John Faso, the 2006 GOP can didate for governor, is a co-founder of New Yorkers for Growth writes in an op-ed in today’s New York Post - ” LT. Gov. Dick Ravitch yester day outlined a five-year financial-recovery plan to plug the state’s immediate $9 billion budget hole and address its looming $60 billion structural deficit over the next half decade.

His two big fixes? More debt to finance current operating deficits, and a new body to oversee long-term budget cuts.

Both are flawed.

Ravitch proposed that the state issue up to $6 billion of new debt over the next three years — 10 percent of the five-year structural deficit — to help ease its path to fiscal health. And he envisioned the creation of a financial-review board, composed of five independent citizens, to make sure the state is cutting its massive structural deficit.

“It is not, in my judgment, possible to cut nine and a half billion dollars . . . out of this budget this coming year,” Ravitch said yesterday. “Not only because I believe it to be a political impossibility, given the varied dispositions of the members of the Legislature. But because there is a level of cuts, no matter what everyone’s politics are, [that] affects employment, it affects human beings.”

But interest costs on the state’s debt are already now about $5 billion a year and rising, so borrowing yet more is hardly a great idea. The state repeatedly has tried to borrow its way out of its problems — most recently after 9/11 — and also routinely has enacted counterproductive tax and fee increases, all on the promise that it would be the very last time that it would resort to such “emergency” measures…

New York does have a way out, but the path won’t be cleared by rearranging deck chairs. Instead, the state needs to embark upon a radically different, pro-growth strategy emphasizing private-sector job growth.

That means:

* Cutting taxes on businesses, both large and small.

* Streamlining environmental and zoning rules to encourage private investment and speedier permit approvals.

* Reducing the size and scope of government by consolidating services and functions.

* Eliminating borrowing that isn’t approved by voters.

* Capping property taxes.

* Cutting health-insurance costs by eliminating state taxes on health insurance and allowing insurers to offer a greater variety of plans.

* Abolishing job-killing taxes on energy to help create jobs.

Simply put, we need to make New York a state where business and entrepreneurs create private-sector jobs.”

To read the entire op-ed click here.