Failed States

After a long spending binge, governors go begging for a handout. It won't be their last.

Michael Flynn & Adam B. Summers from the May 2009 issue

Of the $787 billion in “stimulus” money Barack Obama authorized with his presidential pen on February 17, at least $144 billion was earmarked for a particularly unstimulating purpose: covering the budget deficits of state governments. The 12-digit sum, touted as “state and local fiscal relief” on the administration’s glass-half-full website recovery.gov, quickly exposed a fault line between the nation’s governors. On one side were a handful of fiscal conservatives, led by Republicans Bobby Jindal of Louisiana and Mark Sanford of South Carolina, arguing that bailouts and federal mandates create moral hazards and unfunded liabilities requiring future tax hikes. The other, more powerful side was represented by moderate Republican Arnold Schwarzenegger of California.

“Gov. Sanford says that he does not want to take the money, the federal stimulus package money,” Schwarzenegger told ABC’s This Week on February 21. “And I want to say to him: I’ll take it. I take it because we in California…need it.”

But does California, or any other state, really “need” federal money during this economic downturn? Only if you accept the premise that state budgets should roughly double every decade.

When Gray Davis, a Democrat, became California’s governor in 1999, the state’s budget was $75 billion. Tempted by dot-com windfalls and beholden to public-sector unions, Davis bumped that number to $104 billion in four short years of boom and bust, after which he was bounced out of office for his fiscal irresponsibility and replaced by a Milton Friedman–quoting action hero who promised to bring “fiscal sanity” back to Sacramento. Five years later, after facing another boom, another bust, and a series of bruising political defeats at the hands of public-sector unions, Schwarzenegger had hiked the budget to an astonishing $145 billion. In 10 years, state spending in nominal terms increased 92 percent.

One good way to measure fiscal stewardship is to see whether state spending growth exceeds the rate of population growth plus inflation. Under Davis, budgets rose an average of 6.7 percent a year, as opposed to a population/California price index growth rate of 4.8 percent. Under Schwarzenegger, spending has increased 6.8 percent annually, compared to a population/inflation rate of just under 5 percent. A governor who was swept into office by damning Davis’ $38 billion budget deficit, vowing not to raise taxes, and mocking his predecessor’s vehicle license fee hikes announced on February 20 that he would address his own $42 billion budget deficit by raising taxes and doubling those same fees.

Asked to explain the contradictions on This Week, Schwarzenegger praised the federal stimulus (“a terrific package”), urged Republicans to be “team players” for Obama (who, he said, was doing a “great job”), and unleashed a spectacular metaphor in favor of abandoning a limited-government philosophy. “You’ve got to go beyond just the principles,” he said. “You’ve got to go and say, ‘What is right for the country right now?’ I mean, I see that as kind of like, you go to a doctor, the doctor’s office, and say, ‘Look, can you examine me?’ The doctor says, ‘You have cancer.’ What you want to do at that point is you want to see this team of doctors around you have their act together, be very clear, and say, ‘This is what we need to do,’ rather than see a bunch of doctors fighting in front of you and arguing about the treatment. I mean, that is the worst thing. It creates insecurity in the patient. The same is with the people in America.”

But if the people in America have fiscal cancer, it’s just the latest in a long series of relapses.

There They Go Again

In 2002 the National Governors Association issued a press release saying the “states face the most dire fiscal situation since World War II.” In 1990 The New York Times reported that states and cities faced a “fiscal calamity.” Fire up Google, pick almost any year, and you’ll find plenty of stories about a “fiscal crisis” around the nation.

For decades statehouses have followed a predictable schedule. In good economic times, they collect a lot more tax revenue than they really need. But instead of giving the money back to taxpayers or putting it in a rainy day fund, they pretend the good times will never end. When the good times do inevitably come to a close, governors plead poverty and either ask the federal government for help or raise taxes on their beleaguered citizens. Eventually, the economy rebounds and the vicious cycle starts again.

In the 2009 version, the liberal Center on Budget and Policy Priorities warned in February that governors faced a combined funding shortfall of $350 billion, causing “at least 40 states to propose or enact reduced services to their residents, including some of their most vulnerable families and individuals.” That same month, Corina Eckl, fiscal program director for the bipartisan National Conference of State Legislatures, described the budget figures as “absolutely alarming, both in their magnitude and the painful decisions they present to state lawmakers.” Across the country, newspapers have been filled with stories of closed parks, furloughed state workers, cigarette tax increases, and even, in California, IOUs instead of tax refund checks. “The easy budget fixes are long gone,” Eckl said. “Only hard and unpopular options remain.”

Is that true? Consider the boom cycle preceding this latest recession. In the five years between 2002 and 2007, combined state general-fund revenue increased twice as fast as the rate of inflation, producing an excess $600 billion. If legislatures had chosen to be responsible, they could have maintained all current state services, increased spending to compensate for inflation and population growth, and still enacted a $500 billion tax cut.

Instead, lawmakers spent the windfall. From 2002 to 2007, overall spending rose 50 percent faster than inflation. Education spending increased almost 70 percent faster than inflation, even though the relative school-age population was falling. Medicaid and salaries for state workers rose almost twice as fast as inflation.

Recessions exert a great deal of pressure on state budgets. As economic activity declines, governments collect less tax revenue. As people lose their jobs or suffer drops in income, there is more demand for services such as job training, health care support, welfare, and unemployment compensation. The combination, it is often argued, throws state budgets out of balance and, because states are generally required to enact balanced budgets, often leads to tax increases, dramatic cuts in services, or both. These actions, it is argued, further dampen consumer demand and worsen the economic situation. The chief rationale for federal support of state budgets is to counter this cycle.

By studying the period from 2002 to 2007—that is, the period that began as the economy came out of the mild 2001 recession—we can judge how states spent money when times were better and their services weren’t as desperately needed. In this period, unemployment dipped to around 4 percent, a historic low in modern times; gross domestic product posted steady gains; and most economic measures pointed upward. Meanwhile, the states indulged in fiscal irresponsibility from which no taxpayer should feel eager to bail them out.

Comments

High Every Body|4.7.09 @ 12:04PM|#

Love that pic!

Naga Sadow|4.7.09 @ 12:07PM|#

I bet you do you Skynet loving monster!

High Every Body|4.7.09 @ 12:11PM|#

NS,

Nothing wrong with Skynet. Nothing at all.

DO you know Sara Conner and what is her address?

|4.7.09 @ 12:15PM|#

Meh. Conan was the superior movie.

|4.7.09 @ 12:18PM|#

I'm a friend of Sarah Connor's. I heard she's here. May I see her please?

|4.7.09 @ 12:20PM|#

Why certainly! Nice jacket. . .and where did you get those cool sunglasses?

|4.7.09 @ 12:27PM|#

When the good times do inevitably come to a close, governors plead poverty and either ask the federal government for help or raise taxes on their beleaguered citizens.

Local governments are even worse.

As property values soared in Florida during the Real Estate bubble cities and counties got a huge revenue windfall and went hog wild with civic booster projects. It never occurred to anyone to ease the burden on taxpayers with a millage adjustment or to put some aside for the eventual downturn.

Now the mayor of Orlando is sitting looking at half finished condo projects with hundreds of unsold units and wondering how to pay for the new arena and center for the arts he and the Orange County pols promised.

Of course, it never occurred to the silly bastard to wonder where the fuck all the people who were going to pay a million smackers for a two bedroom in downtown fucking Orlando were going to come from.

O-town never been all that exciting but now the place looks like a fucking ghost town. A ghost town of high rises that smells like piss. A big incentive to stay in the suburbs.

|4.7.09 @ 12:27PM|#

Your clothes...give them to me.

Naga Sadow|4.7.09 @ 12:33PM|#

Talk to the hand . . . bitch!

High Every Body|4.7.09 @ 12:41PM|#

I'm a friend of Sarah Connor's. I heard she's here. May I see her please?

Yea, yea, use the movie version rather than the real version that I used.

BakedPenguin|4.7.09 @ 1:02PM|#

Issac - the good thing from all that is that Dyer's going to take it on the head on the next election.

The bad thing is, no one will learn anything from his mistake(s).

|4.7.09 @ 1:23PM|#

Who's going to beat him, Baked, Ken Mulvaney?

Oddly enough, Seminole County has weathered things a little better, I think. But then the civic fathers have tended to concentrate on basic services more than the kind of booster stuff Dyer and Crotty have been pushing.

They keep talking about all the cuts they've made up here but so far the only one I've noticed is the libraries closing on Friday.

|4.7.09 @ 1:25PM|#

Not that i have anything against Ken Mulvaney.

I've always thought an Irish bar owner would be a splendid mayor. :)

Menstrual Retardation|4.7.09 @ 1:52PM|#

"But instead of giving the money back to taxpayers or putting it in a rainy day fund, they pretend the good times will never end."

As governor, Jesse Ventura returned excess tax revenue to the citizens of Minnesota. Twice. Man, did that ever piss off the Democrats. He also put millions into a rainy day fund.

And then he just got weird.

|4.7.09 @ 2:16PM|#

Now the mayor of Orlando is sitting looking at half finished condo projects with hundreds of unsold units and wondering how to pay for the new arena and center for the arts he and the Orange County pols promised.

Oh, I doubt he's really wondering about it. I suspect he knows exactly how they will be paid for, and it won't be charitable donations, either.

24AheadDotCom|4.7.09 @ 2:18PM|#

One of the major problems with CA - one that Reason no doubt didn't disclose because it breaks their way - is that many of its political leaders frequently get confused about who they work for. Specifically, they sometimes think they work for the Mexicangovernment. A good example - not the best, but someone many have heard about - is Los Angeles mayor Antonio Villaraigosa.

Reason would point that out, except they support the same subsidies that people like Tony try to give to those "willing workers".

Paul|4.7.09 @ 2:29PM|#

24AheadDotCom | April 7, 2009, 2:18pm | #

One of the major problems with CA - one that Reason no doubt didn't disclose because it breaks their way - is that many of its political leaders frequently get confused about who they work for. Specifically, they sometimes think they work for the Mexicangovernment. A good example - not the best, but someone many have heard about - is Los Angeles mayor Antonio Villaraigosa.

Reason would point that out, except they support the same subsidies that people like Tony try to give to those "willing workers".

Moving on now...

|4.7.09 @ 2:44PM|#

R C Dean

My point was that it's not going to come from locally paid taxes since that well has been pumped dry. They're trying to get Federal and State funds, but the State's got a "budget crisis" too. So only one avenue left.

I think anyone with half an brain realizes now that "Federal Funding" is the favored vehicle of state and local pols since noone wants to raise taxes. With what is now accepted (by every one except some pesky libertarians and fiscal conservatives) as limitless Federal ability to borrow everyone can have tax-free spending.

Don't you love it?

hotsauce|4.7.09 @ 2:44PM|#

Shut the fuck up LoneWacko!

|4.7.09 @ 4:01PM|#

My point was that it's not going to come from locally paid taxes since that well has been pumped dry.

I suspect you will find out to the contrary. There is no tax so high that it cannot be raised. For Teh Children, of course.

They're trying to get Federal and State funds, but the State's got a "budget crisis" too. So only one avenue left.

Oh, well, if the local pols are trying to figure out which pot of tax money to dip into to help their well-connected buddies, I can understand their angst. I was just making the point that it will be tax money.

|4.7.09 @ 4:48PM|#

I was just making the point that it will be tax money.

Oh, I didn't think that was ever a matter in dispute.

I think the thing is, that while I find "tax and spend" obnoxious, I find "borrow and spend" obnoxiouser.

Somehow "obnoxiouser" does not look nearly as cromnulent on the screen as it sounded to me in my head. :)

|4.7.09 @ 9:06PM|#

Back during the high-flying dot-com days, our local city government was complaining that the State was siphoning away too much revenue and that we voters absolutely, positively had to approve new taxes in order to make it possible to continue "essential programs" and prevent cuts in city employment. I of course opposed the tax hike on general principle, but in this liberal haven it passed handily. I then responded with letters to the City and in online fora associated with our local newspaper that what the city should do with its new revenue is put it away for a rainy day, and proceed with adjustments and cuts as if the tax measure had failed. The good times would not last forever, I wrote, and we needed to arrive at a size and scope of City government that was sustainable. I didn't just argue abstractly: I pointed to a County in the Central Valley, where I once used to live, which had implemented pretty much my same advice and was now doing OK -- not well, mind you, but not passing the hat as my own local poobahs were doing, either. Of course, I was shouted down and called all manner of vile things for publishing that opinion. Some exhorted me to "Go back to that County if you like it so much," and never mind that I lived there only five years, as a kid, while I have lived here adult, taxpaying citizen and observer of the political scene for nearly 20 years.

I suspect that others around the country, who assessed things in the same way I did, and who prescribed the same ant-like remedies, were similarly marginalized and ignored by their local grasshoppers. So when I see such phrases as "It never occurred to anyone" used by Isaac Bertram and others, I have to point out that there were probably PLENTY of people, to whom "it" occurred. The problem is making sure that the opinions of such people carry sufficient weight in the political process. Given the ancient age of the "Ant and the Grashopper" fable, I conclude that the problem has been around for a long, long time and isn't going away anytime soon. How to break the pattern?

JA Merritt
Santa Cruz CA

|4.13.09 @ 1:34PM|#

They should let CA file for bankruptcy so that the outrageous salary and pension contracts can be settled/reduced/eliminated in court. Or since the states are receiving a bailout, state employees should have to pay a 90% tax on their salaries :).