February 24, 2003
Who needs to read?
by Peyton Randolph
The court battle over affirmative action may not make much difference, if we see more budgets like the one Governor Pataki has on the table.
The governor is portraying a Manichean budget fight between the forces of good (the tax and spending cutters) and the forces of evil (those who want to raise taxes or stop tax cuts to provide money for things like schools).
He made a quick touch and go landing in Amherst the other day to pitch his view of the budget as a battle between those who favor future jobs (like him) and those who want to raise taxes to meet the budget deficit (Democrats, maybe?).
Now, the state does have a budget problem, brought on by the economic problems of the nation and the world. What’s really behind New York’s problem is an absolute failure to save during the seven fat years for the seven lean years. Albany spent it all.
Isn’t this the usual Albany performance?
Yes, and this time much of New York State will see some real problems as a result. The most visible will be tax increases and service cuts in the state’s schools. Others can have much more serious long-range effects.
The governor is proposing a 15-percent cut in state aid to libraries, as a time when the state pension system is jacking up the amount it wants to cover future pension costs.
For many years, the flow of gold from Wall Street meant local governments and agencies had to pay very little toward pensions. Now that flow has ended and the bills are going out to mayors and county executives and supervisors and library directors.
Buffalo & Erie County Public Library Director Michael Mahaney hadn’t even had a chance to move into his office before he was hit with a fiscal crisis.
The library system was already operating in a tight budget. To avoid cutting operating hours in the system this year because of little additional help from the county, the library board balanced its budget on $600,000 in additional late fines by raising the fines.
Maybe because more people are out of work, they are returning the books more on time. That’s hitting the fine revenues.
The governor’s proposed budget cut is somewhere between $387,000 and $552,000, depending on how a couple of different formulas work out, partially reflecting a relative decline in population.
Then, there’s the pension bill. It’s potentially going to cost $1.2- million dollars above and beyond what was budgeted for the libraries.
Adding it up, that’s approximately a $2-million hit in a total library budget of $33-million.
It’s possible that some of these cuts might not take effect. North Tonawanda Republican Senator George Maziarz told a radio reporter on Thursday he wasn’t in favor of the library cuts because people seeking jobs need libraries to find new jobs. That’s interesting because “Little George” from N.T. is a close friend of “Big George from Yale,” Governor Pataki.
Where these cuts hurt most in the inner city. For many poor kids, libraries provide the books and computers they can’t get in school or at home. Those library resources, like Buffalo’s decrepit North Jefferson Branch Library, give minority kids some hope of catching up with suburban kids who may have computers at home and at school and books at home and in the more modern suburban libraries.
Buffalo wants to replace North Jeff, but is having trouble finding the money to build Robert Traynham Coles’ fascinating design for the replacement.
Bill Gates’ personal foundation has put a lot of money into inner city libraries in Buffalo and a lot of other places to get computers to kids who want to use them. That’s important in Buffalo because the public schools system’s much-trumpeted “E-Rate” program is running way behind schedule to get large numbers of computers into the classrooms of city schools, many of which essentially have no computers.
Let’s say only some of the budget cuts take effect. That probably won’t mean complete closing of libraries, but may mean lots of cuts in operating hours. It will probably mean fewer employees since there is already a hiring freeze and will probably mean fewer books are bought.
So, if the libraries are open fewer hours and there are fewer books on the shelves, that might mean urban kids (and, poor rural kids) will have less chance to pick up the skills much more easily available to their suburban counterparts.
Over a few years, those kids will fall even further behind and not be as much of a threat to those legacy kids at Andover and Yale.
A mind is a terrible thing to waste….
Copyright 2003 by Buffalo Report, Inc.