Rushing NYs budget with message of necessity only emboldens Hochuls, Dems bloat

Here’s a radical idea: This year, how about giving New York state legislators and concerned citizens a chance to read all the budget bills before the voting begins?That the budget’s a month late doesn’t actually justify Gov.Kathy Hochul issuing the usual “Message of Necessity” to speed up the bills’ passage for a few days.All the rush does now is keep the details under wraps until it’s all a fiat accompli. As Betsy McCaughey notes, this ploy would see the bills at “hurriedly printed and put on each lawmaker’s desk, along with a ‘message of necessity’ from Hochul requiring it to be voted on within hours, even in the middle of the night.”We distinctly recall Hochul promising unprecedented transparency when she first took office; dropping the “necessity” farce would be a good precedent to break.

Why not honor the state Constitution’s requirement that the Legislature to have three days to read a bill before voting on it? Maybe the state’s leaders fear a public uproar over this reckless and bloated spending plan, packed with special-interest giveaways and assorted tax hikes.God forbid Republican legislators (entirely excluded from budget negotiations) or any conscientious lawmaker have a chance to articulately question a deal that bakes in massive budget shortfalls in the coming years, and probably one this year, too. Democrats are making so much noise about the threats to democracy down in Washington, they really should think about allowing at least a tiny bit of it up in Albany....