Assembly Dems go against form on revenue estimates
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- February
- 26
  Among the understood conventions about Albany is that Assembly Democrats, who always want to spend more than everyone else, always estimate that the state will have more money to spend than anyone else.
Estimating revenues is at its heart a guessing game – albeit educated guesses – so the assumption has always been that the estimates follow to some degree a political agenda. In the Assembly Democrats’ case, that has meant since they want to spend more, they need high revenues estimates to pay for it.  It has been that way every year since 1991.
The normal pattern: the governor’s estimates are the lowest, since he actually has to worry about balancing spending and receipts, and knows that lawmakers will add to his number anyway. The Senate is usually in the middle – and usually end up closest to actual collections.
But this year, Assembly Democrats have broken the mold by being the most pessimistic about the state’s financial health.
“There’s a recession going on, and our numbers reflect that,’’ said Dan Weiller, a spokesman for Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver, D-Manhattan. The Dems think Gov. Spitzer’s revenue estimate is $615 million too high, while Senate Republicans think it’s $100 million too low.
This entry was posted
on Tuesday, February 26th, 2008 at 4:50 pm by Jay Gallagher.
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Jay Gallagher has covered Albany for Gannett News Service since 1984 and has been Albany Bureau chief since 1989. He`s a native of the Boston area and likes to point out that in this millennium, the score is Red Sox 1 championship, the Yankees 0. 
Cara Matthews has been a statehouse correspondent in the Albany Bureau since August 2005. Prior to that, she covered Putnam County government and politics at The Journal News for nearly five years. Before that, she worked at newspapers in Connecticut and covered the state Legislature for one of them. 
