So New York State now has a budget in place, finally. What does it mean for folks who depend on state services, for taxpayers and for state workers?

Probably the first thing to notice is that, considering the dramatic financial challenges facing the state, this is a relatively status-quo budget. According to the state comptroller’s office, the total spending of $136 billion is up about $5 billion, or 4 percent, from last year. The governor’s budget office counts the dollars a bit differently and estimates the overall increase at closer to 2 percent. Either way, spending is going up, not down.

And yet it’s also true that there are significant cuts in major programs. The biggest is the reduction in aid to school districts. That’s not surprising, because public schools are by far the biggest recipients of state tax dollars – so if you are looking to close a budget gap, it’s hard to avoid education. Under the pre-existing school-aid formula, aid to local schools would have gone up by well over $1 billion this year. The adopted budget eliminates that increase and instead cuts school aid by several hundred million dollars.

There are also reductions in various programs funded by Medicaid. That’s the huge area of the budget that provides health coverage for lower-income individuals, nursing homes for the elderly and disabled, and care for the mentally disabled. And yet, despite some cuts to individual programs, overall Medicaid spending will still go up.

There’s a further complication in trying to figure out this year’s budget. Congress is now planning to approve billions of dollars in continued stimulus funding for states across the country. That additional aid will restore some of the planned cuts in Medicaid, and probably some of the reductions in education as well. It’s too early to know exactly what the impact of the federal assistance will be. Clearly, one result is that New York and other states feel less pressure to make structural reforms that could help eliminate future budget gaps.

As usually is the case, the adopted budget leaves another big problem for the state to tackle next year. The comptroller’s office says the 2011 gap will likely be around the same size as the one the state faced this year. But many of the actions the Governor and the Legislature took to solve this year’s problem will not be available again next January. So whoever wins the governor’s race this November will come into office with another big budget gap right at the top of the agenda.

If misery loves company, the good news is that pretty much every other state is facing the same problems as the Empire State. The political class here in New York likes to think that we’re different from everyone else. But there may be some useful lessons in what other states are doing.

For example, in Wisconsin, Governor Jim Doyle and the state legislature adopted a budget that included more than $600 million in cuts to Medicaid. Relative to the size of the program in Wisconsin, that’s a much larger package of reductions than was enacted here in New York. To make those cuts while preserving and even expanding services, the elected leaders in Wisconsin took the choices out of the political environment and put the state Health Department in charge of the detailed decisions. The department, in turn, invited participation by advocates of all the many programs funded by Medicaid, as well as by the public.

The result was very different than the outcome in most other states. Rather than simply cutting services and reducing payments to doctors, policymakers in Wisconsin adopted a variety of changes that are intended to drive dollars toward more effective health care practices. The state will save an estimated $4 million by limiting payments for unnecessary Caesarean sections. Hospitals will be required to submit plans to reduce the rate at which patients return with the same illness, creating stronger incentives to deliver the right care the first time.

Wisconsin may or may not be going about Medicaid reform the best way. Only time will tell. But that’s the point: When New York and other states are facing historic budget problems, we need to try new things. States are assigned the role of being laboratories of democracy, where we experiment with new approaches that later may become national policy. With another big budget gap approaching next year, we’ll have more opportunities to look for new, more successful ways to provide public services at an affordable cost.

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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Do you own a home or business property in New York? Are you troubled by the cost of property taxes? If you answered yes to the first question, changes are you also answered yes to the second. For years, critics of New York’s property taxes have pushed the idea of a legal limit on how much property taxes could go up each year. Until recently, it seemed the kind of idea that had no chance of passage in the state Legislature. Now, it looks like that may be changing before too long.

There’s no question the problem is a real one. The Tax Foundation, an independent nonprofit group based in Washington, calculates property tax burdens in communities across the country. When you calculate homeowners’ tax payments as a percentage of home value, New York is home to every single one of the 10 counties with the highest property taxes in the nation. Look at other good measures –property taxes on the average home, or taxes as a share of household income – and again New York is right at the top of all the states, along with New Jersey.

That explains why elected leaders and candidates talk so much about property taxes. Former Governor George Pataki created the STAR program to provide homeowners with some relief from high school taxes. But research by a variety of experts shows the STAR program makes the problem worse, by reducing voter resistance to annual increases in school taxes. In any case, we know that property tax costs continue to jump, year after year. Just as one measure, total property taxes across New York State rose by 27 percent from 2000 to 2008 – after accounting for inflation.

Across the country, more than 30 states have imposed statutory or constitutional limits on property taxes. Five years ago, E.J. McMahon of the Manhattan Institute’s Empire Center for Policy Research issued a detailed proposal for a cap on school property taxes in New York. He suggested a maximum of 4 percent or the rate of inflation, whichever is less, with voters at the school-district level having the power to approve higher or lower limits. In 2008, a commission appointed by former Governor Eliot Spitzer endorsed a similar tax cap as part of a broader set of proposals that also included a property tax circuit breaker linked to household income, and major steps to help school districts and local governments control costs.

There is strong opposition to the idea of a limit on property tax increases. Unions representing teachers and other public employees, as well as many voters, argue that more spending on education is the right choice, and that caps on property taxes will limit resources. Not surprisingly, experience in other states shows that tax caps do indeed limit spending. Until recently, it seemed a safe bet that such opposition would leave tax cap proposals in Albany gathering dust and eventually fading away.

But that picture is changing dramatically, right now. A statewide campaign for the governor’s office is getting underway. For the first time in state history, all of the leading candidates have endorsed a cap on property taxes. The candidate who holds a wide lead in all of the polls, Democratic Attorney General Andrew Cuomo, is making a property tax cap a major issue – even going so far as to hold a public rally with the Republican county executive in Nassau County on Long Island.

This development changes the political landscape significantly. A month ago, if you had to bet on the eventual outcome, the safe bet would have been no property tax cap in New York anytime in the near future. Now, with strong support from Cuomo as well as Republican candidates Rick Lazio and Carl Paladino, it’s almost a certainty that the next governor will make the tax cap a priority in 2011. History shows that a newly elected governor, especially one who knows how to use the bully pulpit of the office, has a good chance of winning legislative approval on his priority issues.

If a cap on property taxes does become law, the big question will be: What kind of cap might the Legislature approve – one with lots of exceptions for certain spending, or a tighter limit that will please many taxpayers while restraining resources for public services? It’s too early to say. But there’s no question about one thing: A property tax cap is now back on the table in Albany.

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 could be better than a nice bike ride on a beautiful summer day?

How about eight straight days of biking – across New York State, from Buffalo to Albany, with 500 other, obviously crazy folks?

That’s what you get when you sign up for the Cycling the Erie Canal tour sponsored by the nonprofit group Parks and Trails New York. I had the wonderful opportunity to do the tour last week with my daughter and son. It was a tough challenge, daunting at times. But if you’re looking for a new idea for a great week’s vacation, think about this one.

The 400-mile tour starts in downtown Buffalo. That’s right, 400 miles, an average of 50 or so over each of eight days. Now, not all of us have quadriceps made of steel. (Quads are the large muscles on the front of your thighs, and they’re especially important for going up hills on a bike.) For those of us who haven’t trained as we should, the good news is that the biking on the tour is mostly flat, along the Erie Canal path. Not entirely, mind you. And in July there are some hot days. That water bottle gets a lot of action. Oh, and then there’s the occasional rain, with chance of thunderstorms. Our party of three riders got caught out in the backroads west of Seneca Falls when a pretty good storm hit one afternoon. The organizers of the Parks and Trails New York tour promise they’ll help you when emergencies arise. And they keep their word. A van with a friendly volunteer driver – the sag wagon, as it’s known – picked us up and brought us safely to the designated campground for the night.

There’s all manner of wonderful history to absorb on the tour, regarding the great role the Erie Canal played in building the modern economy not only of the Empire State but of America generally. When it opened in 1825, the canal made it possible for farmers and industries to ship foods, production materials and finished goods far more cheaply than before. Great cities such as Buffalo, Rochester and Syracuse – and dozens of smaller towns, from Albion to Waterford – arose to serve the commerce along the canal. And all that trade helped make New York City the global business capital it still remains today.

Of course, we’ve long since passed the days when the foundation of the economy rested on mule-driven canal freighters. The long, continual and painful decline of the former Erie Canal towns is partly a contributor to and partly a product of the broader stagnation of the regional economy throughout Upstate New York.

On Thursday night, the tour group camped at Fort Stanwix National Monument in Rome. Friday morning, we mounted the bikes again and rode the mile or so from the center of the city out to the path along the canal. We discovered you can ride your bike down the middle of the main streets in Rome, New York, without worrying much about traffic. For folks on bicycles, that’s great. But it’s not a good sign about the economic vitality of the area. And you can do pretty much the same in many of the communities along the canal route.

One of the biggest questions facing elected leaders and voters in New York, during this election year, is how to restore the Upstate economy. The most promising ideas include building on the strengths of our colleges and universities, public and private. Lots of evidence indicates that higher education centers are playing increasingly important roles as the global economy centers more on knowledge and information. Cities such as Utica and Schenectady have made a point of working to attract new Americans from other nations, recapturing some of the population and vitality that drained away to other regions of the country. The tourism and hospitality industry itself can play a small but useful supporting role, as the Erie Canal bike tour itself demonstrates.

It’s not likely that smaller communities such as Rome and Lockport – let alone larger cities such as Buffalo and Schenectady – will ever recapture all of the jobs and people they’ve lost over half a century. But, it’s worth looking for the right lessons as to how we interrupt and start to reverse the decline that now, unfortunately, is often taken for granted.

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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The New York State budget is almost complete. All the major appropriation bills have passed both houses of the Legislature. The only piece not yet in place is the revenue bill – a billion dollars or so of increases in the sales tax on clothing, and other tax and fee increases, that would be required to balance the spending already approved.

So why is the Legislature going home for the Fourth of July weekend without passing the revenue bill yet? It’s not just because taxes are unpopular, although of course they are. No, the increase in the sales tax on clothing, higher taxes on many upper-income individuals and other elements of the revenue bill have been agreed upon by the majorities in the Senate and Assembly. The final piece of the budget is essentially being held hostage by other issues.

One of those is the question of a billion dollars in extra federal funding for Medicaid. There’s no way to know right now whether that will come through. It’s no surprise that a potential billion-dollar hole in the budget is cause for concern.

But there’s one unlikely element in the stalemate over a final budget agreement: for the first time in state history, the big issue holding up final action on the budget is a proposal from the State University of New York.

This is a surprise because, like many other state universities across the country, SUNY traditionally has not been a particularly influential force in the Legislature. Public higher education is often described as the balance wheel of state budgets. In other words, when tax revenues are growing strongly and there’s plenty to go around, some will spin off to the university. When revenue is down, higher education is among the first to be cut.

We’ve seen that reality here in New York, over and over. In each of the past two years, Governor Paterson was confronted with sizable budget gaps in the middle of the fiscal year. State law allows the governor to make unilateral cuts in spending for state agency operations, including the State University. The governor does not have the authority to make similar cuts in state aid to school districts, or the Medicaid program. That means budget reductions fall disproportionately on SUNY and other state agencies.

Former Governor Eliot Spitzer appointed a high-level commission of impressive individuals to study the finances and the future of our higher education system back in 2007. The commission concluded that a stronger SUNY could help make New York State a stronger, more competitive force in the 21st century global economy. But to do that, the commission said, both SUNY and the City University of New York should have more flexibility to make their own decisions about tuition, use of their property and development. That proposal is the issue now on the table at the Capitol, as the Legislature works to complete this year’s budget.

In the Albany area, the University at Albany’s College of Nanoscale Science and Engineering has given the region an enormous economic boost by attracting hundreds of millions of dollars in corporate investment and helping to create thousands of good jobs. Other SUNY campuses are major players in their regional economies. Across the country and throughout the world, economic experts agree that higher education is more important than ever not only for its basic purpose of building knowledge, but for putting knowledge to work in creating economic growth – just the thing so many communities in Upstate New York need badly.

Western New York, the Buffalo area, is especially in need of an economic booster shot. The state University at Buffalo is one of the most promising contributors to a brighter future for that economically troubled region. And community leaders in Buffalo are pressing their legislative delegation to make SUNY flexibility a priority. Legislators from other regions, including Senator Neil Breslin from Albany County, are supporting the effort as well. For anyone who understands the economic power of higher education, it makes a great deal of sense.

For once the budget endgame at the Capitol is not about more favors for powerful special interests, or more spending for legislative pork. Instead, it’s about the direction of our public higher-education system and the future of the state’s economy. That’s a debate well worth having, and worth resolving, before the Legislature finishes its work for the 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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The mess caused by the disaster in the Gulf of Mexico gets worse and worse. And like the last one, the original catastrophe isn’t the only problem.

When Hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans and other areas along the Gulf coast in 2005, the immediate damage from the storm surge was enormous. Arguably the worst natural disaster in American history, Katrina caused an estimated 1,500 deaths and more than $80 billion in property damage along 150 miles of coastline in Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama.

But once the hurricane water receded, the damage had only just begun. A study of the governmental response by Richard Nathan and other scholars at the Rockefeller Institute of Government described the problem this way:

“In the end, Katrina and Rita produced two disasters. The first was the immediate crisis created when the hurricanes made landfall. The second was the difficulty various levels of government had in working together to respond to the crisis. This was the more dangerous of the two because the inability to work well together spilled over into the recovery efforts, with ordinary citizens caught in the middle. The long-term impact could be the haphazard rebuilding of the devastated communities, meaning mistakes will be repeated, segments of the population will be left out, and a rare opportunity to reshape a region for the better will be lost.”

Those fears proved to be well-founded. Five years after Katrina, rebuilding has been haphazard. Much of the population has been left behind, and thousands of people left their homes for good because they didn’t see much choice. All three levels of government that were supposed to respond to the hurricanes – federal, state and local – had trouble figuring out how to deal with each other and solve the problems on the ground.

If Katrina was the worst natural disaster this country has ever seen, the ever-expanding BP oil contamination is now the worst environmental mess. And now that there’s a new disaster in the Gulf, that old problem of getting different layers of government to work together is at play once again.

The Wall Street Journal took an in-depth look at the response to the explosion at BP’s Deepwater Horizon oil rig. The Journal reports that federal officials changed their minds on important decisions regarding the response, sometimes more than once. Chemical dispersants to break up the oil were first approved, then ruled to be too toxic, and then reapproved. The administration criticized and delayed, and then partially approved , a proposal by Louisiana state officials to build up eroded barrier islands to keep the oil from the main shoreline.

The governor of Alabama ordered a purchase of heavy-duty containment boom from the Persian Gulf, on the other side of the world, to protect the coastline in his state. When it arrived, the Coast Guard gave the protective material to Louisiana instead. Within days, oil was washing up on the Alabama shore that the booms had been intended to protect.

There have been other complications in the response to the explosion and massive oil release. Of course, with a disaster this size, that’s completely to be expected. Admiral Thad Allen of the Coast Guard, who leads the federal government’s response, says: “We have to learn to be more flexible, more adaptable and agile.”

You could say the same thing about almost any one of the important jobs that our federal, state and local governments do. At its root, the BP disaster is a problem related to the way we balance our need for energy with our concern for the environment. There no good choices there, at least in the short run. There are big environmental questions not only about oil but about coal, natural gas, nuclear power, even renewable energy sources such as wind and solar power. Some say now that we simply have to stop drilling for oil, at least out in the ocean. There’s a good case to be made for reducing our petroleum use. But there are complicated and imperfect choices to be made about those other sources of energy, and about the best ways to encourage conservation. These are not just policy or ideological questions. They’re also managerial issues that require careful thinking and the ability to learn from mistakes.

Sometimes we do learn. Sometimes we don’t. After the last disaster in the Gulf, some thoughtful observers proposed new ways for the president to make sure that the federal government was working effectively with local and state officials – as well as those in the private sector – to produce a better response to the next disaster. Well, the next disaster is here now. What did we learn from Katrina? In terms of responses that have actually changed, it’s a hard question to answer. Maybe we’ll learn more this time.

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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Two big issues are in the news this week. Nationally, it’s the massive oil leak in the Gulf of Mexico. Here in New York, it’s the question of whether state parks will be open for the Memorial Day weekend and through the summer.

What do these two stories have in common? In one sense, both are ultimately about the same thing: The reality that we need to make choices, even when we might not want to.

Let’s start with the oil mess down in the Gulf. Five weeks after an explosion at the BP corporation’s deep-water well, total contamination may be surpassing the Exxon Valdez as the worst oil spill in American history, according to government estimates.

In conversations on public radio and elsewhere, a lot of people are suggesting that this catastrophe proves we need to stop offshore drilling, and drastically reduce our use of petroleum. The reasons go beyond the risk of oil spills and include concerns such as global warming and the rise of powerful, dangerous petro-states such as Iran. There’s something to that argument. But how could we achieve sharp reductions in petroleum consumption?

Keep in mind this point: Oil is our biggest single source of energy. In New York, at last count, it made up 37 percent of all energy use, according to the state Energy Plan. Natural gas was the second-most important source, at 30 percent. Nuclear power was third. Coal, hydropower and other sources each made up less than 10 percent of our overall energy use.

If we want to dramatically scale back petroleum consumption, we’re going to have to find ways to make sharp reductions in overall energy use, or very big increases in use of natural gas and renewable resources. For some perspective on that, New York State has already committed to reduce electricity use by 15 percent below forecast levels, and increase our use of renewable electrical generation sources, by the year 2015. These are good goals that would move us a small part of the way toward the longer-term goal of significant reduction in oil consumption. But as of now, New York State has not figured out how to meet even these initial goals.

It’s hard to do that in a democratic society. Many of us like the freedom to live far from our place of employment, and drive an hour each way at the start and end of the working day. Some people don’t drive as far, but do enjoy driving cars that use a lot of gas. Even some people who think of themselves as environmentalists are in that category. And some other people who call themselves environmentalists don’t want to see windmills near their summer homes, even though more wind power could be good for the environment. A lot of folks would like to close nuclear power plants like the one at Indian Point in Westchester County. But doing that anytime soon would certainly increase the amount of oil and coal we burn for electricity. Tough choices.

Now, on to the state parks. Again we have a failure to make choices. Governor Paterson sent the Legislature a budget plan back in January that would have kept the parks open. But the governor’s budget reflected the tough realities the state faces. Those realities include revenues that have been hurt by the national recession, and rising costs for schools, health care and public-employee benefits. Governor Paterson outlined his choices for closing a $9 billion budget gap, and has asked the Legislature to respond with its plan. So far, the Senate and Assembly have been gridlocked because voters and influential interest groups are telling them not to do anything controversial – not to reduce education funding, not to transfer dollars from the Environmental Protection Fund, not to approve the governor’s proposal for a new tax on sugary drinks.

At almost the last minute before the Memorial Day weekend, the Legislature reportedly was agreeing to a plan to keep the parks open. If the early indications are correct, the choice is an agreement to shift some funding from the Environmental Protection Fund into the parks system. The two are related, obviously, so there’s some logic to the move. Better late than never. But if you had to make your summer vacation plans before now, you may have gone elsewhere.

Choices. The people we elect need to make them. And that means voters need to let the elected people know that we understand the need for choices, too.

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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Voters in school districts across New York went to the polls this week to turn thumbs up, or thumbs down, on their school budgets. The voting came amidst tough times for many taxpayers. Statewide, we’ve lost 300,000 private-sector jobs in the last two years. In every community, there are people who have seen their working hours reduced, gone without a raise or taken a pay cut, if they have managed to hold onto a job at all.

And taxpayer concern about school taxes, in particular, has seldom been higher. There’s good reason for that. By every common measure, the overall tax burden in New York is the highest or among the highest in the country. When you look at property taxes, in particular, the top 10 counties in the nation, in terms of property taxes as a percentage of home value, are all in New York. That’s right. When you measure property taxes relative to home value, every one of the 10 counties in the nation with the heaviest property tax burden is in New York State. More specifically, they’re all in Upstate New York, where property values in many communities have been stagnant for years but the overall cost of property taxes has continued to increase.

So this was the environment as voters made decisions on their school budgets this week. And what was the result?

Surprisingly, it was an overwhelming yes to the proposals that school boards put on the ballot. Statewide, voters approved 92 percent of budget plans, according to the New York State School Boards Association.

What does this tell us? Certainly one interpretation is that strong supporters of public education are simply more likely to be aware of the school budget vote, and to make sure they get to the polling place. The very nature of the voting contributes to this.

Most districts hold the voting in school buildings. That’s convenient for school employees, and for parents who are bringing kids to school, or picking them up at the end of the day. Most of the information that voters receive about the budget proposal comes from the school board and the administration, which obviously have an interest in the outcome.

On the other hand, in most communities there are also a lot of voters, many of them older folks with no children in school, who make sure that they get to the polling place to vote “no” every year. And anyone who thinks that taxes are too high, and schools spend too much, is free to organize like-minded taxpayers in opposition. That’s democracy in action.

After looking at that 92 percent approval rate, it’s worthwhile to look at a couple more numbers. Over the last decade, school budgets have generally provided spending increases averaging 6 percent or more a year. Total property tax increases were generally twice the level of inflation, or more.

But this year, school boards were much more conservative with the budgets they sent to the voters. The average spending increase was around 1.5 percent – far below the recent average. The typical property-tax increase is down substantially, as well. It’s pretty clear that school board members in most communities took voter concerns and the tough economic times into consideration when they made their spending decisions. That’s democracy in action, too.

I served as a technical adviser to a statewide Commission on Property Tax Relief a couple of years ago. During public hearings around the state, including one in this region, I heard homeowners and business owners alike express deep concern over the relentless march of ever-higher property taxes. That sentiment won’t go away based on one year of relatively modest increases. School districts will face tough budget conditions again next year, and very likely for some years to come.

In the long run, that presents us with some choices. Voters can approve significant increases in property taxes every year, to pay for above-inflation spending increases. Or, we can demand reductions in staffing and programs, so spending and taxes don’t have to go up. A third choice is to look for ways to improve educational quality while limiting the cost. More and more observers are talking about the need to make that choice, by introducing basic changes in the delivery of educational services. If we don’t do that, you can pretty much guarantee we’ll see even higher property taxes in the years to 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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The unions representing most New York State employees have won their case in court – at least for now – in their challenge to the furloughs that Governor Paterson wants to put in place. It’s unclear whether that temporary victory for the unions will become permanent; we’ll know more later this month. So that leaves a bigger question: What will the Governor and the Legislature do now, to close the state’s big budget gap?

Let’s try to make some sense of this by taking a step back. The Governor said he needs to find $250 million worth of savings from the state workforce. That’s a small portion of the overall $9 billion gap between projected revenues and expenditures for the current fiscal year. But there’s no denying that with $250 million here, and $250 million there, pretty soon you’re talking real money even in New York.

That $9 billion budget gap arises because the national recession has limited growth in tax revenues, and because baseline expenditures would go up by two or three times the rate of inflation if the budget were left on autopilot. What are the options the Governor and the Legislature can consider to eliminate the gap?

The state provides a wide variety of programs and services, but there are three cost centers, if you will, that matter most. First is aid to public schools. That alone represents almost 30 percent of all the state’s non-federally funded spending. Second is health care, including the state’s $51 billion Medicaid program. And the third big area in the budget is the state payroll, including benefits for employees and retirees. These three – education, health care and the workforce – are such large pieces of the overall pie that you can’t really control spending if you don’t do anything in those areas.

Most people analyzing this issue start either with a presumption that the state wastes a lot of the taxpayers’ dollars, and thus spending can be cut substantially; or the conviction that we can and should raise taxes to solve the problem. The reality is that every major budget gap the state has faced in recent decades has been closed with some combination of reductions from baseline spending and increases in revenues. You can pretty much count on that being the approach this time, too.

The Governor wants to create a new tax on sugary soft drinks, and raise the cigarette tax by another dollar a pack. The Legislature doesn’t like the soda tax. So other taxes are under consideration, including an increase in the income tax on individuals with incomes above $200,000 a year, to go on top of an increase that was enacted as part of last year’s budget. It’s too early to say what will happen, except that some tax increases in Albany this year are almost inevitable.

But it’s unlikely that tax increases alone will be enough to close a $9 billion gap. For some perspective, that $9 billion hole is equivalent to about 17 percent of the state’s General Fund. One thing Governor Paterson and most of the Legislature agree upon is that cutting spending – at a minimum, reducing spending from the increases that would automatically occur under current law – has to be part of the solution.

So that brings us back to those three big areas of the budget: Education, health care, and the workforce. The Governor’s budget proposal would cut aid to local schools substantially, and reduce Medicaid spending by hundreds of millions. If one of those three big areas – such as the workforce – is not part of the equation, then that may put more of the burden on the others, education and health care. The math is pretty straightforward.

If spending is going to be reduced, one important goal is to cut the cost per unit of service, rather than cutting services. Layoffs of state employees, of teachers and other employees at the school district level, probably mean reduction of services. If you have fewer teachers, or fewer clerks working at the Department of Motor Vehicles, it’s hard to see how you avoid some impact on services. But if you can hold the cost per worker constant in a given year, you can keep the same number of employees while keeping costs under control as well. This kind of strategy won’t work forever, but it just might help the state get through one very difficult 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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The story that the Albany Times Union reported earlier this week on New York State’s wildlife pathologist, Ward Stone, is a sad and troubling one from many perspectives. Mr. Stone is an accomplished environmentalist and naturalist whose appearances on WAMC have always been educational, enjoyable and inspiring. He is credited with important work over many years at New York State’s Department of Environmental Conservation. But if the Times Union article is accurate – and it appears to be based on solid information – Mr. Stone was sometimes abusive to his colleagues at the Department, misused his position there, and otherwise engaged in various forms of professional misbehavior.

The element of the story that I found most broadly disturbing is the indication that Mr. Stone had essentially been using his state office as a place of residence for a number of years, contrary to repeated directives from the agency. Almost three years ago, in June 2007, according to the newspaper, the director of the department’s Fish and Wildlife Division sent a, quote, “formal counseling” memo to Mr. Stone instructing him to stop living in his office at the Wildlife Resources Center in Delmar. The memo reportedly came several years after the unusual residential arrangement began. According to the Times Union, that memo of three years ago had little, if any, effect.

The point is not simply that one employee may have used a state office in an inappropriate way. The question is this: Can’t a major state agency such as the Department of Environmental Conservation – and can’t the state of New York – even control inappropriate use of its own property? Can’t a state agency tell an employee not to live in the office and make such an order stick? Apparently not. Well, if not, what does this tell us about the general ability of the state government to effectively carry out its mission of serving the public?

When one employee operates in ways that compromise an institutional culture, the ability of other employees to carry out their work can be seriously impaired. That’s what happened in a different, but somewhat similar case in the city of Schenectady over many years.

In the Schenectady school district, a maintenance supervisor and union leader threatened and intimated fellow employees, including higher-level administrators who supposedly were his own supervisors. Evidence at the trial of Steven Raucci made clear that the school superintendent, Dr. Eric Ely, and members of the elected school board cooperated with or turned a blind eye to Mr. Raucci’s poisoning of the atmosphere in the school district. It’s hard to say precisely how or to what extent such managerial failure degraded the educational environment in Schenectady schools. But it’s also hard to escape the conclusion that the students suffered, because the superintendent and school board would not stand up for ethical behavior.

Again, these are two very different cases. The common thread is that, in both, the top priority in the minds of managers and administrators seems to have been something other than any concern for the overall good of the public. Some combination of inappropriate political considerations, bureaucratic entropy and a circle-the-wagons mentality came before any thought of the ultimate missions of the agencies involved. That sort of misplaced priority happens too often.

It’s not easy to deliver public services of high quality. The people who do the work in the Department of Environmental Conservation, and those in the Schenectady city school district, are mostly folks who want to do a good job protecting the environment and educating the next generation. We ask them to bear a lot of responsibility and take on challenges that are very difficult.

And we ask the leaders in state government, and in local municipalities and school districts, to do things that include creating a work environment where performance and results matter. Nobody expects perfection or anything near it. But when important governmental entities are unable or simply unwilling to intervene against harmful behavior, that level of failure undermines the basic contract between the people and their government.

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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After more than a year of legislative turmoil, criminal investigations and sharper than usual criticism from editorial writers and voters, the New York State Senate now faces yet another scandal. This time the focus is on Senator Pedro Espada, a Democrat who represents parts of the Bronx. Attorney General Andrew Cuomo’s office filed a civil complaint charging Senator Espada with using his nonprofit organization as a “personal piggy bank.” The organization, Soundview Medical, provides health care services, mostly funded by taxpayers through the Medicare and Medicaid programs.

Even for those of us who have seen plenty of political corruption cases over the years, the Espada case is breathtaking for the scale of the alleged venality. The attorney general says Senator Espada arranged for his nonprofit organization to guarantee him a severance package valued at $9 million. The Senator spent more than $250,000 of the organization’s money on personal charges, according to the complaint. Among those listed are more than $80,000 in restaurant bills for 650 meals over the course of three years or so. In other words, if the charges are accurate, Senator Espada billed the so-called nonprofit group for an average of $400 in restaurant bills every week. Those included, by the way, more than 200 sushi meals for which the average bill was around $100 each. Pretty fancy dining – ultimately at the taxpayer’s expense. Other inappropriate expenditures went to support the senator’s political campaign, according to the charges.

The attorney general is asking a court to require that Senator Espada repay the millions of dollars he’s charged with misappropriating. The civil charges, and any criminal charges that might follow, will probably take months to resolve. In the meantime, the case represents a legislative and political nightmare for other members of the Senate, particularly Senator Espada’s fellow Democrats who hold a bare majority in their chamber. The state budget is overdue. New York is facing its worst fiscal crisis in decades, and it’s likely that controversial cuts in spending and increases in taxes will be required to produce a balanced financial plan. Senator Espada’s colleagues may need his vote to pass any legislation or budget bills.

To their credit, some of his colleagues didn’t let the political complications keep them from speaking out immediately about the charges. Senator Neil Breslin, from Albany County, was the first to call on Espada to step down from his position as majority leader, saying such a step would bring some “dignity and respect” back to the Legislature. Several Democrats who are competing for the party’s nomination in this year’s election for attorney general, and a number of Republican lawmakers, echoed that call.

What lessons can we learn from the Espada case? Well, one lesson relates to the enormous increase over the past three decades in the use of nonprofit organizations to provide important public services. Attorney General Cuomo said Senator Espada was able to convert his nonprofit organization’s funds to personal use because he installed a compliant board of directors to oversee the organization. State law requires directors to exercise independent judgement and proper care in overseeing nonprofits. Anyone who has been involved in running such an organization knows how critically important that independence is to maintaining integrity and appropriate use of taxpayer or charitable dollars. There have been many other cases of state legislators directing funding to community organizations and then asking or pressuring these groups to provide financial or political favors. The state comptroller’s office might keep a more watchful eye on state-funded nonprofits generally.

There may be lessons for the Legislature, too. For example, there are few guidelines regarding what should happen to a legislator who is charged with major violations of the civil or criminal laws. Another current member, Senator Kevin Parker of Brooklyn, is under indictment for allegedly assaulting a news photographer. State law provides that conviction on a felony means automatic expulsion from the Legislature. But, in the absence of formal rules, filing of charges alone does not require any action. It’s never easy for any legislative leader to take action against a colleague, especially one of the same party, because legislators rely on mutual relationships for their own political viability and success. Establishing formal rules could make it easier to resolve such problems in the future.

Of course, rules can only go so far. Ultimately, good government starts and ends with good people. We need more of them in politics 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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How can New York State even think about closing state parks? How can anyone seriously suggest locking the gates at Thacher Park, Grafton Lakes and Peebles Island state parks, Minekill and Glimmerglass? Or closing the doors at historic sites including the Schuyler Mansion in Albany and John Brown’s farm up in Essex County?

One way to answer the question is to say that the state just doesn’t have the money. The deep national recession cut revenue dramatically over the last couple of years. Governor Paterson is asking the Legislature to help close a very big budget gap, around $8 billion, for the coming year. The funding cuts for the parks are one small part of his proposal for solving that problem.

Closing the parks would take place in the coming budget year, which starts April 1. This discussion is also driven partly by funding cuts that were imposed over the past two years on the parks system, and on other state agencies.

But saying the state just doesn’t have the money isn’t entirely accurate. This year’s state budget actually spends a lot more than last year’s. The financial plan the Legislature enacted last April increased spending by about $10 billion, or 8 percent, from the previous year. Funding for the environment and parks was up by $249 million.

Huh? Overall spending is up by $10 billion, and appropriations for the environment and parks are up substantially as well. So why are we talking about closing parks?

Two points come to mind. First, some programs are more popular with politically influential groups than other programs are. Second, elected leaders often have more interest in starting new projects – or in this case, acquiring more parkland – than in maintaining them over time.

Let’s take that second point first. Since 2003, the state has spent many millions of dollars to acquire or protect more than 750,000 acres of open space. And over the past 20 years or so, the state parks system has grown by more than 25 percent. A lot of folks applauded those acquisitions, and reasonably so. But was there enough thinking, over the course of those years, about resources to keep the parks thriving for the long term? The idea of closing parks now brings to mind the state’s long-term failure to maintain the Lake Champlain bridge. That failure led to the bridge being closed a few months ago, and enormously painful disruption to daily life for a lot of people in the North Country. What’s the connection between a bridge decaying to the point where it has to be shut down, and proposals to close state parks? Well, there were many years when the state was flush with cash. In hindsight, it looks as though not enough dollars were put into the unexciting and politically unrewarding tasks of taking care of what we already had.

But let’s go back to that $10 billion increase in spending in this current year’s budget. When the state’s expenditures are going up by that much – by 8 percent, more than twice the inflation rate – how is it possible there’s not enough money to keep a few parks open?

The answer is priorities. When it comes to public budgets, priorities are driven in part by demographics, and in part by political influence.

Those forces help explain why New York State’s budget is increasingly dominated by two program areas – education and health care. This year’s budget provided more than $3 billion in new funding for Medicaid, and more than $2 billion in new support for education, at the same time funding for many other areas was being cut.

After receiving the lion’s share of new spending in the adopted budget, K-12 education and health care were largely spared last fall, when weak revenues forced the state to impose midyear cuts. The state parks department was not spared. It took a cut of almost $7 million – a sizable reduction for a fairly small agency.

The reality is that the state parks don’t have a lot of political influence. The unions that lobby and run advertising campaigns on behalf of education and health care do have influence. That power was pretty clearly on display last fall, when Governor Paterson asked the Legislature to make some reductions in the large increases provided for education and health care. The Legislature said no.

The state’s budget cuts have been quite substantial in some areas, and small or nonexistent in others. That’s one reason our parks are running out of money.

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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The news of the day is filled with events far away. But for a lot of people in Albany, one of the most important things going on right now centers on an old, unimpressive-looking building on Washington Avenue.

That place is the old Albany YMCA. It was once filled every day with kids from the surrounding neighborhood, from the Pine Hills area little further uptown, and from throughout the city of Albany. Now, membership has dwindled. The facility is losing money, and just might have to close. But make no mistake: the old building on Washington Avenue is still an important part of the community for a lot of people in the city. And some of them are doing their best to keep it open.

Many have been making phone calls to former and current members, asking them to rejoin or bring in a friend. Other supporters are making special contributions to the Y Reach out for Youth program, which provides free Y membership for kids whose families would never be able to afford it otherwise.

Will the effort to save the Albany Y succeed? It’s too early to say. The management and board of the Y have a responsibility to do something about the longstanding drain of dollars that weakens the overall organization and threatens other programs. After announcing a few weeks ago that the building would close, they’ve committed to taking another look if the new support from the community justifies reconsideration. If the community support is strong enough – if more people decide they and their kids could use a little exercise – if the city of Albany can help with parking nearby – there are a lot of “ifs.” If all of them produce the right answer, maybe the Y can live on for another generation or more. Speaking of ifs – if you are interested in more information or even making a contribution, you can find out more at the Capital District YMCA website, cdymca.org.

But what’s going on here goes beyond one old building on Washington Avenue. The decline of the old Y is an example of how years of population decline have weakened Albany, just the same as we’ve seen in other cities from Troy and Schenectady, down to Hudson and up to Plattsburgh, out to Utica, Syracuse and beyond. That decline helps explain a lot of the political battles over a wide range of issues: the impact of charter schools on the traditional school districts, the difficulty of keeping neighborhoods clean and safe, the occasional and unforgettable stories about young kids shooting guns and dying in the streets. How do we turn those things around?

Surely one answer is that we need to strengthen the institutions that build up the community. The YMCA is one of those. Whatever might happen to one building on Washington Avenue, the Y will always be an important part of the city and of the entire Capital Region. Leaders and members of the Y are asking residents of the area, business and political leaders, and others, to look at ways that volunteer efforts, cooperative initiatives among community-based organizations and other steps might help strengthen those neighborhoods that have been in decline.

Here in the Capital Region in particular, it’s important to recognize the impact of the national recession on New York State government. The state is struggling to close an $8 billion budget gap in the coming year, and faces even bigger problems down the road. So it’s unlikely any large numbers of dollars will be coming from the state capitol to rescue the Y or other community organizations that are having trouble making ends meet. In fact, many nonprofits will likely see existing state funding reduced in the coming year. It’s going to require old-fashioned volunteer work and commitment if we’re going to turn things around and keep the Washington Avenue Y open.

Will the response be enough? If the answer is to be yes, it will have to come from a lot of different people. The YMCA is a membership and community organization. Only if there is enough support from members, and from the community, will the Washington Avenue Y continue for another generation.

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 was just about a century and a half ago when a New York City lawyer and newspaper editor named Gideon John Tucker wrote this famous line: “No man's life, liberty or property are safe while the Legislature is in session.”

Tucker was an accomplished politician himself. He was active in Tammany Hall, the powerful Democratic organization that ran things in New York City for decades. He served for a time as New York State secretary of state. Not many people know his name today, but his remark about the nature of the state Legislature lives on.

No question, we’ve had our share of shady characters and outright scoundrels in the history of the New York State Legislature. It’s been 234 years since New York joined other states in declaring independence from Great Britain. During that time, well over than 6,000 individuals have been elected to the Senate or the Assembly. How often has one of those lawmakers have been found so unfit for office that other members voted to kick him out?

The answer: Hardly ever. Three months ago, the leadership of the state Senate appointed a special committee to investigate the facts involved in the conviction of Senator Hiram Monserrate on a misdemeanor charge of reckless assault. In the report on its investigation, the committee reviewed the history of such matters. It pointed to only three cases in which sitting members of the Legislature were expelled by their colleagues after engaging in fraud or other misbehavior. Another five members of the Assembly were prevented from taking their seats because, as members of the Socialist Party in the 1920s, they were considered disloyal to the United States.

In addition to those eight individuals, we have the case of now former Senator Monserrate. In October, a court found him guilty of recklessly causing physical injury to a woman with whom he was living. The conviction led his Senate colleagues to consider whether sanctions, including expulsion, were appropriate.

His lawyers, a few fellow legislators and Monserrate himself argued that his crime was not so serious as to justify expulsion.

Looking only at the context of the history of the Legislature provides some evidence for their case. Dozens of lawmakers, including some legislative leaders, have been found guilty of misappropriating – in effect, stealing – substantial amounts of the taxpayers’ money. Others have been accused of violent crimes. But except when convicted of a felony and thus automatically disqualified from office, those other officials seldom were forced to leave.

So one question that arises is this: Are there any objective standards that can be applied to these cases, similar to the standards we try to apply in the courts?

The answer is, not really. Legislatures by their nature are political bodies and ultimately responsive to the will of the voters. In this case members of the Senate were aware that this is an election year, and many voters would not look kindly on incumbents who voted to keep Senator Monserrate in office after his conviction. And this year, politics are even more in the air than usual, because the Democrats and Republicans are in a tight battle to control the Senate. These are political considerations. But does that mean they taint a vote in favor of expulsion? Not necessarily. Legislators are supposed to represent the opinions of their constituents, at least within certain bounds.

And it’s also true that there are principles at play. Many of Mr. Monserrate’s colleagues said he has brought dishonor on the Legislature. There’s no question about that. If anything, we may need more of that kind of thinking and judging. It’s hard and often counterproductive for legislators, either at the state level or in Congress, to criticize the personal behavior of their colleagues. They have to have at least some minimal ability to work together, or they won’t be able to get anything done. But somewhere there’s a balance between simply going along to get along, on the one hand, and maintaining good working relationships along with appropriate standards of behavior, on the other.

One of New York’s early constitutional documents contained a provision authorizing lawmakers to expel a colleague. It used the word “purge,” which suggests elimination of something that is noxious and unclean. The overwhelming majority of the members of New York’s legislature are honest, hardworking, respectable individuals. But politics, perhaps especially in New York, does produce some who are not. Expelling another member who has been elected by the voters is an extreme solution. That doesn’t make it a bad 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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There’s an old saying: You get what you pay for. Sometimes, we want things that we’re not willing to pay for. That’s when we can get in trouble.

Two illustrations of this are much in the news this week: The new state budget that Governor Paterson sent to the Legislature, and the health-care legislation President Obama is pushing Congress to enact. These two elected leaders have taken very different approaches when it comes to things you want, and things that you’re ready to pay for.

Governor Paterson’s new financial plan is a classic example of how state budgets are very different from those enacted in Washington. New York and other states are required to balance their budgets every year. They can’t run big deficits, like the federal government has done almost continuously in recent decades. And so when the economy goes downhill, and revenues follow, states have to make tough decisions that leaders in Washington usually avoid.

The tough choices Governor Paterson wrote into his budget include a 5 percent reduction in aid to public schools, other spending cuts, and a billion dollars in new taxes and fees. No governor, or other elected official, wants to make proposals like those. But if the state budget were left on autopilot, spending would jump by $6.5 billion, or 5 percent, at a time when the recession is keeping revenues essentially stagnant.

Of course, anyone can quibble with the Governor’s choices. And predictably, dozens of interest groups are already criticizing him pretty harshly. We’ll hear more from them in the weeks ahead.

But one reason the state is in financial trouble today is that over the course of many years, governors and legislators in Albany have refused to make tough decisions. Instead, they balanced budgets with gimmicks and borrowing. Over time, those practices end up adding to your costs. Governor Paterson is trying to stop rolling the deficits from one year to another. If he succeeds, the state will be a lot stronger going forward. And that would mean that budgets in coming years could be more generous with funding for important services, without imposing big tax increases or piling more debt on our children.

And that brings us to the health-care debate in Washington.

The election of Scott Brown as United States Senator from Massachusetts changes the national political environment dramatically. In responding to that new environment, President Obama said any health-care legislation enacted by Congress must have some form of cost containment, to avoid more borrowing and tax increases.

If the new health-care legislation doesn’t control costs, the president said, “then our budgets are going to blow up.”

That’s just simple economic reality. Health-care costs are the biggest factor driving long-term federal budget deficits. Back in 1993, when Hillary Clinton proposed an earlier version of national health-care reform, she emphasized the need to control costs in order to make dollars available to pay for new coverage.

The current versions of health-care legislation proposed by the House and Senate include no serious mechanisms to limit the growth of costs. And that’s one reason for some of the criticism that has delayed action on the President’s top domestic priority. It’s also one reason Massachusetts is now sending a Republican to the Senate, instead of a Democrat.

You get what you pay for. And sometimes if you’re not willing to pay for it, you have to figure out a new strategy. It looks as though President Obama is working on that 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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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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