My time as a Budget Committee member taught me a lot of lessons – one of which is how each level of government depends on money dropped down from above (or taken from below). Trust me, it is not a small amount of money (and here in NH, it is a Big Boatload at the State level). For years I told our town “watch out – what cannot be sustained will stop” as I watched the Feds borrow themselves into oblivion (and at the time, the Democrats in Concord doing the same thing). In the end, The Piper demands to be paid and local governments started to howl when the money rain they had built into their budget dried up and politicians had to start explaining the effects of having depended on “free money” – and now that “free money” is going to cost dearly. Like now in NY! From Yahoo (reformatted, emphasis mine):
The New York state budget currently under negotiation may be remembered years from now as the beginning of the end for many small towns, cities and school districts. Gov. Andrew Cuomo had tough words Friday for local officials facing fiscal crises and seeking more help from Albany, telling them they should consolidate services or whole governments and school districts rather than looking for relief from Albany. “If it was really, really tough, you’d see that happen,” Cuomo said in his strongest comments yet on the local fiscal crises. “If you are a school district, or a city, or a town or a county, and you are looking for a fundamental financial reform, consolidation is one of the obvious ones.”
