Ned Regan
Former state comptroller
Legislators are the first to tell you that the environment in Albany is just not conducive to the kind of lengthy, serious debate we need to resolve the fiscal crisis. I’d like to see some campaign finance reform so that the Legislature operated in a professional environment. Our judicial system needs to be changed. The process is so fraught with problems that the analysis of it is really very simple: just stop what’s going on, do a couple of things that every other state does, be professional in your approach and then start to debate this issue.







Jerry Kremer
Former chair of Assembly Ways and Mean
I think they have to do an across-the-board freeze in all spending, holding all state agencies and all programs to last year’s budget. And I think that they have to have a sit-down with all of the state’s major unions and attempt to get negotiated freezes or give-backs to try to pick up additional revenues. Finally, I think that the state has to begin to dispose of surplus state properties more aggressively. Between three or four agencies like the Department of Transportation and Corrections, the state owns hundreds of millions of dollars in surplus land that’s not going to be used.







Carl McCall
Former state comptroller
There’s no magic wand. You have to think about the real challenges—what people face as they go up for re-election. The most realistic thing that I have seen is the recent Dick Ravitch proposal, which is a multi-year plan, has some built-in oversight mechanisms, has some significant changes in the budgeting process. Those are the kind of things that could probably work.








Lise Bang-Jensen
Senior policy analyst, Empire Center
The downturn has been characterized by low inflation and nearly flat wage growth for those who still cling to jobs in the private sector. But the same is not true for government, whose unionized employees still receive pay hikes at three to four times the inflation rate. Public schools, where labor comprises 70 percent of budgets, face a choice between massive layoffs and raising taxes to finance 4- or 5-percent annual wage hikes.

The Legislature could freeze the wages of all public employees—state, local government and school district—for at least three years. Such a freeze would save school districts throughout the state over $1 billion in the coming year alone.






E.J. McMahon
Director, Empire Center
The existing system of generous, guaranteed “defined-benefit” (DB) pensions for government employees is a looming financial disaster. New York City’s taxpayer-funded pension costs have skyrocketed from a norm of just over $1 billion during the Giuliani era to $6.7 billion in the current city budget. They are projected to grow by another $1 billion over the next four years.

It’s time to stop the bleeding and to shield taxpayers from future financial risk. The way to do it: close down the DB system to new entrants. Replace it with a “defined-contribution” system of individual retirement savings accounts modeled on the successful plans offered to SUNY and CUNY for decades.






Ron Deutsch
Executive director, New Yorkers for Fiscal Fairness
We need to reduce the rebates that we provide for the stock transfer tax. We’ve had a system in place since 1981 where instead of collecting the tax, we rebate it on paper and give it back. Right now we’re rebating $16 billion per year back to the brokers on Wall Street. So my thoughts are, hey, Wall Street is partly responsible for the economic crisis right now. Main Street bailed out Wall Street, and Wall Street is recovering quickly. Reducing the rebate to 80 percent instead of 100 percent would raise about $3.2 billion. We also favor a tax of 5 cents on plastic bags—something we estimate would raise $340 million a year.







Bob Ward
Deputy director, Rockefeller Institute
We need to give the governor clearer authority over the budget. The governor, no matter who occupies that office, is more motivated than the Legislature to manage the budget carefully. That makes sense—the governor suffers the most political pain when a fiscal crisis forces last-minute cuts or tax increases. Lt. Gov. Ravitch’s five-year plan would give the governor the power to cut spending in the middle of a fiscal year if a budget gap arises and the Legislature does not address it. Including strict new accounting rules and other provisions, the Ravitch plan would add up to the most significant fiscal reform in the state’s modern history.