Governor Paterson today announced that he was ordering state agencies to cut their budgets by $500 million to help in dealing with a current-year state deficit of between $2.1 billion (the official forecast as of late July) and $3 billion (the governor’s own latest estimate).
The cuts will come out of “non-personal service” spending–stuff like travel, printing and consulting contracts, Paterson’s office said.
The governor acknowledged that today’s action–closing between one-fifth and one-quarter of the deficit–represents just “a first step” towards balancing the budget for the fiscal year ending March 31. Incredibly, he still won’t outline any further steps. Instead, he repeated his mantra about “working cooperatively with the Legislature to enact additional savings.”
Unfortunately, far from raising confidence that the governor is finally getting on the case, today’s announcement only shines a brighter spotlight on Paterson’s continuing inability or unwillingness to produce a plan of action for addressing a growing problem.
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