Opposition to no-fault divorce in New York has united two groups that don’t usually see eye-to-eye: religious advocates opposed to a change that would make divorces easier to obtain, and women’s groups that believe no-fault would enable moneyed husbands — including adulterers and batterers — to dump their spouses unilaterally. A news conference Monday at the Capitol brought the two flanks together.

The Rev. Jason McGuire of New Yorkers for Constitutional Freedoms said the no-fault measure, which narrowly passed the Senate last week and is now before the Assembly, should be called “the midlife marriage crisis bill” because it would smooth the path for men who want to trade in an aging wife for a “younger, sleeker model.”

Those tending to the women’s-rights side of the argument had harsh words for the principal Senate backers of the bill, including Democrats Ruth Hassell-Thompson, Liz Krueger and Diane Savino. The activists argued that the legislators were either deluded about the “myths” surrounding no-fault or had been bought off for campaign cash from lawyers.

“They took a position quickly and then they were locked into a position politically,” said Monica Getz of the Coalition for Family Justice. “… I could see very well, without ill intention, where Sen. Savino and Sen. Hassell-Thompson would be seduced by the bar associations.”

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For the first time in four decades of collecting data, the National Governors Association (NGA) reports that total state spending has dropped for two years in a row. In hard-hit Arizona, for example, the state budget has sagged to 2004 levels, despite blistering growth in population and demand for government services. Starting with the 2008 fiscal year, state governments have closed more than $300 billion in cumulative budget gaps, with another $125 billion already projected for the coming years, says Corina Eckl, fiscal-program director at the National Conference of State Legislatures (NCSL). Similar figures aren’t collected for the nation’s counties, villages and towns, but when the National League of Cities surveyed mayors recently, three-fourths of them described worsening economic conditions.

Accustomed to the ups and downs of the ordinary economic cycle, elected officials and budget planners are facing something none of them have experienced before: year after year of shortfalls, steadily compounding. Ordinarily, deficits are resolved mostly through budgetary hocus-pocus. But the length and depth of the recession are forcing governments to go beyond sleight of hand to genuine cuts. And that makes lawmakers gloomy in all but a handful of states. (It’s a swell time to be North Dakota.) According to an NCSL survey, worry or outright pessimism is the reigning mood in the vast majority of capitals.

Many taxpayers might say that it’s about time spending dropped. But then they start hearing the specifics. Government budgets contain a lot of fixed costs and herds of sacred cows. K-12 education absorbs nearly a third of all spending from state general funds. Add medical expenses, primarily Medicaid, and it’s over half. Prisons must be maintained, colleges and universities kept open, interest on bonds and other loans paid. Real cuts provoke loud howls, and you can hear them rising in every corner of the country. College students have marched in California, firefighters have protested in Florida, and on June 10, Minnesota saw the largest one-day strike of nurses ”” some 12,000 ”” in U.S. history.

And don’t count on the shaky economic recovery for relief.

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If you pop into a toilet on the Seattle waterfront this summer, you might see over-flowing bins. The reason? A polite notice explains that “because of 2010 budget reductions”, the Seattle government can no longer afford to “service this comfort station” each day. Hence the dirt.

Investors would do well to take note. In recent months, America’s fiscal mess has assumed a rather surreal air. On paper, the country’s federal-level deficit and debt numbers certainly look very scary. But in practical terms, the impact of those ever-swelling zeroes still seems distinctly abstract.

After all, so far the federal government has not been slashing spending; on the contrary, there was a stimulus bill last year. And, as my colleague John Plender pointed out this week, Treasury bond yields have been falling as investors flee the eurozone woes. As a result, those scary numbers still seem to be a problem primarily concocted in the world of cyber finance.

But there is one place where reality is already starting to bite in America and that is in terms of state finances. Just look at the statistics. A report from the US Center on Budget and Policy Priorities issued last month estimates that in fiscal 2010 the US states collectively posted a $200bn-odd budget shortfall, equivalent to 30 per cent of all state budgets.

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Many states are acknowledging this year that they have promised pensions they cannot afford and are cutting once-sacrosanct benefits, to appease taxpayers and attack budget deficits.

Illinois raised its retirement age to 67, the highest of any state, and capped public pensions at $106,800 a year. Arizona, New York, Missouri and Mississippi will make people work more years to earn pensions. Virginia is requiring employees to pay into the state pension fund for the first time. New Jersey will not give anyone pension credit unless they work at least 32 hours a week.

“We can’t afford to deny reality or delay action any longer,” said Gov. Pat Quinn of Illinois, adding that his state’s pension cuts, enacted in March, will save some $300 million in the first year alone.

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The State Senate on Tuesday, clearing aside decades of opposition, put New York on a course to adopt no-fault divorce ”” the last state to do so. It approved legislation that would permit couples to separate by mutual consent, a major shift with sweeping implications for families and lawyers.

For decades, New Yorkers have been bedeviled by divorce laws that critics said prompted endless litigation and custody fights that were both unnecessary and cruel.

Under current divorce law, one spouse must take the blame, even if both sides agree that a marriage cannot be saved. To get a divorce, one party must allege cruel and inhuman treatment or adultery or abandonment, or the couple must be legally separated for one year.

The new legislation still has to pass the State Assembly, which is considering two bills that would include some version of no-fault divorce. But advocates said Tuesday that they believed that victory in the Senate, which was controlled by Republicans until last year, gave the measure momentum and a high likelihood of gaining approval in the Assembly, which is also controlled by Democrats.

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South Carolina state police should investigate how the unemployed winner of the state’s Democratic U.S. Senate primary paid his filing fee of more than $10,000, after claiming indigency and being appointed a public defender to represent him in a court case, a state lawmaker says.

“There are several questions regarding the filing fee paid for by Mr. Alvin Greene,” Republican Rep. Chip Limehouse wrote in a letter dated Tuesday to State Law Enforcement Division Chief Reggie Lloyd.

Greene, a 32-year-old political unknown, stunned the party establishment when he defeated former state lawmaker Vic Rawl in the June 8 primary to see who would face GOP U.S. Sen. Jim DeMint, the heavy favorite in the fall.

Ugh and yuck. Read it all.

According to the Pew Center on the States, state pensions and other retiree benefit programs are underfunded by $1 trillion. And that estimate was made before the stock market swoon of 2008.

That number is an aggregate of all states, some of which are in relatively decent shape, and some of which are courting disaster. Too many states and localities created pension plans that are way too generous, allowing some workers, particularly those in law enforcement and other emergency response areas, to retire as early as their 40s, to “double dip” by collecting a salary and pension at the same time, or to manipulate pay in a way that inflates their pensions. In New Jersey, for example, a local lawyer and Democratic Party official cobbled together some part-time work for local government to claim a pension of more than $100,000.

The shortfall is made worse when cash-strapped governments make unrealistic projections about investment returns or underfund their plans by failing to make adequate annual contributions.

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Spending cuts by state and local governments from New York to California may act as a drag on the economy into 2011, only the second time in more than a half century that such reductions have restricted growth for three consecutive years.

States face a cumulative budget gap of $127.4 billion as 46 prepare for the start of their fiscal year on July 1, according to a report this month by the National Governors Association and the National Association of State Budget Officers. They will have to fill that hole largely on their own, as aid from the federal government under programs including President Barack Obama’s $787 billion stimulus package starts to wind down.

State and local cutbacks may trim growth by about a quarter percentage point in 2010 and 2011 after shaving it by 0.02 point in 2010, said Mark Zandi, chief economist at Moody’s Analytics Inc. He also sees the governments lopping payrolls by 200,000 during the next year after reducing them by 190,000 in the 12 months through May.

“The budget cutting that is dead ahead will be a significant impediment to economic growth later this year into 2011,” he said in an interview.

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Public school teacher pensions are a ticking time bomb. They’re short by $933 billion in assets needed to cover promises to retirees, or more than $18,600 per public school pupil.

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President Obama urged reluctant lawmakers Saturday to quickly approve nearly $50 billion in emergency aid to state and local governments, saying the money is needed to avoid “massive layoffs of teachers, police and firefighters” and to support the still-fragile economic recovery.

In a letter to congressional leaders, Obama defended last year’s huge economic stimulus package, saying it helped break the economy’s free fall, but argued that more spending is urgent and unavoidable. “We must take these emergency measures,” he wrote in an appeal aimed primarily at members of his own party.

The letter comes as rising concern about the national debt is undermining congressional support for additional spending to bolster the economy. Many economists say more spending could help bring down persistently high unemployment, but with Republicans making an issue of the record deficits run up during the recession, many Democratic lawmakers are eager to turn off the stimulus tap.

“I think there is spending fatigue,” House Majority Leader Steny H. Hoyer (D-Md.) said recently. “It’s tough in both houses to get votes.”

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Senator Blanche Lincoln of Arkansas survived a tough challenge from her party’s left wing on Tuesday to capture the Democratic nomination in a runoff primary election, resisting the anti-incumbent wave that has defined the midterm election year.

Mrs. Lincoln withstood a multi-million-dollar campaign against her from organized labor, environmental groups and liberal advocacy organizations from outside Arkansas as she prevailed over Lt. Gov. Bill Halter. She faces a difficult contest in the fall, but her victory challenges the suggestion that voters are poised to oust all officeholders.

“We proved that this senator’s vote is not for sale and neither is yours,” Mrs. Lincoln said. “We took on the outside groups seeking to manipulate our votes.”

In California, Republican primary voters chose female business executives to run for Senate and for governor after both crushed their opponents.

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Brushing aside allegations of extramarital affairs, tea party favorite Nikki Haley pushed aside a tough group of political stalwarts and nearly won outright the GOP primary race for governor. Just shy of the 50 percent needed to earn the Republican bid, Haley now faces U.S. Rep. Gresham Barrett in a runoff June 22.

Meanwhile, Democrats overwhelmingly chose Vincent Sheheen as their nominee for governor. Sheheen, a state senator from Camden, took 59 percent of the vote, topping Jim Rex, state superintendent of education, with 23 percent. State Sen. Robert Ford of Charleston finished with 18 percent.

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Of all the incumbents on the ballot across the nation Tuesday, of all the establishment figures whose careers are on the line in this midterm election year, there is no bigger target than Senator Harry Reid of Nevada, the Democratic majority leader.

But will Mr. Reid’s prospects rise after Tuesday night?

That’s one of the questions that will be answered when the outcome of primary contests in 11 states ”” the biggest day so far this election season ”” provides a layer of clarity as to how Republicans and Democrats will be positioned in their battle for control of Congress over the next five months.

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Reports from election officials throughout the state indicate that so far turnout throughout the state has been low to moderate. However, there are reports of moderate to heavy turnout in some counties and precincts.

Historically, primary turnout is lower than that of general elections ranging from 18% to 26% over the past 12 years. Turnout in General Elections has ranged from 45% to 76% during that same period.

Polls close at 7:00 p.m. Voters in line at 7:00 p.m. will be allowed to vote. The State Election Commission will report election results and voter turnout tonight at www.scVOTES.org. Look for the 2008 Primary Results link on the front page.

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Having counted on Washington for money that may not be delivered, at least 30 states will have to close larger-than-anticipated shortfalls in the coming fiscal year unless Congress passes a six-month extension of increased federal spending on Medicaid.

Governors and state lawmakers, already facing some of the toughest budgets since the Great Depression, said the repercussions would extend far beyond health care, forcing them to make deep cuts to education, social services and public safety.

Gov. Edward G. Rendell of Pennsylvania, for instance, penciled $850 million in federal Medicaid assistance into the revenue side of his state’s ledger, reducing its projected shortfall to $1.2 billion. The only way to compensate for the loss, he said in an interview, would be to lay off at least 20,000 government workers, including teachers and police officers, at a time when the state is starting to add jobs.

“It would actually kill everything the stimulus has done,” said Mr. Rendell, a Democrat. “It would be enormously destructive.”

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At least 11 states have passed laws this year regulating or restricting abortion, giving opponents of abortion what partisans on both sides of the issue say is an unusually high number of victories. In four additional states, bills have passed at least one house of the legislature.

In a flurry of activity last week, Gov. Haley Barbour of Mississippi signed a bill barring insurers from covering abortion in the new insurance exchanges called for under the federal health care overhaul, and the Oklahoma Legislature overrode a veto by Gov. Brad Henry of a bill requiring doctors who perform abortions to answer 38 questions about each procedure, including the women’s reasons for ending their pregnancies.

It was the third abortion measure this session on which the Legislature overrode a veto by Mr. Henry.

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Thousands of Rhode Island income-tax refunds are being delayed longer than previously reported because of state cash-flow problems.

Overall, the state has delayed payment of about 53,000 individual income-tax refunds ”” totaling about $36.3 million ”” to make sure it has enough money to pay off state borrowings that come due in June, said Paul L. Dion, chief of the state Office of Revenue Analysis.

When the issue first arose earlier this month, state officials said they were delaying payment of refunds by about three weeks after the returns were processed. As of Tuesday, however, the delay had grown to between four and six weeks, state officials acknowledged.

Normally, when a tax return is processed, it takes the state several days to issue a refund on a return that was filed electronically, a week or so for a return that was filed on paper, state Tax Administrator David M. Sullivan said.

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State Assembly Speaker John A. Perez on Tuesday outlined an alternative path to balancing California’s budget that would raise oil taxes, delay corporate tax breaks and borrow billions from the nickel-and-dime deposits consumers make on recyclable bottles — and would not require any Republican support.

At the heart of the proposal is the idea of raiding the state’s bottle deposits for the next 20 years and then getting an $8.7-billion loan from Wall Street. The programs currently funded by bottle deposits would be reimbursed by a new tax on oil production.

Perez (D-Los Angeles) called his budget plan a “unique and creative approach.” A spokesman for Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger called it “legal gymnastics.”

Read the whole thing.

Tuition increases for undergraduates attending public colleges and universities in their home states appear to be all over the map this fall.

The range so far ”” from no change at Maine’s community colleges to double digits at some Virginia and Arizona universities ”” reflect the variety of strategies schools and states are trying to balance their economic challenges with those of students and parents.

“States are starting from different places,” says Julie Bell of the National Conference of State Legislatures. But in general, money for higher education “just isn’t there.”

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In Yonkers, more than 100 retired police officers and firefighters are collecting pensions greater than their pay when they were working. One of the youngest, Hugo Tassone, retired at 44 with a base pay of about $74,000 a year. His pension is now $101,333 a year.

It’s what the system promised, said Mr. Tassone, now 47, adding that he did nothing wrong by adding lots of overtime to his base pay shortly before retiring. “I don’t understand how the working guy that held up their end of the bargain became the problem,” he said.

Despite a pension investigation by the New York attorney general, an audit concluding that some police officers in the city broke overtime rules to increase their payouts and the mayor’s statements that future pensions should be based on regular pay, not overtime, these practices persist in Yonkers.

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Senator Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania, who left the Republican Party a year ago in hopes of salvaging a 30-year career, was rejected on Tuesday by Democratic primary voters, with Representative Joe Sestak winning the party’s nomination on an anti-incumbent wave that is defining the midterm elections.

In Kentucky, Rand Paul, the most visible symbol of the Tea Party movement, easily won the Republican Senate primary and delivered a significant blow to the Republican establishment. His 24-point victory over Trey Grayson, who was supported by the most powerful Republican on Capitol Hill, Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, underscored the anti-Washington sentiment echoing across the country.

The outcomes of both contests, along with a Democratic primary in Arkansas that pushed Senator Blanche Lincoln into a runoff election in June, illustrated anew the serious threats both parties face from candidates who are able to portray themselves as outsiders and eager to shake up the system.

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Religious leaders from Arizona took their cause to Capitol Hill on Thursday (May 13), saying they can no longer ignore the “human cost” of illegal immigration in their state.

“I’m here representing evangelicals,” said Gary Kinnaman, an evangelical pastor from Phoenix after a morning meeting with Sen. John McCain. R-Ariz. “We are increasingly concerned.”

The interfaith group of Jewish, Methodist, evangelical, Catholic and Episcopal leaders said they oppose their state’s new law that allows police to question Arizonans about their legal immigration status. The group said the federal government, not the state, should take the lead on immigration reform.

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Herein lies the challenge: Small businesses, half of the private sector (and the most important part as far as jobs are concerned), have been heavily impacted by this credit crisis. Small businesses created 64% of new jobs over the past 15 years, but they have cut five million jobs since the onset of this credit crisis. Large businesses, by comparison, have shed three million jobs in the past two years.

Small businesses continue to struggle to gain access to credit and cannot hire in this environment. Thus, the full weight of job creation falls upon large businesses. It would take large businesses rehiring 100% of the three million workers laid off over the past two years to make a substantial change in jobless numbers. Given the productivity gains enjoyed recently, it is improbable that anything near this will occur.

Unless real focus is afforded to re-engaging small businesses in this country, we will have a tragic and dangerous unemployment level for an extended period of time. Small businesses fund themselves exactly the way consumers do, with credit cards and home equity lines. Over the past two years, more than $1.5 trillion in credit-card lines have been cut, and those cuts are increasing by the day….

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The Rev. Canon Carmen B. Guerrero remembers living with the fear of her mother, a third-generation Mexican American, “who would never go close to the border because she was afraid of getting deported, although she had been born here.”

For Guerrero, canon for peace and justice in the Episcopal Diocese of Arizona, the state’s tough anti-illegal immigration law feels a bit like déjà vu.

Guerrero described suffering of her parishioners because of the immigration debacle.

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The New York attorney general has started an investigation of eight banks to determine whether they provided misleading information to rating agencies in order to inflate the grades of certain mortgage securities, according to two people with knowledge of the investigation.

The investigation parallels federal inquiries into the business practices of a broad range of financial companies in the years before the collapse of the housing market.

Where those investigations have focused on interactions between the banks and their clients who bought mortgage securities, this one expands the scope of scrutiny to the interplay between banks and the agencies that rate their securities.

The agencies themselves have been widely criticized for overstating the quality of many mortgage securities that ended up losing money once the housing market collapsed. The inquiry by the attorney general of New York, Andrew M. Cuomo, suggests that he thinks the agencies may have been duped by one or more of the targets of his investigation.

Those targets are Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, UBS, Citigroup, Credit Suisse, Deutsche Bank, Crédit Agricole and Merrill Lynch, which is now owned by Bank of America.

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The death penalty has sparked intense debate in Maryland in recent years — but attitudes among residents haven’t changed much.

Sixty percent of Marylanders favor use of the death penalty for people convicted of murder, while 32 percent are opposed, according to a new Washington Post poll.

Those figures don’t tell the entire story: Given a choice, more say they prefer the punishment of life in prison with no chance of parole than the death penalty — by 49 percent to 40 percent.

Neither result has changed much since The Post asked the same questions three years ago.

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As bishops of the Episcopal Diocese of Massachusetts, our eyes are open to the realities of transgender people and their families. Many of them serve faithfully in the congregations and ministries of our diocese, as lay people, as deacons and as priests. They are dedicated and loving parents, children, siblings, friends and community leaders. Again and again, we hear how they have struggled against incredible odds and pressures to be true to their identity as beloved children of God, made in the image of God.

It pains us that even as transgender people claim their identities and step into newness of life, they face discrimination and violence that undermines their human dignity. A November 2009 survey by the National Center for Transgender Equality and the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force found that 97 percent of respondents had been harassed or mistreated on the job, and 26 percent had been fired for being transgender. You will recall that in November 1998, an Allston transgender woman, Rita Hester, was murdered and her killer never found. This local tragedy led to an annual Nov. 20 international Transgender Day of Remembrance, for transgender people who have died, especially those who have been killed or taken their own lives. It is fitting that our state should model amendment of life and hope for a future that is better than this sad past.

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Over the past week various people from around the archdiocese have asked for help in reflecting on Arizona’s new immigration law. As readers will know, I’ve used this space many times in the past to urge sensible, national immigration reform. Citizens of this country have a right to their safety and the solvency of their public institutions. But we undermine those very goals if we ignore the basic human rights of immigrant workers and their families.

In the case of Arizona state law, Catholics should listen first to the leaders of the Arizona Catholic community, for obvious reasons. They know the situation there best. Bishop Thomas Olmsted of Phoenix, Bishop Gerald Kicanas of Tucson and Bishop James Wall of Gallup, N.M. (whose diocese includes portions of Arizona) are all excellent pastors. Their leadership in the coming weeks and months should set the tone for our own response.

Having said that, it’s worth making a few simple observations:

First, illegal immigration is wrong and dangerous for everyone involved….

Second, the new Arizona law, despite its flaws, does unintentionally accomplish one good thing. Thanks to Arizona, the urgency of immigration reform and the human issues that underlie it””deported breadwinners; divided families; the anxiety of children who grew up here but do not have citizenship””once again have moved to the front burner of our national discussions. Our current immigration system is now obviously broken. Congress needs to act….

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BISHOP GERALD KICANAS (Roman Catholic Diocese of Tucson, Arizona): Even the Arizona legislators, Bob, are considering modifications to the bill, which suggests that they themselves are concerned about how it could be misinterpreted. So there will be legal action, certainly, and we’ll monitor that and participate where we feel it would be appropriate.

{BOB] ABERNETHY: Do you think the church might become a party to the lawsuits to try to stop the bill?

BISHOP KICANAS: I don’t know that we’ll be bringing the lawsuits forward. Those will be brought forward by, certainly, others, but we will review those, and perhaps being a friend of the court where it would be appropriate.

ABERNETHY: Do you think in the end that the bill can be stopped, that the law can be stopped?

BISHOP KICANAS: Well, there is great national concern, certainly concern within our state among religious leaders, among many portions of our community. It has to be addressed that this bill does not well represent the state of Arizona and is not going to resolve the issues that we are facing.

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Hawaii’s civil union legislation appeared to be dead in January, when the House didn’t take a vote on the measure and postponed it indefinitely out of fears that Lingle would veto.

The issue was revived Thursday after every other bill introduced this year had been acted on. Democratic House Majority Leader Blake Oshiro made the motion to reconsider the bill, although the House fell three votes short of the two-thirds majority needed to override the governor.

The bill was written so that civil unions would be available to both same-sex and opposite-sex couples to avoid claims of discrimination.

“Equality feels really good,” said Suzanne King, who said Hawaii would recognize her Massachusetts marriage to her partner as a civil union if the bill becomes law. “It allows us to strengthen our family.”

Read it all from AP (my emphasis).