The pace is picking up at the state Capitol. The budget is scheduled to be approved by April 1st. In order to meet that deadline, the state Senate and the state Assembly are likely to advance their own one-house budget plans this upcoming week. A week after that, both houses should begin a joint conference committee process to work out their differences while they negotiate with the governor.
There are big issues to be addressed – from ethics to education. But there are a number of other issues that have not gotten attention and that, if enacted as proposed by the governor, would cause real problems for New Yorkers. Here are three of them.
1.Breast cancer screening. The governor proposes, once again, to combine a number of public health programs, and then slash the funding for them by a whopping 15%. One of those programs is the state’s Cancer Services Program. The CSP provides free cancer screening for New Yorkers who lack health coverage.
The single largest number of cancer screens is mammography (the program also covers colon and cervical cancer screenings). It is also one of the biggest programs on the governor’s chopping block.
2. Tuition Assistance Program (TAP). The governor’s plan says that unless the legislature approves college financial aid for undocumented immigrants and tax credits for students attending private and parochial schools, there will be no money in the budget for TAP.
TAP is the state’s largest college financial aid program. Its maximum award is $5,165 for the state’s lowest income college students.
But the governor is proposing to eliminate funding for TAP unless the legislature approves the proposals for financial aid for undocumented immigrants and tuition tax credits. You heard that correctly, under the governor’s budget proposal there is a possibility that the TAP financial aid will be completely eliminated. All $1 billion in aid for over 300,000 New York college student recipients is at risk.
It is mystifying why the governor would put such a popular – and necessary – program at risk, but he has.
3. Environmental Protection Fund. Created by the state legislature in 1993, the Environmental Protection Fund is a source of funding for environmental projects. Some examples of projects that the EPF funds are: purchasing land for the NYS Forest Preserve, restoring historic sites, conserving farmland, controlling invasive species, upgrading municipal sewage treatment plants, and paying for recycling programs.
The EPF not only has significant environmental benefits, it has a positive economic impact as well. A 2012 study by the Trust for Public Land showed that for every $1 invested in land and water conservation through the EPF, the state received $7 in economic return.
The EPF once received $255 million and was scheduled to increase to $300 million before the economic recession occurred. The EPF is currently funded at $162 million.
The governor proposes to increase that funding by $10 million, but he does so by taking revenues generated by the state’s program to regulate its greenhouse gases.The governor wants to divert $36 million of the revenues normally used to help reduce air pollution that causes global warming and use some of it for EPF.
These are some of the disturbing elements of the governor’s budget plan: Cuts to public health programs – including free breast cancer screening for the uninsured; political brinkmanship that puts at risk $1 billion of college financial aid; and, an environmental plan to “rob Peter to pay Paul” by increasing environmental spending by stealing it from a greenhouse gas reduction program.
As the legislature begins its part of the budgetary deliberations, it must reject the governor’s three big mistakes and instead improve these programs – not hurt them.
