Screw you NY Governor for cutting library funding & for being a predictable fuckstain

The BBQ Pit
1

In the thread Let’s predict the BS ‘Hard Times’ news stories we’ll hear I posited that newspapers would report on a sad scenario related to libraries in these troubled times thanks to our glorious leaders:

“Citizens flock to libraries seeking low cost entertainment” followed immediately by “State reduces funding for libraries”

Well, right on schedule, NY Governor David Paterson has threatened to cut $20 million out of the state’s library budget. Now, I could go for the easy joke about Paterson not appreciating a good book because the man is too blind to even spank it to Playboy properly, but instead he just want to hang my head and cry.

The fact that I knew it was coming combined with the fact that no one at the state seems to want to give some other department a turn in the barrel has just left me drained.

We don’t know how the cuts are going to shake out yet (thankfully, no one should lose their job), but how the hell are we supposed to help the public through these rough times if we don’t have any money to buy stuff? The library is free in the sense that we don’t charge people personally when they ask for job search help or resume help or computer help or that new Stephen King book. But someone down the line has to pay for it.

Sometimes I think OtakuLoki has the right idea, NY is full of crooks and the only way they’ll get it is if the people march on Albany with torches, pitchforks and burning effigies.

Which we’ll have to make extra big so that fuckwit Paterson can see them.

2

Isn’t New York cutting something like a billion dollars from its overall budget? While I appreciate that $20 million being pulled from libraries sucks, not least for you, it’s kind of a drop in the cost-cutting bucket.

3

I’ll trade you — California is cutting its already-gutted public education system. The LA Times headline was something like “Cal State Schools to Turn Away Qualified Students,” to which the universal reaction was, “Can’t they turn away the unqualified students clogging our overcrowded classrooms first?”

Of course, I personally think that if schools and libraries had better funding and appreciation to begin with, we wouldn’t be in the mess we’re in, full stop.

4

New York state is cutting **$2 billion **from its budget. They need to cut everywhere. They are cutting transportation, education, they already cut the $200 million from the Congressional fund which appears to be some sort of discretionary fund.

I think the $20 million is reasonable and you are killing Governor Paterson over an impossible situation. He has been doing everything possible to keep the state from losing its bond rating.

Jim

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Justin, of all the sacred cows that were protesting in Albany this week, the libraries are the only one I have sympathy and support for.

As you said, in rough times, the services offered by libraries become more vital, not less.

And I can see why the library services are among the first to get gutted: $20 million is a 20% cut. That’s effing huge.
Having said that, there are a couple of things I have to disagree with you about in your OP. First off, Governor Paterson has been trying to get the Legislature to propose cuts of their own - and they refused. It was election time, after all. I find myself more sympathetic to Paterson than I am with the Legislature - at least he’s recognizing the problem, and trying to do something about it. Not necessarily what I’d like to see done - but he’s not sticking his head in the sand and unwilling to see.

Secondly, while Paterson proposed those cuts, none of them are going to be acted upon, because the outgoing legislature refuses to take the blame for it.* So AIUI the library budget, for this fiscal year, is still safe.

Which is horrid, because I think that next year’s budget is going to make $20 million in cuts look like chump change - the longer the budget continues, as is without accounting for the shortfalls in revenues, the worse it’s going to be.

Sadly, NY’s budget is so full of sacred cows that the logic of the situation is going to mean that useful, relatively small ticket items, like libraries, are going to be getting it in the neck. (I’ve just sent letters to my Assemblywoman, and Senator, asking them to protect library funding - but I suspect that’s going to be a voice in the wilderness.) The biggest news this week was all the protesting about the various school districts who can’t accept one iota less in state spending.

What I hadn’t seen in any of the articles I read, which I’ll admit wasn’t all that many - I got enough of the tone to see that the CSEA and Teacher’s Unions weren’t going to go for any cuts in their ballywacks, which was going to gut the majority of Paterson’s plan - was the issue about the law passed recently that local governments are not allowed to let school budgets decrease, even fail to increase in pace with inflation. So if the state successfully cuts local school aid, it will simply transfer that burden to the local governments.

Which will do diddly to save the taxpayers anything - and may well make things worse.

On preview: What Exit?, I think you’re missing that the libraries have gotten about an 8% cut already this year, and the $20 million being proposed are from the money that was left, making it more than 20% more. It is, I believe, a disproportionate cut from the budget. And it’s happening, I believe, because the librarians aren’t part of the various unions, AFAIK.

*After the incoming Senate Majority Leader’s statement this weekend, any chance of across the aisle bi-partisanship went out the window, when he basically said: “We Democrats will fix everything, now - and have only been prevented from doing that because of those evil Republicans in the Senate were stopping us.”

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Everybody and everything is going to be affected in some way by this economic downturn. What makes libraries so unique that I should care about their budget cuts?

Everybody has something they hold sacred, I understand that. But something has to get cut, and everybody has a legitimate beef with why their program is getting the axe. With that in mind, I am not prompted to go man the ramparts for a place that I might have seen the inside of maybe twice in the last 5 years.

7

I spent my childhood in NYC’s public libraries.

For many poor children they’re a safe haven; a place where they can do their homework or read a good book in a well lit heated space with grown ups who might actually not make demands on them or yell at them for small mistakes. I understand the need for cuts (my husband is a state employee and he came home today talking of potential layoffs) but I also understand the OP’s outrage.

8

And the financial crisis hit New York a lot more directly than other states. I was surprised a few months back to find out that taxes on Wall Street financial companies were the source of twenty percent of New York’s revenue - and those businesses took a dive this year. It’s expected that New York will collect at least 15% less in revenue than was originally estimated.

9

States such as California are far more dysfunctional. I understand that most of the spending is mandated by initiatives passed by a simple majorities of the citizenry. So the term-limited politicos basically paper over the state’s problems with accounting tricks, and endeavor to pass the problem over to their successors.

10

Do we know he’s going to be the Majority Leader? I thought some of the Senate Democrats were threatening to caucus with the Republicans

11

I thought just posting library funding cut by a huge amount would be enough to ensure a little nerd rage on the SDMB, I guess I was wrong.

So here’s a few more reasons why this well and truly sucks:

  1. As someone said upthread, this is the second major cut we have had to endure this year. Not only that, but this $20 million is the largest cut, percentwise, proposed by Paterson.

Which then irritates me because the state then…

1a) Tells job seekers to use the Internet at the library to look for jobs. They also tell them that librarians will sit with them and help them make a resume and search the Internet… which we CANNOT do because we don’t have the budget money for staffing like that.

1b) On that note, they also are quick to brag to the newspapers and TV channels about how we have a great library system in this state and its a great source of free entertainment. But oh wait, our budget has been slashed which means fewer programs and a lot fewer items to check out.

1c) Finally, they tell old people to go to the library in the summer when it gets really hot for the AC. Oh, but sorry Grandma, with budget cuts, we’ve had to reduce hours. Hope you don’t die next July.

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This certainly sucks. I’m just more scared by the MTA right now, and would like to tie the entire board to the tracks of the #7 line.

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That is just it, I see the cuts coming everywhere and all being hard. The NYC council is giving Bloomberg a really hard time about his not sending out the rebates checks that the city clearly cannot afford this year. It stinks the libraries are being hit hard but this is a terrible time for mass transit cutbacks too. Are schools a luxury?

Where should the Two Billion Dollars come from?

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I can’t find the article right now, but I read a great quote the other day on why the schools are being greedy bitches. Paraphrased:

“When people talk about school cuts, they don’t mean cutting overall school funding. They’re talking about cutting the increase school funding woiuld receive over the previous year.”

So forgive me if I don’t have much sympathy for the schools.

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In the end, I think even the schools will have to take a hit. I’m curious to see how all of this turns out. Think of it this way, if the Feds did not decide to step in and bale out the idiots* on Wall Street, New York could be going the way of Michigan and Libraries would probably be closing, not just going on very short rations for a year or two. I know it stinks and they are taking 20+% of your budget but it is only 1% of the cuts they need to make.

  • I am not saying all of Wall Street is run by idiots, I mean the ones that have been stupid in their investments.
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If ya’ll are going to charge on Albany with pitchforks and torches, please give a girl a warning, and I’ll get out of Dodge. Thankfully I don’t live downtown, where the State buildings are, but I’m not that far.

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Wait! I thought you were going to let us store the pitch there for the torches? Darnit, now the logistics are all screwed up…

The March is off, people!

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The schools are taking a hit. My stepmom is an employment law attorney in the NY Board of Ed’s General Counsel’s Office, and she is busy as hell right now sorting out all the complex and competing legal issues that go along with layoffs in a system in which many employees are unionized.

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Oh. Well, I do have a shed. My landlord might not appreciate it, but anything for a friend!

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Point of Honor(?): There is no state government as dysfunctional as New York’s. Hopefully, that will change now that the Democrats have taken ownership of the whole mess, but for as long as I can remember (that’s pretty long) the Senate Republicans have stymied every intiative of the Democrats, and the Assembly Democrats have returned the favor. The result is that nothing got passed but the most innocuous bills (We have backup alarms on our swimming pools now!) and the budget was “balanced” with absurd accounting tricks, like mortgaging prisons to the Thruway Authority.