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

[chique]

@OtakuLoki

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.

No, I don’t see.

Look, I appreciate that in lean times budgets need to get cut. I just disagree with the manner in which they’re cut. Why do libraries get hit with 20%? Why not just cut everything by pulling numbers out of my ass 1.7% or 2.3% or 5.8%? Why cut these major entities by major amounts?

I mean, seriously - I don’t know of a single government entity that can’t survive a 1.7% (or, for that matter, a 5.8%) cut; that would have to save (m/b)illions for an ecomony the size of the State of New York’s. Why pick on the libraries?

[OtakuLoki]

chique - you’re using logic, and basing your judgement on a ROI based on good recieved by the public for the monies spent.

By that measure I believe you’re right - libraries should be the last thing cut in lean times. As Justin Bailey rightly points out, the various employment assistance programs in the state all lean heavily on the availability of library services to make their own work possible for their clients. That’s just one example of a vital library service that is going to be in higher demand in poor economic times than in glut times.

In Albany, however, logic such as yours is impossible to find.

The first question seems to be, not “What’s the public benefit of these monies?” Rather it seems to be, “Will be pissing off one of the unions, or other special interest groups by cutting these monies?”

And on that scale - libraries and librarians are SOL. I am not certain, but I don’t believe that library personnel are covered by any of the state collective bargaining agreements, nor are they organized in any kind of labor group. So the spineless cowards in Albany will see the money going to the libraries as being money they can raid without causing huge, misleading advertising campaigns from the CSEA, for example, claiming that, say, Paterson, or Silver, are trying to KILL YOUR BABIES!

Look to Airman Doors’ response in this thread: Many people who are well-to-do, these days, aren’t really using libraries. So they’re not on the radar of many people.

Until you get told at the unemployment office, “You’re not allowed to use our computers more than fifteen minutes a day for your job search. No you can’t print out any of your leads here. Go to the library to that, if you don’t have a computer at home, you useless fuck.”

Please don’t mistake recognition of the dysfunctional way that Albany makes judgments for approval, either.

I can see why the library budget is among the first to be cut. I do not approve, nor do I think it to be a smart thing.

The sacred cows are coming home to roost, and NY is about to get assraped, as I have said several times already this year. And the electorate deserves at least as much of the blame as the assholes in Albany. With very, very few exceptions, the same goddamned incompentent incumbents got returned to Albany this past election day.

It’s beyond Democrat or Republican for me. The fucking Legislature is broken, and needs to be torn down, and rebuilt. Both parties are equally culpable, and both parties should have to pay for this idiocy.

[Measure_for_Measure]

@saoirse

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.

I really don’t know enough about New York or California politics to compare the two.

But New York’s budget process is objectively superior in one particular way. Years of mismanagement have given California the second lowest bond rating in the nation, just above Louisiana. Indeed California has been pushing Moody’s, S&P and Fitch to dumb down their municipal ratings so that the Golden State will look better to international investors. (They succeeded this year, as it happens.)

CA’s rating is A+. NY’s General Obligation Bonds are 1-2 notches higher, AA or AA-, with a stable outlook by Fitch.
http://www.budget.state.ny.us/investor/creditRatings.html

@What Exit?

Where should the Two Billion Dollars come from?

[hijack]Well, it should come from the federal government. It’s a recession and the worst time possible for state and local governments to be tightening their belts. Congress should allocate $200 billion to the states as a block grant, with $75 billion to follow the following year, so that the bloodletting can be postponed until the economy is stronger. [/hijack]

[Tim_T-Bonham.net]

@Dr.Drake

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.

Next weekend, I will be attending the memorial service for Senator Allan Spear, who in 30 years as Chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee & President of the Senate, insisted that the state of Minnesota invest just as much money in schools as it does in prisons. A really radical idea when he started, but as he said, we have to pay either way in the end, but it costs less to educate a student then to guard a convict.

[OtakuLoki]

Per the 2008-9 budget plan, approved this past April. (link, warning .pdf)

$3.0 billion for the DCOS, the Department of Corrections. Note that this figure includes both prison and parole/probation budgets.

NYS aid to local school districts: $21 Billion.

I agree with the late Senator’s claim that schools should be at least as well funded as prisons.

To present that eulogy, here, and imply that NY doesn’t already exceed that spending level is a bit disingenuous.

Furthermore, I’m not sanguine about the idea that throwing more money at the existing schools will solve all the problems with education that we have. Rochester, in particular, is infamous for having a lousy city school system. There are good schools, of course, with some great programs - but overall, the graduation rate has been pretty lousy in the past.

Here’s a link (warning: .pdf) to the city school district’s budget (To give them props, their budget is easy to find, and read, unlike anything on the State level - for example, the DOCS makes nothing available on their website about their own budget.) which claims expenditures of $682.8 million. (Along with continual complaints about budget requirements imposed by the State without commensurate funding assistance.) Elsewhere on the site, the RCSD claims to have 44,000 students, including 10,000 adults. Taking that figure at face value, that’s still spending levels of $15,500 per student.

Per the US government’s Department of Education’s National Center for Education Statistics, in 2004-5 (the last year for which I could find data) the national average per student spending was $8701, or to correct for today’s money, $9266.

So, in spite of spending 50% more, per student, than the national average, the Rochester City Schools have a graduation rate of 53% (within four years, going up to 62% by allowing for an extra year) which everyone involved claims is abysmal. ISTR that the 2003-2007 cohort of students did a little better, but I can’t be arsed to find a cite on that. Per this cite, the national graduation average is 68%. Hell, NYS, itself has an average of 64% for the four year data.

Mind you, the national number sucks, too. 68% is a just barely passing grade from what I recall.

The little scandals that have been coming out of the school district in the past couple of years, involving some of the most truly mind-boggling cost-cutting measures imaginable (Let’s see, students are failing in job lots - let’s forbid them from taking books home!) has further eroded what faith I might have had in the city school district’s ability to work out effective plans for their monies. To be fair, part of their problems involve spending that is mandated at the state level, or is tied to contractual obligations. I will not allow them to claim that as the sole source of the problem.

IOW, when come back, bring pie. *

*In this case, pie is defined as figures to prove your boneheaded assertions.