California Budget Crisis- A Preview of New York?

The democrats are in power, we'll just spend our way through it. No worries!

If memory serves, California has some ridiculous inclusions in their budgetary process for all sorts of lobbyist and special-interest groups that make it almost impossible to not have a budgetary shortfall even in good times. They are required to have too many "hands-in-the-pot" and that leads to fiscal problems for all administrations.

I am not saying the NY won;t have problems, but California is not comparable to any other state becasue of their quirky set-up.

No way!

The NY legislative brai trust will increase personal, property, sales, fuel taxes plus all user fees plus reduce police, fireman & infrastructure funding to replenish the coffers. The new taxes combined with the cuts will fuel population growth and business formation which will further explode revenue sources. Apt. maintenance payments will continue to rise which will no doubt increase the attractiveness of home ownership.

I'm pumped. :)

No, we're going to pay for it all with increased parking revenue (go MuniMeters!) and traffic tickets. That plus the end of the $400 real estate rebate and we'll be sitting pretty.

Seriously, I hope we don't go back to garbage collection patterns of the 80s (and the public urination odors caused by homelessness). Good lord the city stank, particularly on weekends in the summer.

thank God there is no possible way that the Democrats in power could Fuck things up as badly as the REpublicans have over the last 8 years.

They decimated our economy, military, world standing, capital markets, stock market, state budgets, environment, etc etc

Don't know where you live, aboutready, but in my nabe it still stinks to high heaven in the summer.

"If memory serves, California has some ridiculous inclusions in their budgetary process for all sorts of lobbyist and special-interest groups that make it almost impossible to not have a budgetary shortfall even in good times. They are required to have too many "hands-in-the-pot" and that leads to fiscal problems for all administrations.

I am not saying the NY won;t have problems, but California is not comparable to any other state becasue of their quirky set-up."

Good point... but I think its actually worse here. California doesn't have anywhere near the union problem here. You can't get elected without the unions here, and we've promised them more money than we will probably ever have. Check out the WSJ-writer book "While America Aged".

The damage from that - especially with a very pro-union government about to hit - is going to be unprecedented.

NYC is going to need a bailout....

evnyc - I'm in Peter Cooper. I have a very good sense of smell, and while still not lovely, it seems much, much better than the 80s. Maybe my standards are just very low as a result of years of olfactory abuse.

California is not the center of the US financial world. New York state and city rely heavily on the banking industry for their tax revenues. No profits there. Their metro regions (with the exception of prime SF) have been in a real estate decline for over three years, while we are just entering ours. We will need a bailout, but luckily (or not) state governments seem to be on the approved list (actually, everyone except the auto industry seems to be on the approved list for bailouts). Of course, those in power may not look to kindly on those in New York, given our institutions' roles in the mess to begin with.

And we started much later... I think we're just getting a free preview.