New York simply must break out of this short-term thinking. Let's also put aside a style of budgeting that stresses restoration of things lost. The pattern is of long standing. The Executive proposes cuts, and the legislative branch tries to restore them. All the advocacy groups fall in step.
Budget making for the next five years needs to be about some very long-term investments.
After the Regents adopt new standards this spring, standards which require 90 percent of the students to be able to read at or above the state reference point in third grade reading, we will discover that a great many New York schools can't perform at that level. We must invest in the fundamentals of reading, mathematics, science. The choices are frightfully complex and require more than the few weeks we usually give. The extraordinary deficit that we have incurred in the quality of our facilities must be paid off. It's not just a New York City problem.