Gov. David A. Paterson proposed on Tuesday what would be the largest cut to school aid in more than two decades and nearly $1 billion in new or increased taxes and fees as he unveiled his budget, a plan that is likely to be the first chapter in a prolonged battle with the Legislature.
Searching for new sources of tax revenue amid a fiscal crisis, the governor proposed legalizing mixed martial arts, allowing the sale of wine in grocery stores, taxing bottled soft drinks, taxing cigarette sales on Indian reservations and deploying speed-enforcement cameras in highway work zones.
He even proposed charging fees to many families that enroll in an early intervention program for children with autism, attention deficit disorder and other special needs, and delaying one of his signature achievements — a plan to increase monthly welfare allowances.
And everyone is howling. Library associations are calling it disastrous. No one wants to sacrifice anything.
But Mr. Paterson avoided harsher medicine. He has made no significant cuts to the state’s work force and even assured union leaders that he would not seek layoffs this year, a risky move as the state faces huge deficits in the coming years.
And some aren't being asked to sacrifice at all. Absurd.
Showing posts with label Budget. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Budget. Show all posts
Wednesday, January 20, 2010
Saturday, November 14, 2009
How bad are times?
New York State is in bad financial shape.
Gov. David A. Paterson is imploring the Legislature to finally reckon with the state’s ugly financial reality. But first the governor must reckon with the likes of Senator Carl Kruger. Mr. Kruger, a Brooklyn Democrat who is the chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, has amassed a campaign war chest of $2.1 million, in part because of generous contributions from his labor union allies.
Special interest? Defender of the worker?
Despite a deficit of more than $3 billion, Mr. Kruger has threatened to block any significant cuts to health care and education, the biggest spending areas in the budget. He has presented his own budget plan, which has startled even Albany veterans for its reliance on one-time maneuvers and financial gimmickry.
If Albany veterans are surprised, it must be a doozy.
The governor and lawmakers have clashed over spending before. But recent events have created a new urgency and, in the view of Mr. Paterson and budget analysts, a desperate situation. The state has lost 270,000 jobs since the start of the recession. The tax bounty from Wall Street has shrunk.
That bounty is an important part of the city's and state's budgets.
And spending just keeps soaring. New York now spends more than any other state on Medicaid, twice the national average per capita. It also spends the most on school aid, per student, than any other state.
And nobody wants to accept cuts.
In New York over the last decade, the state operating budget has risen an average of 5.8 percent annually, far outpacing the average inflation rate of 2.8 percent. Budget analysts say lawmakers never prepared for the down times.
Chile did, but almost no one else saved the bounty from good times as insurance against lean times. But New York State spending pace was ridiculous, outpacing inflation, more than double that rate.
Senators have delayed budget negotiations for weeks as Mr. Kruger accused the governor of creating a “doomsday scenario” and vowed not to “succumb to his hysteria.”
No, things aren't bad; the Guv is crying wolf.
It is not clear whether Mr. Paterson has the stomach for a protracted battle over spending. With the help of Lt. Gov. Richard Ravitch, he has made progress persuading newspaper editorial boards and Assembly leaders that bold action is needed.
Still, on Thursday, Mr. Paterson seemed to be wavering on his commitment to cuts. That day, one of the state’s most powerful unions, 1199 S.E.I.U. United Healthcare Workers East, drew 2,000 people to Albany for a spirited rally, demanding that Mr. Paterson back off any budget cuts. The S.E.I.U. and its health care industry allies do not shrink from aggressively attacking governors. They unleashed a blistering set of television ads against Mr. Paterson last year, blaming him for hurting the most vulnerable people with his budget reductions.
All well and good, but where is the money to come from?
Gov. David A. Paterson is imploring the Legislature to finally reckon with the state’s ugly financial reality. But first the governor must reckon with the likes of Senator Carl Kruger. Mr. Kruger, a Brooklyn Democrat who is the chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, has amassed a campaign war chest of $2.1 million, in part because of generous contributions from his labor union allies.
Special interest? Defender of the worker?
Despite a deficit of more than $3 billion, Mr. Kruger has threatened to block any significant cuts to health care and education, the biggest spending areas in the budget. He has presented his own budget plan, which has startled even Albany veterans for its reliance on one-time maneuvers and financial gimmickry.
If Albany veterans are surprised, it must be a doozy.
The governor and lawmakers have clashed over spending before. But recent events have created a new urgency and, in the view of Mr. Paterson and budget analysts, a desperate situation. The state has lost 270,000 jobs since the start of the recession. The tax bounty from Wall Street has shrunk.
That bounty is an important part of the city's and state's budgets.
And spending just keeps soaring. New York now spends more than any other state on Medicaid, twice the national average per capita. It also spends the most on school aid, per student, than any other state.
And nobody wants to accept cuts.
In New York over the last decade, the state operating budget has risen an average of 5.8 percent annually, far outpacing the average inflation rate of 2.8 percent. Budget analysts say lawmakers never prepared for the down times.
Chile did, but almost no one else saved the bounty from good times as insurance against lean times. But New York State spending pace was ridiculous, outpacing inflation, more than double that rate.
Senators have delayed budget negotiations for weeks as Mr. Kruger accused the governor of creating a “doomsday scenario” and vowed not to “succumb to his hysteria.”
No, things aren't bad; the Guv is crying wolf.
It is not clear whether Mr. Paterson has the stomach for a protracted battle over spending. With the help of Lt. Gov. Richard Ravitch, he has made progress persuading newspaper editorial boards and Assembly leaders that bold action is needed.
Still, on Thursday, Mr. Paterson seemed to be wavering on his commitment to cuts. That day, one of the state’s most powerful unions, 1199 S.E.I.U. United Healthcare Workers East, drew 2,000 people to Albany for a spirited rally, demanding that Mr. Paterson back off any budget cuts. The S.E.I.U. and its health care industry allies do not shrink from aggressively attacking governors. They unleashed a blistering set of television ads against Mr. Paterson last year, blaming him for hurting the most vulnerable people with his budget reductions.
All well and good, but where is the money to come from?
Friday, October 30, 2009
A Discipline in Denial
Earlier this month, Sen. Tom Coburn of Oklahoma swooped in on the National Science Foundation budget, offering an amendment that would ban the organization from "wasting any federal research funding on political-science projects." The assumption that the money was better spent on "real science," seemed to cause the entire quarrelsome field of political scientists to rise as one in righteous opposition.
Senator Coburn strikes again.
Querulous academics often are their own worst enemies in these funding battles. They quickly wax hysterical, unaware that platitudes about supporting "free inquiry" do not cut much with the general public. Should NSF be spending $188,206 to support a study of "candidate ambiguity and voter choice," designed to ascertain how politicians benefit from being vague?
188 thousand out of a budget totaling 2.5 trillion dollars; wow, that will make an impact. Seems more pf an anti-intellectual charade than budgetary discipline. Coburn's at it again.
Still, the political scientists have a point. The program has been going since the early 1960s, and the dollar amounts have always been relatively small—the money for political science projects have amounted to $112 million over a 10-year period, compared to NSF's budget request for 2010 of more than $7 billion.
188 thousand out of 7 billion equals 0.00269%
There are other reasons to think that this battle may be ill-chosen. The very program under fire supported the work of Elinor Ostrom, who won a Nobel Prize in economics this year for her work advancing the role of free institutions, rather than governments, in managing natural resources—an analysis Mr. Coburn might find valuable.
Senator Coburn strikes again.
Querulous academics often are their own worst enemies in these funding battles. They quickly wax hysterical, unaware that platitudes about supporting "free inquiry" do not cut much with the general public. Should NSF be spending $188,206 to support a study of "candidate ambiguity and voter choice," designed to ascertain how politicians benefit from being vague?
188 thousand out of a budget totaling 2.5 trillion dollars; wow, that will make an impact. Seems more pf an anti-intellectual charade than budgetary discipline. Coburn's at it again.
Still, the political scientists have a point. The program has been going since the early 1960s, and the dollar amounts have always been relatively small—the money for political science projects have amounted to $112 million over a 10-year period, compared to NSF's budget request for 2010 of more than $7 billion.
188 thousand out of 7 billion equals 0.00269%
There are other reasons to think that this battle may be ill-chosen. The very program under fire supported the work of Elinor Ostrom, who won a Nobel Prize in economics this year for her work advancing the role of free institutions, rather than governments, in managing natural resources—an analysis Mr. Coburn might find valuable.
Saturday, April 4, 2009
Barack’s Continental Coolness
If nothing else, the president’s trip overseas helped resolve the longstanding question of who can be more irritating, the Republicans or the French.
I think that's an easy one, but, that's just me, I suppose.
Back home, we’re just grateful that we don’t have to sit on the edge of our collective seats wondering how the president will embarrass us next. No more worrying that our chief executive might surprise Angela Merkel with a come-from-behind massage or fall in love with the president of Russia when their eyes meet across a crowded room.
W looked inot Vlad's eyes, and, biy, was he wrong.
In London, Obama was the most popular guy in the gang. When President Nicolas Sarkozy of France and China’s Hu Jintao got into a squabble, Obama took them off to separate corners and resolved the conflict, to universal applause. True, it only required switching the word “recognizing” to “note,” but in diplomatic circles, that’s what cool is all about.
Kudos to the American prez.
And then it was off to France, where the Michelle-mania spiked as the first lady and her French counterpart, the former fashion model Carla Bruni, went outfit-to-outfit. They both had bows on their coats! The wardrobe commentary was, to be honest, a bit much. However, perhaps we should be grateful to the wives for changing their clothes so frequently. It took our minds off the unemployment figures and allowed the news media to avoid having to cover the discussions on special drawing rights.
Before the summit began, Sarkozy had threatened to walk out unless he got his way on financial regulation. (When considering our French-versus-Republican contest, note that they both like to go into negotiations announcing that whatever happens, the answer is no.) But once Obama and he got together, the French leader said that despite their differences, his American counterpart was still “entirely in line with whatwe want.”
Sarko was blowing hot air, but Barack is too cool for that.
To be fair, the French, the Germans and the other heel-dragging countries have some reason to be dubious about getting too close to Obama in anything but a photo op. The Europeans don’t really trust American presidents to deliver on what they say, particularly if it has to go through Congress.
Democracy does have a cost.
While the G-20 was finishing its business, members of Congress were showing how they did theirs by passing a budget resolution. The spending plan was somewhat smaller than the president had requested. The Senate also added the Republican priority of reducing taxes on people who inherit estates of $7 million or more — a move that would increase the deficit while stimulating the economy approximately as much as eliminating a sales tax on square potato chips.
So the Dems agreed to reduce taxes on estates of more than $7 million, which, one supposes, is middle-class tax relief (in some sense).
But even so, not a single Republican voted yes on the budget. In the House, the G.O.P. came up with an alternative that would cut more taxes for the wealthy while clamping down on nondefense spending. House Republicans think we invest way too much on these government programs and try to cut back on them every single year that their party is not actually in power.
And the Republicans, with a Republican priority inserted into the budget, voted no.
In the Senate, Republican Judd Gregg of New Hampshire predicted that the budget plan “will absolutely put this country on an unsustainable path.” This would be the same Judd Gregg who agreed to join the Obama cabinet as commerce secretary before a last-minute discovery that the president is a Democrat.
Absolutely? Is this a Republican who supported George W. Bush for eight years of unrestrained spending, much of it off the budget?
Actually, it’s no contest when you think about it. The French aren’t even in the ballpark.
I think that's an easy one, but, that's just me, I suppose.
Back home, we’re just grateful that we don’t have to sit on the edge of our collective seats wondering how the president will embarrass us next. No more worrying that our chief executive might surprise Angela Merkel with a come-from-behind massage or fall in love with the president of Russia when their eyes meet across a crowded room.
W looked inot Vlad's eyes, and, biy, was he wrong.
In London, Obama was the most popular guy in the gang. When President Nicolas Sarkozy of France and China’s Hu Jintao got into a squabble, Obama took them off to separate corners and resolved the conflict, to universal applause. True, it only required switching the word “recognizing” to “note,” but in diplomatic circles, that’s what cool is all about.
Kudos to the American prez.
And then it was off to France, where the Michelle-mania spiked as the first lady and her French counterpart, the former fashion model Carla Bruni, went outfit-to-outfit. They both had bows on their coats! The wardrobe commentary was, to be honest, a bit much. However, perhaps we should be grateful to the wives for changing their clothes so frequently. It took our minds off the unemployment figures and allowed the news media to avoid having to cover the discussions on special drawing rights.
Before the summit began, Sarkozy had threatened to walk out unless he got his way on financial regulation. (When considering our French-versus-Republican contest, note that they both like to go into negotiations announcing that whatever happens, the answer is no.) But once Obama and he got together, the French leader said that despite their differences, his American counterpart was still “entirely in line with whatwe want.”
Sarko was blowing hot air, but Barack is too cool for that.
To be fair, the French, the Germans and the other heel-dragging countries have some reason to be dubious about getting too close to Obama in anything but a photo op. The Europeans don’t really trust American presidents to deliver on what they say, particularly if it has to go through Congress.
Democracy does have a cost.
While the G-20 was finishing its business, members of Congress were showing how they did theirs by passing a budget resolution. The spending plan was somewhat smaller than the president had requested. The Senate also added the Republican priority of reducing taxes on people who inherit estates of $7 million or more — a move that would increase the deficit while stimulating the economy approximately as much as eliminating a sales tax on square potato chips.
So the Dems agreed to reduce taxes on estates of more than $7 million, which, one supposes, is middle-class tax relief (in some sense).
But even so, not a single Republican voted yes on the budget. In the House, the G.O.P. came up with an alternative that would cut more taxes for the wealthy while clamping down on nondefense spending. House Republicans think we invest way too much on these government programs and try to cut back on them every single year that their party is not actually in power.
And the Republicans, with a Republican priority inserted into the budget, voted no.
In the Senate, Republican Judd Gregg of New Hampshire predicted that the budget plan “will absolutely put this country on an unsustainable path.” This would be the same Judd Gregg who agreed to join the Obama cabinet as commerce secretary before a last-minute discovery that the president is a Democrat.
Absolutely? Is this a Republican who supported George W. Bush for eight years of unrestrained spending, much of it off the budget?
Actually, it’s no contest when you think about it. The French aren’t even in the ballpark.
Obama’s Farm Subsidy Cuts Meet Stiff Resistance
April 4, 2009
Obama’s Farm Subsidy Cuts Meet Stiff Resistance
By DAVID M. HERSZENHORN
WASHINGTON — Among the audacious proposals in President Obama’s budget was a plan to save more than $9.7 billion over a decade by putting strict limits on farm subsidies that are disbursed regardless of market conditions or even whether the land is actively farmed.
But Mr. Obama’s grand ambitions have run into political reality.
The budget outlines approved by the House and Senate on Thursday night do not include limits on farm subsidies at all, and even champions of change say that if the president’s plan can be revived, it will have to be scaled back so significantly that the savings could amount to just several hundred million dollars.
Some of the fiercest critics of farm subsidy programs say the new administration overreached in offering a proposal that could have cut off payment not just to large corporate agribusinesses, but also to medium-sized family farms that might not even be profitable, setting off a huge alarm in the powerful farm lobby.
The White House plan would have prohibited so-called direct payments to farms whose annual gross receipts exceeded $500,000 — a large sum on the surface, but one that did not take account of whether those receipts yielded any real profits.
Within days, the National Farmers Union, which represents roughly 250,000 farm families, forcefully denounced the president’s plan and urged Congress to oppose it. The group’s board also raised the issue at a meeting with officials at the White House
While Mr. Obama’s Democratic allies on Capitol Hill adopted much of his budget template, the farm subsidy limits never got off the ground.
In the House, farm-state lawmakers told the Budget Committee chairman, Representative John M. Spratt Jr., Democrat of South Carolina, that they would not support any budget plan that tinkered with hard-fought agreements they struck in passing last year’s omnibus farm bill.
And in the Senate, Kent Conrad, Democrat of North Dakota, chairman of the Budget Committee and an ardent defender of agricultural interests in his state, quickly discarded the president’s proposal.
Even some of the toughest critics of farm subsidies would not endorse the president’s approach.
Representative Ron Kind, a Wisconsin Democrat and a major advocate of cutting subsidies, has been working with the White House chief of staff, Rahm Emanuel, to revamp Mr. Obama’s plans.
“There’s more that we can do to tighten up these programs,” said Mr. Kind, who is urging an eligibility cap of $250,000 in income.
Other critics of farm subsidies said that the initial White House proposal, while bold, missed the mark.
“It cast a cloud over the whole gesture to have something like that,” said Ken Cook, the president of Environmental Working Group, a nonprofit that has energetically lobbied to reduce farm subsidies.
Mr. Cook suggested that the administration had done a more careful job in laying the groundwork for initiatives on climate change and health care. “In this case,” he said, “it was thrown out there and those of us on the reform side of the agenda really found ourselves in an awkward position.”
Amendments to adopt some of Mr. Obama’s limits were defeated by the Budget Committees in both chambers.
Congressional Democrats and the Obama administration said that the budget resolutions adopted Thursday protected Mr. Obama’s top priorities, on health care, energy and education, while also reducing the deficit.
But administration officials also conceded that the president’s farm proposal was far more ambitious than lawmakers were willing to endorse. The officials said they had not given up on the idea of ending government subsidies for the wealthiest farmers just as they plan to end the Bush tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans.
“We look forward to continuing the conversation with the leadership and the relevant committees and the stakeholders in finding the best way to support rural America and get some savings and efficiencies out of agricultural programs,” said Kenneth S. Baer, a spokesman for the Office of Management and Budget.
In the Senate, Mr. Conrad did help with approval of a budget provision that would save $350 million over five years by making modest cuts to crop insurance programs, but it was far short of the $2 billion in cuts to insurance programs that Mr. Obama had proposed.
As part of his budget plan, Mr. Conrad also expressed a willingness to consider “targeted savings in agriculture” down the line.
As usual, party lines in the debate over farm subsidies were blurred in some cases by geographic interests.
In the House, Representative Paul D. Ryan, Republican of Wisconsin, joined Representative Earl Blumenauer, Democrat of Oregon, in offering an amendment to cap eligibility for farm subsidies at $250,000 in family income. Senator Charles E. Grassley, Republican of Iowa, offered a similar amendment in the Senate. Both were defeated.
In last year’s farm bill, the income eligibility cap was reduced to $750,000 in farm income or $500,000 in non-farm income, from $2.5 million.
But even if the Obama administration succeeds in getting a $250,000 cap enacted, it is unclear that it will save much money.
In 2007, when the Bush administration proposed a $200,000 income cap, a study by the Agriculture Department found that fewer than 2 percent, roughly 38,000 of more than 2.6 million farm proprietors or landlords of farm properties, reported gross income of more than $200,000 and received subsidy payments.
One of those who studied the plan was Keith Collins, then the department’s chief economist and now an industry consultant. “There’s just not going to be a lot of savings on a $250,000 hard cap,” Mr. Collins said.
Obama’s Farm Subsidy Cuts Meet Stiff Resistance
By DAVID M. HERSZENHORN
WASHINGTON — Among the audacious proposals in President Obama’s budget was a plan to save more than $9.7 billion over a decade by putting strict limits on farm subsidies that are disbursed regardless of market conditions or even whether the land is actively farmed.
But Mr. Obama’s grand ambitions have run into political reality.
The budget outlines approved by the House and Senate on Thursday night do not include limits on farm subsidies at all, and even champions of change say that if the president’s plan can be revived, it will have to be scaled back so significantly that the savings could amount to just several hundred million dollars.
Some of the fiercest critics of farm subsidy programs say the new administration overreached in offering a proposal that could have cut off payment not just to large corporate agribusinesses, but also to medium-sized family farms that might not even be profitable, setting off a huge alarm in the powerful farm lobby.
The White House plan would have prohibited so-called direct payments to farms whose annual gross receipts exceeded $500,000 — a large sum on the surface, but one that did not take account of whether those receipts yielded any real profits.
Within days, the National Farmers Union, which represents roughly 250,000 farm families, forcefully denounced the president’s plan and urged Congress to oppose it. The group’s board also raised the issue at a meeting with officials at the White House
While Mr. Obama’s Democratic allies on Capitol Hill adopted much of his budget template, the farm subsidy limits never got off the ground.
In the House, farm-state lawmakers told the Budget Committee chairman, Representative John M. Spratt Jr., Democrat of South Carolina, that they would not support any budget plan that tinkered with hard-fought agreements they struck in passing last year’s omnibus farm bill.
And in the Senate, Kent Conrad, Democrat of North Dakota, chairman of the Budget Committee and an ardent defender of agricultural interests in his state, quickly discarded the president’s proposal.
Even some of the toughest critics of farm subsidies would not endorse the president’s approach.
Representative Ron Kind, a Wisconsin Democrat and a major advocate of cutting subsidies, has been working with the White House chief of staff, Rahm Emanuel, to revamp Mr. Obama’s plans.
“There’s more that we can do to tighten up these programs,” said Mr. Kind, who is urging an eligibility cap of $250,000 in income.
Other critics of farm subsidies said that the initial White House proposal, while bold, missed the mark.
“It cast a cloud over the whole gesture to have something like that,” said Ken Cook, the president of Environmental Working Group, a nonprofit that has energetically lobbied to reduce farm subsidies.
Mr. Cook suggested that the administration had done a more careful job in laying the groundwork for initiatives on climate change and health care. “In this case,” he said, “it was thrown out there and those of us on the reform side of the agenda really found ourselves in an awkward position.”
Amendments to adopt some of Mr. Obama’s limits were defeated by the Budget Committees in both chambers.
Congressional Democrats and the Obama administration said that the budget resolutions adopted Thursday protected Mr. Obama’s top priorities, on health care, energy and education, while also reducing the deficit.
But administration officials also conceded that the president’s farm proposal was far more ambitious than lawmakers were willing to endorse. The officials said they had not given up on the idea of ending government subsidies for the wealthiest farmers just as they plan to end the Bush tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans.
“We look forward to continuing the conversation with the leadership and the relevant committees and the stakeholders in finding the best way to support rural America and get some savings and efficiencies out of agricultural programs,” said Kenneth S. Baer, a spokesman for the Office of Management and Budget.
In the Senate, Mr. Conrad did help with approval of a budget provision that would save $350 million over five years by making modest cuts to crop insurance programs, but it was far short of the $2 billion in cuts to insurance programs that Mr. Obama had proposed.
As part of his budget plan, Mr. Conrad also expressed a willingness to consider “targeted savings in agriculture” down the line.
As usual, party lines in the debate over farm subsidies were blurred in some cases by geographic interests.
In the House, Representative Paul D. Ryan, Republican of Wisconsin, joined Representative Earl Blumenauer, Democrat of Oregon, in offering an amendment to cap eligibility for farm subsidies at $250,000 in family income. Senator Charles E. Grassley, Republican of Iowa, offered a similar amendment in the Senate. Both were defeated.
In last year’s farm bill, the income eligibility cap was reduced to $750,000 in farm income or $500,000 in non-farm income, from $2.5 million.
But even if the Obama administration succeeds in getting a $250,000 cap enacted, it is unclear that it will save much money.
In 2007, when the Bush administration proposed a $200,000 income cap, a study by the Agriculture Department found that fewer than 2 percent, roughly 38,000 of more than 2.6 million farm proprietors or landlords of farm properties, reported gross income of more than $200,000 and received subsidy payments.
One of those who studied the plan was Keith Collins, then the department’s chief economist and now an industry consultant. “There’s just not going to be a lot of savings on a $250,000 hard cap,” Mr. Collins said.
Wednesday, March 25, 2009
To Cut Costs, States Relax Prison Policies
The Deerfield Correctional Facility in Ionia, Mich., was closing, so inmates were put on a bus to be transported to another prison, in Muskegon.
Corrections officers at Deerfield carrying chains for the final 33 of 1,200 prisoners being transferred to another prison.
Begs the question: if financial difficulties change prison policies, are such policies valid in the first place?
March 25, 2009
To Cut Costs, States Relax Prison Policies
By JENNIFER STEINHAUER
CARSON CITY, Nev. — For nearly three decades, most states have dealt with lawbreakers in two ways: lock more of them up for longer periods, and build more prisons to hold them. Now many governments, out of money and buried under mounting prison costs, are reversing those policies and practices.
Some states, like Colorado and Kansas, are closing prisons. Others, like New Jersey, have replaced jail time with community programs or other sanctions for people who violate parole. Kentucky lawmakers passed a bill this month that enhances the credits some inmates can earn toward release.
Michigan is doing a little of all of this, in addition to freeing some offenders who have yet to serve their maximum sentence. And last Wednesday, Gov. Bill Richardson of New Mexico, a Democrat, signed legislation to repeal the state’s death penalty, which aside from ethical concerns was seen as costly.
Being tough on crime and sentencing has long been the clear path toward job retention for state lawmakers — Republicans and Democrats alike. But the economic crisis is forcing them to take a more pragmatic approach as prisoners are increasingly seen less as indistinct wrongdoers and more as expenses that must be reined in.
“When state budgets are flush,” said Barry Krisberg, president of the National Council on Crime and Delinquency, “prisons are something that governors and legislators all support, and they don’t want to touch sentencing reform. But when dollars are as tight as they are now, you have to make really tough choices. And so now things are in play.”
Recessions tend to prompt changes to corrections policies. After the recession at the start of this decade, numerous states enacted laws eliminating some long mandatory minimum sentences; several began to offer early release and treatment options to some drug offenders. Those changes, though, were far less reaching than what is happening now and did little to curb exploding corrections budgets.
In the past 20 years, correction department budgets have quadrupled and are outpacing every major spending area outside health care, according to a recent report by the Pew Center on the States. With 7.3 million Americans in prison, on parole or under probation, states spent $47 billion in 2008, the study said.
Faced with such costs, even states known for being particularly tough on crime are revisiting their policies and laws.
“In Kentucky, our prison budget is approaching half a billion dollars,” said J. Michael Brown, secretary of the State Justice and Public Safety Cabinet. “And as dollars get scarce, it forces a tremendous amount of scrutiny.”
The annual cost to keep someone in prison varies by state, and the type of institution, but the typical cost cited by states is about $35,000, said Peggy Burke of the Center for Effective Public Policy, a nonprofit group that works with local governments on criminal justice matters.
The most pervasive cost-saving trend among corrections departments has been to look closely at parole systems, in which it is no longer cost-effective to monitor released inmates, largely because too many violate their terms, often on technicalities, and end up back in prison. In California, among the few states to mandate parole for all convicts, parole violators — not new offenders — account for the largest percentage of inmates entering the system.
New Jersey recently began a program for some offenders on parole with technical violations, like failing to report to a parole officer or changing their address without the officer’s approval. Rather than being returned to jail, those former inmates are sent to a center for a clinical assessment of their risks and needs. With that change, the state is on track to save $16.2 million this fiscal year.
Other states are shortening paroles, or even sentences, to save money.
In Kentucky, Gov. Steven L. Beshear, a Democrat, is about to sign a bill that makes permanent a pilot program that offers qualifying inmates credit for time served on parole against sentence dates, in part to avoid a pattern of inmates’ choosing to stay in prison rather than risking later parole violations. The trial program saved the state $12 million last year. The state has also adopted a program that gives treatment rather than jail time to select drug offenders.
In California, where Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, a Republican, has called for $400 million to be cut from the state’s corrections budget, officials are seeking to remove low-level drug offenders from the parole supervision system and to provide them treatment options instead.
Like other states making such changes, California is led by a governor who long opposed such shifts in prison policies. But Mr. Schwarzenegger, as well as other leaders and lawmakers who are far more conservative, has come around to a view held by advocates of sentencing and prison reform that longer sentences do little to reduce recidivism among certain nonviolent criminals.
“In California we are out of room and we’re out of money,” said the state’s corrections secretary, Matthew Cate. “It may be time to take some of these steps that we should have taken long ago.”
Several states are also looking at sentencing itself. In New York, for example, Gov. David A. Paterson, a Democrat, has proposed an overhaul of the so-called Rockefeller drug laws that impose lengthy mandatory sentences on many nonviolent drug offenders.
Some states are simply consolidating operations and closing prisons, which is controversial among lawmakers and often riles a community. Colorado, Kansas, Michigan and New Jersey have all shut down or announced the closing of at least one prison. Others are proposing to do so.
Here in Carson City, home to one of the oldest state prisons in the country, the state estimates it would save $18 million a year by closing the prison. But the idea has rattled employees, some of whom have followed their parents’ career paths, and the community, which considers the prison a provider of jobs and an important piece of Nevada history.
“We are the oldest prison west of the Mississippi,” the warden, Greg Smith, said during a tour last week. “And the staff here takes a lot of pride in that.”
The 220-year-old prison is older than the state of Nevada, and the buildings, according to officials, sit on land filled with saber-toothed tiger prints. It first housed men who gave “firewater” to Indians and is where the state’s license plates are made. But the prison’s aging facilities have raised questions about its efficiency compared with modern counterparts.
The lament is similar in Michigan, where three prisons are set to be closed and more are being studied.
“As the economy has worsened, prisons are the modern-day factory in our rural areas,” said Russ Marlan, a spokesman for the Michigan Corrections Department. “We built these prisons in the 1980s, and people were adamantly opposed to having them in their communities. Now we go and try to take them out, and they don’t want them gone.”
Meanwhile, some states that revised parole and sentencing in boom times are fighting a different battle: to hold on to the financing that made those changes possible.
In Kansas, for instance, where drug treatment has replaced incarceration for some offenders and mentally ill offenders have received housing assistance, the prison population fell in recent years, largely because recidivism also declined, said Roger Werholtz, secretary of the Kansas Corrections Department. Now many of those programs have fallen victim to budget cuts.
Corrections officers at Deerfield carrying chains for the final 33 of 1,200 prisoners being transferred to another prison.
Begs the question: if financial difficulties change prison policies, are such policies valid in the first place?
March 25, 2009
To Cut Costs, States Relax Prison Policies
By JENNIFER STEINHAUER
CARSON CITY, Nev. — For nearly three decades, most states have dealt with lawbreakers in two ways: lock more of them up for longer periods, and build more prisons to hold them. Now many governments, out of money and buried under mounting prison costs, are reversing those policies and practices.
Some states, like Colorado and Kansas, are closing prisons. Others, like New Jersey, have replaced jail time with community programs or other sanctions for people who violate parole. Kentucky lawmakers passed a bill this month that enhances the credits some inmates can earn toward release.
Michigan is doing a little of all of this, in addition to freeing some offenders who have yet to serve their maximum sentence. And last Wednesday, Gov. Bill Richardson of New Mexico, a Democrat, signed legislation to repeal the state’s death penalty, which aside from ethical concerns was seen as costly.
Being tough on crime and sentencing has long been the clear path toward job retention for state lawmakers — Republicans and Democrats alike. But the economic crisis is forcing them to take a more pragmatic approach as prisoners are increasingly seen less as indistinct wrongdoers and more as expenses that must be reined in.
“When state budgets are flush,” said Barry Krisberg, president of the National Council on Crime and Delinquency, “prisons are something that governors and legislators all support, and they don’t want to touch sentencing reform. But when dollars are as tight as they are now, you have to make really tough choices. And so now things are in play.”
Recessions tend to prompt changes to corrections policies. After the recession at the start of this decade, numerous states enacted laws eliminating some long mandatory minimum sentences; several began to offer early release and treatment options to some drug offenders. Those changes, though, were far less reaching than what is happening now and did little to curb exploding corrections budgets.
In the past 20 years, correction department budgets have quadrupled and are outpacing every major spending area outside health care, according to a recent report by the Pew Center on the States. With 7.3 million Americans in prison, on parole or under probation, states spent $47 billion in 2008, the study said.
Faced with such costs, even states known for being particularly tough on crime are revisiting their policies and laws.
“In Kentucky, our prison budget is approaching half a billion dollars,” said J. Michael Brown, secretary of the State Justice and Public Safety Cabinet. “And as dollars get scarce, it forces a tremendous amount of scrutiny.”
The annual cost to keep someone in prison varies by state, and the type of institution, but the typical cost cited by states is about $35,000, said Peggy Burke of the Center for Effective Public Policy, a nonprofit group that works with local governments on criminal justice matters.
The most pervasive cost-saving trend among corrections departments has been to look closely at parole systems, in which it is no longer cost-effective to monitor released inmates, largely because too many violate their terms, often on technicalities, and end up back in prison. In California, among the few states to mandate parole for all convicts, parole violators — not new offenders — account for the largest percentage of inmates entering the system.
New Jersey recently began a program for some offenders on parole with technical violations, like failing to report to a parole officer or changing their address without the officer’s approval. Rather than being returned to jail, those former inmates are sent to a center for a clinical assessment of their risks and needs. With that change, the state is on track to save $16.2 million this fiscal year.
Other states are shortening paroles, or even sentences, to save money.
In Kentucky, Gov. Steven L. Beshear, a Democrat, is about to sign a bill that makes permanent a pilot program that offers qualifying inmates credit for time served on parole against sentence dates, in part to avoid a pattern of inmates’ choosing to stay in prison rather than risking later parole violations. The trial program saved the state $12 million last year. The state has also adopted a program that gives treatment rather than jail time to select drug offenders.
In California, where Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, a Republican, has called for $400 million to be cut from the state’s corrections budget, officials are seeking to remove low-level drug offenders from the parole supervision system and to provide them treatment options instead.
Like other states making such changes, California is led by a governor who long opposed such shifts in prison policies. But Mr. Schwarzenegger, as well as other leaders and lawmakers who are far more conservative, has come around to a view held by advocates of sentencing and prison reform that longer sentences do little to reduce recidivism among certain nonviolent criminals.
“In California we are out of room and we’re out of money,” said the state’s corrections secretary, Matthew Cate. “It may be time to take some of these steps that we should have taken long ago.”
Several states are also looking at sentencing itself. In New York, for example, Gov. David A. Paterson, a Democrat, has proposed an overhaul of the so-called Rockefeller drug laws that impose lengthy mandatory sentences on many nonviolent drug offenders.
Some states are simply consolidating operations and closing prisons, which is controversial among lawmakers and often riles a community. Colorado, Kansas, Michigan and New Jersey have all shut down or announced the closing of at least one prison. Others are proposing to do so.
Here in Carson City, home to one of the oldest state prisons in the country, the state estimates it would save $18 million a year by closing the prison. But the idea has rattled employees, some of whom have followed their parents’ career paths, and the community, which considers the prison a provider of jobs and an important piece of Nevada history.
“We are the oldest prison west of the Mississippi,” the warden, Greg Smith, said during a tour last week. “And the staff here takes a lot of pride in that.”
The 220-year-old prison is older than the state of Nevada, and the buildings, according to officials, sit on land filled with saber-toothed tiger prints. It first housed men who gave “firewater” to Indians and is where the state’s license plates are made. But the prison’s aging facilities have raised questions about its efficiency compared with modern counterparts.
The lament is similar in Michigan, where three prisons are set to be closed and more are being studied.
“As the economy has worsened, prisons are the modern-day factory in our rural areas,” said Russ Marlan, a spokesman for the Michigan Corrections Department. “We built these prisons in the 1980s, and people were adamantly opposed to having them in their communities. Now we go and try to take them out, and they don’t want them gone.”
Meanwhile, some states that revised parole and sentencing in boom times are fighting a different battle: to hold on to the financing that made those changes possible.
In Kansas, for instance, where drug treatment has replaced incarceration for some offenders and mentally ill offenders have received housing assistance, the prison population fell in recent years, largely because recidivism also declined, said Roger Werholtz, secretary of the Kansas Corrections Department. Now many of those programs have fallen victim to budget cuts.
Friday, February 27, 2009
Climate of Change
But I don’t blame Mr. Obama for leaving some big questions unanswered in this budget. There’s only so much long-run thinking the political system can handle in the midst of a severe crisis; he has probably taken on all he can, for now. And this budget looks very, very good.
A Bold Plan Sweeps Away Reagan Ideas
It is a happy day in America once again. The ghost of the Gipper has been purged.
Copies of the president’s budget, “A New Era of Responsibility.”
The budget that President Obama proposed on Thursday is nothing less than an attempt to end a three-decade era of economic policy dominated by the ideas of Ronald Reagan and his supporters.
And two weeks ago some of us were worrying that President Obama was being bested by Mitch McConnell. Nah!
After Mr. Obama spent much of his first five weeks in office responding to the financial crisis, his budget effectively tried to reclaim momentum for the priorities on which he campaigned.
Paul Krugman was quite complimentary.
His efforts would add to a budget deficit already swollen by Mr. Bush’s policies and the recession, creating the largest deficit, relative to the size of the economy, since World War II. Erasing that deficit will require some tough choices — about further spending cuts and tax increases — that Mr. Obama avoided this week. But he nonetheless made choices.
That agenda starts with taxes. Over the last three decades, the pretax incomes of the wealthiest households have risen far more than they have for other households, while the tax rates for top earners have fallen more than they have for others, according to the Congressional Budget Office.
“The tax code will become more progressive, with relatively higher rates on the rich and relatively lower rates on the middle class and poor,” said Roberton Williams, a senior fellow at the Tax Policy Center in Washington. “This is reversing the effects of the Bush policies,” he added, and then going even further.
Mr. Obama would try to lift the incomes of the middle class and poor through two main channels, administration officials said. The first is an overhaul of health care, meant to reduce the insurance premiums now taking a large bite out of many families’ paychecks.
The other channel is education. Over the last three decades, the pay of college graduates has risen significantly faster than the pay of less-educated workers. Mr. Obama aims to move workers into the first category by increasing federal financial aid and simplifying the myriad of aid programs. In recent years, the United States has lost its standing as the country in which the largest share of young adults graduates from college.
We as a nation simply accepted these trends, out of self-interest, or resignation. Now we have a President who is showing leadership in trying to balance things a bit better for those who are not wealthy and influential.
Copies of the president’s budget, “A New Era of Responsibility.”
The budget that President Obama proposed on Thursday is nothing less than an attempt to end a three-decade era of economic policy dominated by the ideas of Ronald Reagan and his supporters.
And two weeks ago some of us were worrying that President Obama was being bested by Mitch McConnell. Nah!
After Mr. Obama spent much of his first five weeks in office responding to the financial crisis, his budget effectively tried to reclaim momentum for the priorities on which he campaigned.
Paul Krugman was quite complimentary.
His efforts would add to a budget deficit already swollen by Mr. Bush’s policies and the recession, creating the largest deficit, relative to the size of the economy, since World War II. Erasing that deficit will require some tough choices — about further spending cuts and tax increases — that Mr. Obama avoided this week. But he nonetheless made choices.
That agenda starts with taxes. Over the last three decades, the pretax incomes of the wealthiest households have risen far more than they have for other households, while the tax rates for top earners have fallen more than they have for others, according to the Congressional Budget Office.
“The tax code will become more progressive, with relatively higher rates on the rich and relatively lower rates on the middle class and poor,” said Roberton Williams, a senior fellow at the Tax Policy Center in Washington. “This is reversing the effects of the Bush policies,” he added, and then going even further.
Mr. Obama would try to lift the incomes of the middle class and poor through two main channels, administration officials said. The first is an overhaul of health care, meant to reduce the insurance premiums now taking a large bite out of many families’ paychecks.
The other channel is education. Over the last three decades, the pay of college graduates has risen significantly faster than the pay of less-educated workers. Mr. Obama aims to move workers into the first category by increasing federal financial aid and simplifying the myriad of aid programs. In recent years, the United States has lost its standing as the country in which the largest share of young adults graduates from college.
We as a nation simply accepted these trends, out of self-interest, or resignation. Now we have a President who is showing leadership in trying to balance things a bit better for those who are not wealthy and influential.
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