By KEVIN SACK
Published: May 22, 1995
ALBANY, May 21— The budget that Gov. George E. Pataki proposed in February rested on the three philosophical pillars of his campaign: to cut state income taxes, to put welfare recipients to work and to reduce state spending. Nearly four months later, the budget negotiations that Mr. Pataki seems close to completing would largely achieve those three goals.
But in each case, Mr. Pataki will fall short of the specific goals he set in his original budget proposal, and perhaps nowhere more than with welfare. Although public opinion polls suggest that welfare may be the strongest issue in Mr. Pataki’s favor, the Republican Governor bargained away several of his most significant welfare initiatives to secure agreement from the Democratic Assembly Speaker, Sheldon Silver, on a tax cut package.
That agreement, sealed late last week as part of the larger — and as yet unresolved — state budget negotiations, provides for a three-year package of income tax cuts that would reduce rates by 25 percent for two-thirds of all filers. Although it differs in size and shape from the tax cut proposed by Mr. Pataki, it enables the Governor to deliver on a respectable portion of his most important fiscal promise.
That may explain why the Governor was willing to give up the welfare proposals that had gained the most attention in Albany and around the state.
Mr. Pataki’s inability to reduce welfare benefit levels or impose time limits on able-bodied welfare recipients distinguishes him from many of the Republican governors he cites as models, like John M. Engler of Michigan and George V. Voinovich of Ohio. It may, however, provide political ammunition for Albany’s Republicans. Several Republican lawmakers and political strategists said last week that their party’s shortcomings in the budget process would simply allow them in the 1996 legislative elections to portray Democrats as obstructionists to welfare changes.
Mr. Pataki will still emerge from the budget negotiations with significant changes in welfare. Workfare will be mandatory for able-bodied recipients, who will otherwise be kicked off the welfare rolls. Parents will lose benefits if their children are chronically truant from school. Electronic finger-imaging of welfare recipients will be imposed statewide and other anti-fraud tactics will be strengthened.
Mr. Pataki stressed the point today that many of those measures had been proposed in Albany before, either by the former Democratic Governor, Mario M. Cuomo, or Republican legislators, but had never been pushed through the Democratic-controlled Assembly.
He also emphasized that the state spending would decrease by about 1 percent. Although that is well short of the 3.5 percent reduction the Governor wanted, state budget officials say they believe it would be the first time since World War II that a governor proposed and the Legislature enacted a real spending cut.
“The budget is not done, but we have the potential to have a real historic break from the past,” Mr. Pataki said in an interview today.
Mr. Silver, for his part, expressed satisfaction that he had succeeded in moderating the most stringent welfare sanctions and in refocusing the income tax cut to give greater benefit to the middle class. He said today that nearly two-thirds of the plan’s total savings would go to taxpayers who earn less than $100,000.
Those making more than $55,000 would average a 13 percent cut in tax rates, rather than the 25 reduction for everyone proposed by Mr. Pataki. Mr. Silver also succeeded in killing the fourth year of the tax cut, which would have had the most severe fiscal impact on the state. Under Mr. Pataki’s plan, the fourth year would have cost the state $6.8 billion in revenues. The third year of the consensus plan is expected to cost just over $3.5 billion.
Mr. Pataki, according to Mr. Silver, cannot declare total victory.
“We had a Governor who thought he had the right to dictate everything and he found out that he didn’t,” Mr. Silver said. “He had to come to the table and give and take like everybody else. It wasn’t going to be this great home run that he was going to hit out of the ball park.”
Indeed, Mr. Pataki and the Republican State Committee ultimately fell somewhat short in their efforts to circumvent Mr. Silver and apply pressure directly to individual Democrats in the Assembly. The advertising campaign that the state Republican chairman, William D. Powers, ran against Democratic lawmakers in their districts increased the hostility of this year’s negotiations but never persuaded members to break ranks with the Speaker.
“The whole Pataki game plan was that he had this incredible leverage because he could go around the Speaker,” said Mel Miller, a former Democratic Speaker who is now a lobbyist. “The notion that he could rule by this coalition of Republicans and moderate and conservative Democrats absolutely failed.”
Mr. Silver vowed today that he would be able to get the budget passed with only Democratic votes in his house, which has 94 Democrats and 56 Republicans. Pataki administration officials and lawmakers in both parties have speculated that Mr. Silver would need Republican votes to get the budget through the Assembly.
Earlier this year, Mr. Silver said he could support time limits for able-bodied welfare recipients as long as they were provided with job training and other tools needed to survive in the workplace. But throughout the negotiations, Mr. Silver apparently took a hard line against time limits and benefit reductions.
It eventually became clear to Mr. Pataki that those proposals would have to be jettisoned to enact the tax cuts and other welfare changes. “That was his victory,” one Pataki administration official said of Mr. Silver. “But we’ve used that to leverage every welfare reform we could think of.”
Pataki administration officials also questioned whether the Court of Appeals, the state’s highest court, would have upheld time limits on welfare benefits, and argued that what they gave up might have been struck down anyway.
“When you look at the tax cuts, the Medicaid changes, the decrease in spending, the business tax cuts, none are things the Assembly wanted,” said one administration official, insisting on anonymity. “And the biggest thing we gave up was something we didn’t think our court would uphold.”
Chart: “ADDING IT UP: The Albany Tax Cut” shows estimated savings for a family of four under Governor Pataki’s budget plan. (Source: State Department of Taxation and Finance)(pg. B6)
http://www.nytimes.com/1995/05/22/nyregion/pataki-yielding-a-bit-on-welfare-plan.html?scp=75&sq=workfare&st=nyt&pagewanted=1
Posted on June 17, 2010 by WP
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