Wisdom of the Voters
This article is from the archive of The New York Sun before the launch of its new website in 2022. The Sun has neither altered nor updated such articles but will seek to correct any errors, mis-categorizations or other problems introduced during transfer.
The decision of the voters of New York State to reject ballot Proposition One, which would have emasculated the governor’s office and handed power over the state budget to the tax-and-spend lawmakers in the Legislature, is a testimony to the wisdom of the electorate. Backers of the proposal, including Cablevision and Service Employees International Union 1199, spent a million dollars to try to snow New Yorkers with the idea that the legislative power grab amounted to budget “reform.” So-called good government groups like NYPIRG, Common Cause, and the New York League of Women Voters fell for the stunt and allowed their names to be used as part of the campaign that our J.P. Avlon, in a memorable election-eve column, called a “profile in cynicism.”
Yet the voters of this state didn’t fall for it. Far be it from them to destroy the powers of an office inhabited by giants such as Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Theodore Roosevelt, Alfred E. Smith, Thomas Dewey, and Nelson Rockefeller, and turn those powers over to the speaker of the Assembly, Sheldon Silver, and the Senate majority leader, Joseph Bruno. Governor Pataki deserves credit for working energetically to sound the alarm about this proposal, as do some of his would-be successors, including William Weld, John Faso, Randy Daniels, Thomas Suozzi, and Eliot Spitzer. Editorials in The New York Sun, the New York Post, the Daily News, the Wall Street Journal, and even the New York Times opposed the proposition.
The current budget process in Albany has resulted in a high tax burden and high levels of debt, so it’s easy to understand the impulse to change the process. But in rejecting Proposition One, the voters rejected the notion of tinkering. They set the stage for a 2006 gubernatorial election in which the candidates will have the power to follow through on pledges to change Albany for the better by cutting taxes and spending. The challenge for voters in the year ahead will be to choose a new governor who will use his precious powers to set priorities wisely and begin to ease the tax burden that is such a drag on economic growth and job creation in the Empire State.