Who’d have thunk it? Eliot Spitzer is making George Pataki look like Gary Cooper.
Doubt it?
Just compare what each accomplished in their first few months in office – most especially, their first budgets.
Sure, Pataki later morphed into spinelessness. But he started with a backbone.
The present governor?
All talk.
No walk.
He took office promising fundamental reform – an on-time budget shorn of special-interest-driven hikes in spending and of related business as usual.
He might have a budget by Sunday, April 1 – but don’t bet on it.
Take this to the bank, though: It’ll have billions for special interests – business-as-usual billions.
Where Spitzer won office in a landslide, Pataki barely crept into the capital. But he knew he was headed into a knife fight – so he brought with him some gun-fighters.
People who knew policy and politics – and who never, ever flinched.
There was Patricia Woodworth, his savvy budget director, and Zenia Mucha, his political consigliere – seasoned, thumb-in-your-eye pros who also knew how to negotiate when negotiations were appropriate.
The team faced a $5 billion budget gap, and the quick fix would have been to raise taxes.
But instead, they lowered them – and still managed to plug the gap.
How?
By holding down spending.
On Pataki’s very first day as governor, he froze hiring. Now that’s “Day One, Everything Changes.”
Then, in his budget, he cut 20,000 state employees. And called for real trims in state-funded outlays – not just “slowdowns in growth.”
Yes, the trims were small – just two-tenths of a percent. But he held the Legislature in check, keeping the final bottom line to just four-tenths of a percent above the previous year’s (effectively, after inflation, a cut).
This wasn’t easy, of course; Pataki had to break his promise to end late budgets. But he stopped reckless spending in its tracks.
Now look at Spitzer’s performance.
He had more than a year to get ready for the past two months – to hire gunslingers of his own.
But while he came to office with a plan, he lacked a strategy for implementing it and – far more importantly – a team capable of getting the job done.
He thundered and he threatened and he preened and he promised.
And the special interests snapped him upside-down by his ankles and shook all of the pennies out of his pockets.
The result: a $122 billion spending monstrosity, complete with a full 9 percent hike in state-funded spending – more than almost every year of Pataki’s tenure.
No tax cuts.
No reductions in headcount. (Indeed, Spitzer plans to expand the state workforce.)
No real changes in budget formulas, entitlements or the political-payoff system.
The budgeting process itself is worse than ever, with closed-door dealmaking, lawmakers left out of the loop and special-interest groups driving the bus. Not to mention rancor, confusion and chaos.
No, it’s not absolutely too late for the gov to regain his footing. Maybe he can learn from his mistakes – and come to the next fight better prepared.
Maybe.
But, as George Pataki demonstrated, the most likely direction after even an inspirational beginning is down.
Spitzer’s already in the deep weeds.
So is New York.
It didn’t have to be that way.