If my household budget was in as bad a shape as the state’s, I’d probably be filing for bankruptcy.
But the state can’t do that, so it has to find a way to balance it’s budget at a time when state revenues have cratered and few consituencies are willing to sacrifice their perks. The standard whipping boys in this debate, of course, are the state worker unions, who get generous benefits, but the reality is that all of us are beneficiaries of some piece of the state budgetary pie.
There are numerous small towns who use the state police as their police force without paying anything — basically, allowing them to not provide their own police while getting a subsidy from taxpayers in towns that have their own departments.
There are the open-space and farmland-preservation subsidies that go to primarily suburban towns to keep development in check.
There is money for the arts, for education, for recreation. A load of money is spent to help businesses, seniors, the working poor.
Basically, there are few people in the state who are not touched in some positive way by the state budget.
And there are few people in the state willing to give up even the smallest piece of their pie. At the same time, no one wants to pay more in taxes, meaning that we are asking the state to spend more money without paying into the kitty to ensure it has the money we want it to spend.
So, I can’t complain too loudly about the cuts to the tax rebate program, even though I am going to get hit by them. There are other options that could be considered, but most could not survive the political maelstrom that would inevitably follow.
My challenge to those who want to cut first and ask questions later is this: Make specific suggestions on cuts, explain why they are fairer or more logical and sell those specifics to the people of the state. Go ahead. I dare you.
Hank Kalet 