In 2020 state legislators will examine whether to turn to New York residents and businesses for more tax revenue but meanwhile New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo will become the nation's highest paid Governor thanks to a pay raise approved by lawmakers as part of the new state budget.

Assembly Speaker Carl Heastie recently was not shy about his tax-raising preferences and as he outlines the basic choices he said, “for us in the Assembly we would always rather raise revenues than cut.”

The Democrat-led Senate and Assembly voted to gradually increase Cuomo's salary from the current $179,000 to $250,000 on Jan. 1, 2021.

These same lawmakers will see increased salaries from $79,500 to $110,000.

Rank and file lawmakers have been doing a lot of thinking and talking since the governor released a report on the health of the state's finances midway into the 2019 fiscal year which pointed to a $6.1 billion deficit looming in the future.

What Heastie was talking about will be a move in 2020 to again raise taxes on the super-wealthy, a tax worth about $4.5 billion annually.

New York State judges are not happy with the proposed budget as the 1,300 state judges will not get a raise in pay in 2020 and could see their salary frozen until at least 2024.

And meanwhile New York continues to lose more population to other states than anywhere else in the nation and residents are leaving for areas that are less expensive to live.

But the movement out of the state seems to fail Albany politicians who choose to raise their pay and taxes, rather than providing New York residents and taxpayers with affordability.

Voters in the voting booth can address these issues.

Ed Townsend provides year around "Beyond The News"coverage in this column with over 60-years of photojournalism analysis and insight. The column can also be read on his Web blog at http://bght.blogspot.com