Identifying, and Addressing, New York State's Local Government Problem

New York State has a local government problem.

I think that's a fair statement. Almost more important than the statement being fair is that most of New York's political class would appear to agree. New York has a lot of local governments. No one really knows how many, but Andrew Cuomo, several times in his policy book The New NY Agenda, cites a figure of roughly 10,000.

This plethora of local governments has various consequences, few of which good. Political accountability is too-difficult to establish, because it's too difficult to know who answers to whom, who is supposed to do what, and who did what. Certain important political and governmental decisions are in effect subject to no scrutiny whatsoever, because few know who is making them. Further, all these layers of government get expensive. It doesn't take a Tea Partier, or any kind of conservative, to understand that.

I suppose all these local governments might make increase the points of access to citizens. If the citizens know where to look for that access, of course.

New York State has a local government problem. And it isn't new. Look at the following quotes.

The term “county government,” as applied in the commonly accepted sense of a single governing body for county affairs, is misleading. There is no such thing in New York State as a single, or a unified, government for an entire county. Instead, there are for each county several independent governing departments and officials, the functions of each being territorially coextensive with the county boundaries in general. (County Government, Page 85)

And:

For the purpose of government, which means for purpose of raising and expending money for the advantage of the people, we have in this State and within its counties many units or districts. Many of these districts are included within others and many overlap each other. Each has certain officers and certain powers of local government and support. Consider a typical New York county, my own [Oneida County], containing 2 cities, 26 towns, 19 incorporated villages, 23 special districts and 355 school districts outside of the cities. (County Government, Page 27)

The book those quotes are from, County Government, was published in 1915.

The Oneida County official who made the second statement, the one from page 27, went on to point out how all of the 400 or so governments within Oneida County had the power to tax the citizens. In 1915, there were roughly 400 taxing entities within Oneida County alone. It's undoubtedly more now.

79 years later, in 1994 (the year of the so-called Republican Revolution) the situation had not improved. Then-Governor Mario Cuomo raised the issue in his Message to the Legislature (State of the State message).

Trading the unaffordable luxury of autonomy for the substantial economies of consolidation is one of the most constructive steps communities can take to lighten their tax load . . . I propose giving local voters the power to insist that the merits of consolidation be studied—not by politicians with a personal interest in the outcome but by forming Citizens' Restructuring Initiatives (CRIs) . . . The people would have the power both to launch a CRI and to determine, in the voting booth, whether to go forward with its recommendations. (1994 Message to the Legislature, pages 119-120)

It's scarcely deniable that one of the reasons local taxes are so high in New York State is that there are so many entities that can, and do, tax the State's citizens. Even if reducing the number of entities would somehow not reduce taxes, then at least the people would know who was taxing them, and what for.

Mario Cuomo lost the 1994 election to George Pataki, who rode the wave of Newt Gingrich's Republican Revolution and entered office spouting a lot of Reagan-era rhetoric about reducing the size and cost of government. Pataki uttered the phrase “the heavy hand of government” again and again during his administration.

One indicator, not a perfect one of course, of reducing the size of government is reducing the size of the government workforce. It's even better if this can be done without layoffs (and State layoffs did not happen under Pataki) because layoffs hurt local economies more than high taxes.

By this measure, during the Pataki era the size of State government did indeed shrink. According to an annual Rockefeller Institute of Government publication called the New York State Statistical Yearbook, the State workforce had approximately 17,419.89 fewer full-time positions on January 1, 2007, when Pataki was replaced by Eliot Spitzer, than on January 1, 1995, when Pataki replaced Mario Cuomo. (The Rockefeller Institute's State workforce data uses a thing called a “Full-Time Equivalent.” 2 half-time workers would count as 1 FTE.)

On the surface, we can congratulate George Pataki on accomplishing one of his policy goals. (Even though this figure doesn't include the public authorities, or the Legislature, or private sector consultants hired by the State.)

However, during that same time period, according to the same publication, positions under the jurisdiction of the County Civil Service agencies, outside of New York City, actually went up by 31,506. And there's a lot besides New York City that this figure doesn't include: certain political appointees; employees of cities; local elected officials; employees of local legislatures such as Town Councils. Somehow I doubt that the increase noted by the Rockefeller Institute was somehow compensated for by a decrease in areas not recorded by the Institute.

New York State has a local government problem.

There are currently 3 major candidates for Governor of New York State. Andrew Cuomo has the Democratic nomination. Carl Paladino and Rick Lazio are currently in a bitter contest for the Republican nomination.

As far as I can tell, neither Rick Lazio and nor Carl Paladino have a plan for dealing with New York's local government problem.

Lazio, in his policy book (entitled Building a Better New York), outlines a plan for a property tax cap (Building a Better New York, pages 4 and 12). He also professes a desire to “end” State unfunded mandates on local governments (Building a Better New York, page 9). But I see nothing there for the problem of there being simply too many local governments and too much overlap between them all. We know that these issues are not simply byproducts of unfunded mandates, because as far as I can tell unfunded mandates were not considered a big issue in 1915, and we know that New York's local government problem goes back at least that far and probably a lot further.

Paladino makes no mention of the local government issue whatsoever in the plan for New York (which consists of 8 bullets) that is posted on his website. The one mention of property taxes on the site appears to come in reference to Medicaid spending.

By contrast, however, Lazio's campaign website mentions the word “mosque” 33 times, and Paladino's 294 times, according to a Google search on both sites.

Andrew Cuomo has, by far, the most detailed plan to reform local government. It's found on pages 82 through 92 of his policy book, The New NY Agenda. The details are available for anyone to read, so I won't get into them, but broadly speaking it revolves around allowing local governments, and local voters, to initiate and lead efforts to cut layers of government and share services. It would ultimately, it seems, be up to the voters to decide if they prefer the unaffordable luxury of autonomy, or not. While he also deals with unfunded mandates (The New NY Agenda, pages 55, 56, 155), and has a fairly detailed property tax cap plan (The New NY Agenda, pages 42-45), it's clear that Cuomo is placing most of his faith in this area in the local government reform plan.

Importantly, Cuomo also appears to have a good handle on the depth and extent of the local government problem.

Our system of local government was constructed hundreds of years ago and is the product of historical accumulation.109 As a result, at the local level there exists overlap and duplication, resulting in high taxes, inefficiency and waste.110 In fact, there are more than 10,500 local governmental entities --- including 62 counties, 932 towns, 555 villages and more than 7,000 special districts --- imposing taxes and fees across New York State. (The New NY Agenda, page 82)

If there's a similar understanding of the issue displayed, or a plan for the issue outlined somewhere in documents on either Carl Paladino's or Rick Lazio's websites, I somehow missed it completely. E-Mail me a link and I will take a look.

It should be noted that Andrew Cuomo's local government reform plan has a lot in common with the one his father outlined in his 1994 Message to the Legislature, as cited above. This isn't necessarily a bad thing, as it might suggest that Andrew, like his father before him, understands that the local government issue isn't totally the fault of Albany, but rather in part is the fault of the localities themselves, and thus the solutions might also be found locally.

But, I have to wonder if anyone could really solve this problem. It's long-standing, and to the degree to which Andrew and Mario Cuomo are correct, the local government problem is one in-part of local government's making. And therefore, indirectly, of our own.

Andrew Cuomo, at least, appears to recognize that a problem exists, and that it goes beyond the “unfunded mandates,” a term which during the Pataki years was used so often that it effectively lost all meaning.

Whoever wins the Gubernatorial election will have to deal with the issue, one way or another. Andrew Cuomo, it seems, will at least have a head start.