<b>IN’s Cooper:</b> Goodbye, Empire State

Reflecting its declining population as documented in the 2010 census, New York soon will lose two House seats, and tie with Florida as the nation’s third-most-populous state. Poor New York.
As a geography-obsessed kid in the ’50s and ’60s, I remember when California overtook New York in the population race. I was disappointed that we were no longer No. 1, but it only seemed fair in a way. After all, California dwarfed us in physical size and it had Disneyland and drive-ins and other cool stuff. Why wouldn’t every American — whether from boring Kansas or freezing Wisconsin or sardine-packed Brooklyn — want to flee to the land of freeways and fun?
At the moment, California remains on top in terms of population, but Texas is hot on its heels, with plenty of wide open spaces to accommodate lots more people. In addition to warm weather (the sine qua non for population growth since the advent of air conditioning, which allowed the southern half of the nation to get a decent night’s sleep for the first time in history), Texas has that other requirement for growth — low taxes.
There’s no doubt about it, aside from upstate New York’s crummy winters and downstate’s crowding, the biggest factor driving people away from the Empire State is taxes. When the property taxes on a 60-year-old Levittown Cape Cod can run $1,000 a month, it’s no wonder that the average New Yorker — and there are plenty of us who don’t work on Wall Street or live on Park Avenue — seriously contemplates a one-way trip through the Lincoln Tunnel.
(For non New Yorkers interested in a bargain, the outbound trip via the tunnels and bridges connecting New York and New Jersey are free; into the city they grab you for $8.)
So where does all our tax money go, aside from the usual share that flows into politicians’ pockets?
There’s the huge chunk that goes to pay police officers, firefighters, teachers and other civil servants, who all seem to “work” 10 years and then retire at 125% of their last year’s pay for the next 40 years.
Then there’s Medicaid and various aid programs to keep poor people from starving and freezing to death.
Another slice goes to local governments.
By now, after Eliot Spitzer’s zipper issues and outgoing Gov. David Paterson’s appearances on Saturday Night Live, the whole country probably knows that Albany is dysfunctional. But did you know that our crazy-quilt local government system also is a costly mess?
Where I live, on Long Island, one of the wealthiest counties in the nation is headed toward insolvency and state oversight. My own hometown is actually a composite of nine incorporated villages and the unincorporated areas of one of the county’s three towns. I’m also in separate water, library, park and school districts — each with its own governance and taxing power. It’s so crazy, many of my neighbors aren’t exactly sure which village or district they live in. As you can imagine, we pay for all this in the form of eye-popping taxes.
It would be easy to pin all the blame for high taxes and New York’s decline on politicians. I won’t do that, but I’ll pin 78.62% of the blame on them, just to be precise for a change.
I’ll pin a couple of percentage points of blame on big companies, which either fled the state for tax subsidies from other climes or who shifted the tax burden to the average schnook by shaking down New York for their own tax breaks (as Goldman Sachs did for its new headquarters near the site of the World Trade Center).
But we New Yorkers are to blame, too. Rather than pay for stuff ourselves, or do without, many of us expect Albany and New York City to “do something” whether the state or city can afford it or not. We hang on to our balkanized municipal government structure in the name of local control and remain positively sheep-like in re-electing the bozos who represent us in Albany.
If we want someone to be able to buy our homes and co-ops when we move to Florida, we’d better get on the ball and put our house in order.

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