Fiscal tom-foolery
The state Senate Republican leadership had a "press availability" in Watertown to trash Gov. David Paterson's budget proposal, and to take a swipe at their local Democratic colleague, Sen. Darrel Aubertine. During their blitzkrieg, they suggested Paterson's version of fiscal discipline is not the solution to the budget deficit. Rather, they proposed, drastic reductions in taxes and fees would have New York up and running on all eight cylinders right quick.
While there was truth in what they said about New York being unfriendly to business, they failed to acknowledge that the real problem with the New York state Legislature is that it simply can't stop its own spending. The pork-barrel money that flows out of Albany continues unstanched, and only a significant amount of fiscal restraint by the Senate and Assembly will ever make tax and fee breaks possible.
Will that happen? No, not in the immediate future, and not in my lifetime absent a major voter revolt. Alas, that is unlikely when the legislators best at returning state money to their districts are frequently the best protected.
Of course, many small towns would be sunk without infrastructure grants and loans. Among state programs, the Clean Water Revolving Fund has brought potable water to thousands of households statewide. State highway funding is vital to our transportation network. Aid to cities like Ogdensburg is a vital element of local budgets. And there are many other important programs the state helps municipalities with.
On the other side of the coin, however, there are many programs, especially ones that send federal aid through state agencies, that leave me shaking my head. One of the most glaring is the federal transportation grants that have poured millions of dollars into the north country for walking trails. It's almost like the default award, the "parting gift for our guest", that towns and villages are grabbing at.
From Sackets Harbor to Massena, about $7 million in trail grants have been applied for in the past three years, according to Times archives. The cost of these trail projects range from $1.3 million a mile in Alexandria Bay, to $61,300 a mile for the Thousand Islands Land Trust. (Turns out they know how to get the most out of their grant money, by a long shot; the federal government will get their trail for $48,000 per mile in U.S. funds.)
What to me is the most bizarre grant application – one that has miraculously, to date, been denied – is a Clayton committee's request for $9.2 million to add biking/hiking lanes to 6 miles of Route 12E. I drove that route last fall and passed seven hikers and one biker in that section – without one penny being spent to "facilitate" their journey.
I agree that walking trails are a quality-of-life benefit. The problem is, many of the "trails" are proposed to utilize existing paths and sidewalks. The Alexandria Bay mile long trail, which will cost a dizzying $1.3 million, will use existing streets and sidewalks for well more than half its length.
I live in a village, and my wife and I walk frequently. We have used our car to mark out routes of various length, and if we want to walk two miles, we have a couple routes we can take, and a couple for a mile and a half, and so on. All of these routes utilize quiet village streets and sidewalks. I don't WANT my village to ask for money to do what I can do for myself.
The reality is, outside of a couple of streets in Watertown which, blissfully, have not been proposed as walking routes, there are no hamlets or villages in the north country that don't offer miles of varied routes for walkers because the roads and streets aren't so crowded that walkers are by and large in danger.
So, while our local elected officials hold their hands out for a few million in "trails" funding, our state slides toward bankruptcy and our Legislature continues its broken, dysfunctional ways. And everything stays the same, in good times and bad.
