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In Budget Crisis,ALBANY STUMBLES ON SCHOOL FUNDING
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| Governor George Pataki invoked a little-used power to order state lawmakers into deliberations on school funding this week.
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By Aaron Rutkoff
Albany is in severe disarray—more so, even, than the condition of futility and gridlock that passes for normal in the state capitol on the best of weeks.
With just over a week remaining until the court-ordered deadline for the complete reform of the way the state distributes money for education, Governor George Pataki invoked a little-used constitutional power to convene an “extraordinary session” on July 22—at high noon, no less—for all state lawmakers. While flexing gubernatorial muscle adds drama to an already tense week in the capitol, legislators were literally unmoved by Pataki’s order:
members of both the Senate and Assembly were already in Albany for special summer sessions of their own.
As lawmakers continued to go through the motions this week in deliberations that few believed would produce a viable compromise before the deadline, one significant change became clear. The term “farce,” which had previously been the domain of finger-waging pundits and editorial writers commenting on the proceedings in Albany, became something of a commonplace among the frustrated lawmakers themselves.
“That is an excellent word,” said Assemblyman Barry Grodenchik as he shuttled back and forth between legislative sessions. “This is essentially a farce.”
The state budget, now nearly three months overdue, hangs on the outcome of a battle over revised funding for education, with billions of dollars still separating different drafts of the pivotal legislation. Lurking behind the budget, in turn, are an array of incomplete legislative initiatives concerning everything from raising the minimum wage to authorizing the MTA’s takeover of New York City’s private bus lines.
Legal Battles
The dispute over state funding for education that reached its climax this week has been brewing for over a decade, ever since a non-profit advocacy group, the Campaign for Fiscal Equity (CFE), filed a class action lawsuit against the state. The suit charged that funding formulas used by Albany lawmakers to distribute money to school districts statewide failed to ensure that New York City children has access to sound, basic education.
In the long legal battle that followed, a series of judges agreed with the CFE’s basic contention that the process used to apportion school funds effectively shortchanged city students relative to their peers in other parts of the state, particularly those in wealthy suburban districts.
Pataki opposed the suit with a $12 million legal campaign, famously arguing at one point that eighth-grade schooling was enough to fulfill the educational mandate in the state constitution.
Last year, a judge from the New York’s highest court disagreed, finding that students statewide are entitled to a meaningful high school education. The ruling invalidated existing school funding formulas and set a 13-month period for legislative reform. This period ends July 30, at which point the court will appoint “special masters” to deal with the funding issue, removing the problem from the hands of elected representatives once and for all.
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| Mitchel A. Rebell, shown here at a previous event with Mayor Bloomberg, has led the 10-year campaign to reform school funding in the state.
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Butting Heads
For the rest of the month, as lawmakers attend sessions both special and extraordinary in a last-ditch effort to satisfy the court-ordered reforms, there remains little hope for an agreement. Each of the three men who hold most of the power in Albany—Pataki, Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver and Senate majority leader Joe Bruno—favor vastly different solutions, and it is not clear that some of these proposals would even meet the demands of the court.
In the Assembly, where Democratic lawmakers from New York City dominate, a plan to spend over $7 billion in state revenue on education for under-funded districts all over the state enjoys support, but this amount is several billion dollars higher than competing plans, and there is no indication of where all the money would come from.
On the other hand, Pataki has backed a proposal to authorize thousands gambling machines throughout the state, called video lottery terminals, which would generate money for a far smaller school aid package. The Senate, controlled by upstate and suburban Republicans, also supports the use of video lottery terminals to finance a $6 billion plan.
Two days before the governor’s “extraordinary session,” a rare meeting last convened in the aftermath of Sept. 11, even Pataki sounded pessimistic on the prospects of compromise, as he urged lawmakers to pass a bill that closely resembled his proposal. “I can’t say as I stand here that I believe that all of a sudden the Assembly will end its unwillingness or inability to act on this issue,” he told reporters at a press conference. “But we have to try and I intend to try, and this is an extraordinary effort to get a resolution.”
Lawyers from the CFE pointed their fingers back at the governor, noting that his reform plan has barely changed since he first touted it January. According to CFE Director Michael A. Rebell, Pataki’s plan “rehashes an inadequate proposal that was dead on arrival six months ago.” If passed, which seems unlikely, Rebell said the judge would invalidate Pataki’s plan on Aug. 3, when the high court is slated to review whatever solution—if any—is reached by state lawmakers.
Education Aside
As the clock winds down on the state’s effort to deal with school funding impasse, other pressing issues lurk in the shadows, effectively sidelined for months by the failure to agree on state budget. By the end of the first week of August, if the budget remains unresolved, it will be the most delayed budget in the last two decades.
Over the 20 years, it should be noted, not a single budget has ever been passed by the April 1 deadline.
Senator Toby Stavisky, who supports the overhaul of school funding, credits the success of the CFE lawsuit for the extreme tardiness of the state budget this year. Without the lawsuit, she said, “we would have had a budget—I wouldn’t say on time— but we would have had a budget agreement by now.”
Despite the overwhelming gridlock in Albany, a few important issues have been tentatively resolved. Just this week, Bruno and Silver reportedly agreed to raise the minimum wage in the state, adding a full two dollars on top of the federally mandated $5.15 an hour over the next three years. If passed and signed by the governor, the deal would see the minimum wage increase to $6 an hour by January.
With so many legislative issues in limbo and the budget unresolved, some legislators even sounded eager to have the courts take the school funding issue out of their hands. “Once you get by July 30,” Bruno told reporters, “hopefully life gets simpler.”
If the court re-adopts the school funding dilemma, the scope of the reform effort will shrink. The CFE lawsuit focused exclusively on inequity in New York City; though state lawmakers expanded the issue to also help under-funded districts throughout the state, the court only has a mandate to revise spending on city students.
But with the landmark lawsuit a success, lawmakers had little doubt that poor upstate districts would soon follow suit. According to Stavisky, five such CFE-inspired lawsuits are poised to enter the courts if the state cannot broker a deal that increases school funding across the state.
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