bigger players than local governments. New York is one of the few exceptions, where local governments spend more than the state. And Washington is by far the biggest player of all, with more control than ever over education, social services and other jobs once controlled entirely by states and localities.

We may be entering a new era now in the federal-state relationship. Washington is going to provide, at least temporarily, a major boost in funding for state Medicaid and education programs. That’s appropriate in tough times. But will more control over important programs move to Washington as well? And equally important, what happens when the new federal money runs out? New York and other states will see revenues fall off the cliff once again. We can expect the economy to recover somewhat in the next couple of years, and tax revenues will grow as well, but it’s probably not going to be enough to replace the temporary federal aid.

That means government leaders in New York and elsewhere, at all levels, will need to do a lot more to bring spending into line with revenues. Taking a careful look at the size and structure of local government is one good step. It’s not about ideology. It’s about making government work and deliver services better at a cost we can sustain in the long run.

Robert Ward is deputy director of the Nelson A. Rockefeller Institute of Government, the public-policy research arm of the State University of New York. He is also author of New York State Government: Second Edition, published by the Rockefeller Institute Press.

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In the era of the 24-hours-or-less news cycle, the once-unimaginable development of an African-American president of the United States is fast becoming unremarkable. That itself is … well, pretty remarkable.

Those of us who have reached a certain age each have our own experiences dealing with racial differences – experiences that are blessedly less of a concern for our children’s generation. I recall reading The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn around 5th grade, finding excitement in the adventure of a boy who ran away and floated down a big river on a raft. And realizing, dimly at first and then more clearly, what was going on in Huck's relationship with Jim, the runaway slave. Realizing, from the uneducated perspective of a 10-year-old, how Sam Clemens was making it clear that even though Jim’s society did not treat him as a man, a man he was. Even in a supposedly progressive state such as New York, in the mid-1960s, this was something worth thinking about.

I was so captivated by the story of Huck Finn that I introduced some of his language to friends at school. One day my friend Mike went home and said "yes’m" to his mother, imitating an expression Huck and his friend Tom Sawyer used. Mike and his family are black. His mother was not at all amused by “yes’m,” and warned him never to use that word again. She said it was language that slaves would use, an insult to black Americans, suggesting ignorance and backwardness. I tried to explain that Clemens put the word in the mouths of both white and black characters, but to no avail. It was an early education in the reality that two centuries of legal and extra-legal subjugation could naturally give some of us very different perspectives from others.

When I first read Huckleberry Finn, 20 years or so after Jackie Robinson joined the Brooklyn Dodgers, it was accepted that black Americans could playing leading roles in sports – at least some, such as baseball and basketball. The country had granted marquee positions in entertainment to Nat King Cole and others. Gradually, some African-Americans rose to the top in the corporate world, as CEOs of global giants such as Time Warner, Merrill Lynch and American Express. It's now unexceptional to see black Americans as mayors and members of Congress. Finally, the ultimate glass ceiling is broken by a man we’ve come to know not just as the first African-American president but as an enormously impressive policy wonk, strategist, family man and leader.

In judging modern political leaders, those who make their living in and around government will often say that a particular elected official either is, or is not, “a grownup.” Some politicians are mainly in the business of enriching themselves with money or power. Others may be honest, but have little grounding in ideas, and goals, and accomplishments. In this taxonomy, a grownup is someone who cares deeply about getting things done, knows how to set an agenda, and is willing to accumulate and use political capital for important goals. In countless ways – his respectful treatment of his predecessor, honor for the nation’s heritage, and willingness to confront the difficulties of the future – President Obama has quickly earned placement in this category.

Today, our short-term national conversation is about rebuilding and maintaining the high level of economic comfort that we’ve built up over the last century. The pain of a recession has made Americans forget that, from a long-term perspective, we have things pretty good today. And the long-term perspective for the future tells us that it’s time now for some sacrifice, so that our children and grandchildren can move forward rather than falling back. President Obama talked of this in his inaugural address when he criticized “our collective failure to make hard choices.” He’ll challenge our comfort more definitively in the weeks ahead by forcing us to confront the unaffordable cost of Social Security, Medicare and other entitlement programs.

Forty-eight years ago, another young President urged Americans, “Ask not what your country can do for you, but what you can do for your country.” If we have forgotten this goal since then, a new President is here to remind us. There was a time when a man who looked like Barack Obama would be dismissed as less than a man. We’re fortunate not only that we’ve mostly moved beyond that sorry chapter, but that we have a grownup leading the nation today.

Robert Ward is deputy director of the Nelson A. Rockefeller Institute of Government, the public-policy research arm of the State University of New York. He is also author of New York State Government: Second Edition, published by the Rockefeller Institute Press.

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