A New N.Y.: A Blueprint to Reform Government

On December 11, 2008 Attorney General Andrew M. Cuomo announced a plan to empower communities across the state with the ability to fundamentally reorganize and consolidate local governments. In May, the Attorney General, after working with various groups, citizens and the Legislature, announced legislation, entitled The New N.Y. Government Reorganization and Citizen Empowerment Act ("Empowerment Act").

The Empowerment Act received overwhelming bi-partisan support and was passed by both house of the Legislature in June.  The Governor recently signed the bill into law. You can find out more about how the Empowerment Act works on this site.

WHY THE NEED FOR REFORM?

Simply put, our system of local government is broken. It has been outpaced by globalization, regionalization, and an ever changing marketplace. The density of local government in New York is astounding. Amazingly, New York has more than 10,521 overlapping governments, including counties, towns, villages, school districts, special districts and public authorities. These entities impose layer upon layer of taxing structures--with citizens receiving multiply tax bills annually--resulting in the highest local property tax burden in the nation.

Many local governments were established well over a century ago, when the State was a vastly different place. There were no highways, computers or cell phones. No one could have envisioned the global economy in which our State now has to compete for good jobs.

To hold government to account the people must have a government they can understand. But what they have today instead at the local level is a ramshackle mess. The current local government system is the product of sheer historical accumulation - not logic, reason or common sense. As Professor Gerald Benjamin has observed, it’s “the system that just grew.”

Given the current fiscal crisis New York is facing, reorganization of some governmental entities to more efficiently provide vital services is needed. In some cases, consolidation or dissolution may be necessary to reorganize government to meet the needs of their communities. However, current law is unable to solve the problem for it is inconsistent, often nonsensical, poses legal barriers, and includes anachronisms that make operational reform virtually impossible.

The Attorney General's Empowerment Act will help to streamline existing processes, eliminate inane inconsistencies, and strike from the law offensive anachronisms such as requiring property ownership in order to vote in a special town election on a proposition to consolidate water districts.

It is a system almost nobody understands, least of all the people served by it. New Yorkers have the highest local tax burden in the country that dwarfs other states and far exceeds the national average. By consolidating governments and services, taxpayers could save millions of dollars annually.

WHY IS THE ATTORNEY GENERAL INVOLVED?

The Attorney General’s Office has been doing its part to address the problem of local government dysfunction. Over the past 19-months, the office has been conducting statewide investigations into waste, fraud and abuse at various levels of government. Those investigations have already resulted in numerous settlements and convictions that have saved taxpayers millions of dollars. Every case of fraud, no matter how small, can create big problems for the state.

As the state’s chief legal officer, Attorney General Cuomo is often tasked with advising local governments on laws regulating them. It is clear that current laws are filled with inconsistencies, complexities, and anachronisms making meaningful reform in the current environment unattainable.

NEW YORK’S PAST SUCCESS

The conventional wisdom is that government could not be reorganized. Reports were written, but nothing got done. It has gone on for years. But, ultimately, leadership made the difference. In the early part of the 20th century, the structure of New York State’s Government was every bit as bad as the current state of our local government system. But, what these dire times present is an opportunity.

Take for instance school districts. In 1947, a statewide Master Plan for School District Reorganization was enacted an although not a compulsory plan for reorganization, the Master Plan guided state level efforts to encourage reduction in the still-large number of school districts. The result was the reduction of the number of schools from 10,000 to less than 700 today.

Visionaries like Governor Al Smith - supported by reformers, the media, and good government organizations made the impossible possible. In the 1920s, New York comprehensively reformed the structure of State government and created a model emulated by states throughout the nation. It was then one of the greatest achievements in American politics.

It has always been our mission to solve the nation’s problems first here in New York and serve as an example.