I like your posts, Mr ReformWNY. You seem to be very astute. Good for you!
This is a sticking point for me too. The media keeps drilling "pork and patronage" into our heads. Politics DOES NOT WORK without patronage. I had patronage jobs, people in my family have had partonage jobs, etc. We were completely qualified for the jobs we had, too. People do not do things for free anymore. If you help someone out, they do the same for you. Patronage does not cost the taxpayers anything beyond what they would have paid someone that was not given a position as a favor. How else do you repay your most loyal supporters?SO my question is still the same. What is thesolution? Everyone right now is afforded hindsight... something the legislators voting at the beginning of the year didn't get. As far as pork and patronage cutting.... isn't the pork gone from the legislature? What are you going to cut? As far as waste... didn't Kennedy attack the cell phones and the cars, etc. right off the bat?
As for waste, Tim should be commended for taking away cell phones and cars. In the grand scheme of things, however, these items are a drop in the bucket of our budget mess. I'm positive that as Tim recognizes other money drains, they too will be addressed.
While I do not have an answer to this question, as I cannot specifically name things that could be cut, I do have a comment. Currently, a homeowning family earning $70000 a year in WNY gives 50% of his or her earnings to local, state, and federal governments. 33%-36% goes towards income taxes, 6% goes towards property tax, then there is the 8% (soon to be 9.25% sales tax), government usage fees (licenses, courts, permits), school tax, etc. If you are a pack-a-day smoker, the state gets $405.15 of your money per year. At some point, we have to say "No More!" What, exactly, is our government spending our hard-earned money on? How much more do we have to give before we can say we are no longer in debt?agree wholeheartedly that a tax increase is not reform... but my question is what do you do in the meantime while reform is in process? How do you keep functioning? At what cost is the penny saved? As a good teacher in highschool said many times "You can pay me now... or you can pay me later." We skipped the penny. We now have estimates of a deficit as high as 115mil+. How much revenue has the county lost to Niagara county on DMV's? What is it going to cost to repair things next year that went to pot this year because of neglect?
This isnt a matter of "we need more sales tax to fix things" - this is a matter of getting creative. Lets stop spending money on everything and reevaluate what we need. Our municipalities are our biggest employers. That just wont work. I'll bet you could lay off 33% of our current government employees and still run it efficiently. I understand that there are issues with contracts, politics, etc. Maybe insolvency isnt such a bad thing.
A big flaw of the Laffer Curve is the fact that it does not take into consideration that people wont stop working as a result of higher taxation - they will just move, which seems to be the situation now.
I would bet that the Sales Tax penny would be supported more if it had a REAL end point to it. A clause that stipulates that it cannot be renewed after an end date. How many times will the public be duped into supporting another "temporary tax", only to find out that years later, they are still paying it and it really didnt pay for anything anyways!
I, personally, feel that we have too many governments. I support the idea of regionalism and feel that getting rid of layers upon layers of goverment mess can help the area. I wouldnt trust our current leadership to do it, though.
Great thread, Reformer.