Last week, state lawmakers continued their examination of Governor Hochul’s budget, in particular her higher education plans, by holding public hearings.  It was clear from the testimonies at the higher education hearing that there was widespread support for the proposals advanced by the governor, but that there was also broad agreement that her plan did not tackle the daunting challenges facing colleges across New York.

First the support.  Testifiers agreed that the governor’s plans to eliminate the so-called “TAP Gap,” boost funding for educational opportunity programs, childcare, and expand the state’s largest college financial aid program – the Tuition Assistance Program (TAP) – were all worthy of support.

The “TAP Gap” is the result of a decision made in the first year of the Cuomo Administration as part of the SUNY2020 plan, which allowed regular increases in public college tuition.  But that plan included a trap door.  As public college tuition went up, financial assistance from the state’s TAP stayed frozen. 

In order to ensure that the neediest students still had their tuition costs covered by the state, the State University of New York and the City University of New York campuses were required to provide that assistance from their own coffers.  As the tuition price went up and financial aid stayed frozen, more and more financial aid costs from the state treasury were placed onto the books of public colleges.  As a result, the state forced public colleges to cover the needs of the most economically needy students.  As tuition kept going up, the gap increased and increasingly added financial stress to an already-stressed system.  Last year, lawmakers agreed to phase in state support to cover the gap between tuition and financial aid.  Governor Hochul’s budget would eliminate that gap this year.

While the governor’s budget eliminates the “TAP Gap” which helps stabilize public colleges’ finances, it does little to reverse the sector’s downward financial trends that have resulted from previous Cuomo budgets and the pandemic.  The upshot is that many public and independent colleges are facing financial peril.    

For example, SUNY was seeing dramatic enrollment declines (outside of its university centers) during the pre-pandemic period.  The enrollment losses have been staggeringly large at many community colleges.  This trend preceded the pandemic, but the pandemic has accelerated the slide toward a financial abyss.  CUNY had a more stabilized enrollment until the pandemic, and now it is facing revenue gaps from significant enrollment losses.  Smaller, independent colleges have also seen enrollment declines.  Enrollment declines result in revenue shortfalls that can result in reduced services and/or workforce reductions.  Both of these outcomes make those colleges less attractive to potential students.  The less attractive the campus, the less likely students will want to attend, which triggers a continued downward spiral.

Despite massive state financial surpluses, Governor Hochul’s budget proposes little to reverse these trends.

Testimony from college administrators, faculty, and students all called for significant additional state financial assistance.  According to one analysis, in order to restore the tuition losses to SUNY, the state would have to add $500 million in support and the City University would need upwards of $200 million.  Testimony also pointed out that the state’s support for private colleges through its “Bundy Aid” program was at a high of $100 million in 1990 and has been slashed to a bit more than $35 million in the governor’s plan. 

Groups called for hundreds of millions of dollars in additional state aid in order to reverse the increasingly dire finances of many colleges.

Testimony focused on the benefits of such additional investments.  Higher education plays an important role in boosting the economy of the state.  Institutions of higher education are often regional economic engines.  State investments in higher education generate economic activity – hiring staff, spending in the community, higher incomes and tax dollars.  Yet, for years the state has underfunded higher education to earmark other, flashier economic strategies – some that succeeded and some that failed miserably, and some that failed scandalously – with prison terms for top public officials.

Investments in higher education always pay back far more.  But state investments have stagnated while student enrollments have suffered.

Of course, enrollment declines can be the result of other factors as well – changing demographics and weakening economies.  However, it was clear from the hearing that Governor Hochul’s budget is simply too limited to provide the resources necessary to turn around higher education and help lift the state’s economy.   The message was unmistakably clear: Now is the time for the state to act, and to act boldly, to restore New York’s institutions of higher education.

Last week, Governor Hochul and New York’s political leaders agreed on new boundaries for Congressional and state legislative districts.  The lines were drawn by the Legislature’s Democratic majorities and the upshot is likely to result in a big hit on the dwindling political clout of the state GOP.

Redistricting is a once-in-a-decade exercise in which a state’s political boundaries are adjusted to reflect changes in population.  That process starts off with the census, which is then followed by “reapportionment” (the process by which the 435 seats in the Congressional House of Representatives are redistributed among the states to reflect the changes in the nation’s population).  Reapportionment led to the loss of one Congressional seat for New York as the state’s small population growth did not match that of other states.

Reapportionment is followed by “redistricting” in which state – and then local – officials redraw political boundaries to reflect changes within their jurisdictions.  This round of New York’s redistricting was initiated through a new process.  That new process was the result of an agreement spearheaded by former Governor Cuomo to take direct control of redistricting from legislators and shift that responsibility to a bipartisan commission.

That commission, however, could not come to an agreement and that failure allowed legislators to step in and draw the new lines themselves.  As a result, the new maps were developed by the Democratic supermajorities in each house and approved by Governor Hochul last week.

The new lines favored Democrats.  Independent analyses showed that Democrats will have voter advantages in 22 of the new Congressional districts and the new state Senate districts.  Republicans howled that the changes were illegal and quickly filed suit to block the plans.

The Republicans’ complaint is correctly based on the fact that the plans do work to the benefit of Democrats; whether the plan is illegal is not so clear.

New York is a heavily-Democratic state – at least when it comes to voter enrollment.  And the gap between Democrats and Republicans is growing.  Thus, any plan would benefit Democrats.  Based on data released by the Center for Urban Research at The Graduate Center of the City University of New York, 22 of the 26 new Congressional seats have a majority of voters who preferred President Biden over former President Trump.

Clearly, those lines favor Congressional Democrats – although previous preferences don’t necessarily translate into electoral success – but it doesn’t hurt! 

Compared to the previous redistricting, however, the outcome does not look so skewed.  Ten years ago, the courts drew the lines for New York’s Congressional delegation when the then-Republican-controlled Senate could not agree with the Democratic-controlled Assembly.  Those lines gave Democrats enrollment advantages in 21 districts (out of 27 at that time).  And since that time, over 845,000 new Democratic voters have been added to the rolls – compared to only a tiny increase in Republicans, a bit over 18,000 new voters for that Party.

Each Congressional district now contains about 777,000 people and the increase in Democratic voters exceeds that amount.

The Democratic advantage in the state Senate is even clearer – Republicans gerrymandered the heck out of the Senate in 2012 in order to keep their majority.  But eight years later in the 2020 election, even with lines drawn by Republicans, Democrats took 2/3 of the Senate districts.

This is not to say that Democrats are not guilty of gerrymandering; it’s pretty clear that their actions have the effect of gerrymandering, or drawing the lines to create political advantage.  However, whether they intended to gerrymander and thereby violated the law is up to the courts.

But the impacts clearly underscore the need for reform.  No New Yorker should have to doubt whether the state’s political boundaries are rigged.  New York needs an independent redistricting commission, not a bipartisan one – particularly the current one which doesn’t work anyway.

The arguments against independence are that other states rig their Congressional maps, thus New York should too – in order to help balance the scales.  That argument is logical of course, but it really is an argument for a nationwide reform, not inaction.

The state of California has the nation’s most independent redistricting commission.  That should be the model for New York and the nation.  Elected officials should not choose their voters, voters should choose their elected officials.

A rapidly heating planet, rising sea levels, oceans choked with plastic pollution, landfills overflowing with solid wastes, an increasingly decrepit drinking water infrastructure, and industrial chemical hazards menacing drinking water – these threats and others are the backdrop for lawmakers’ review of Governor Hochul’s proposed environmental budget this week.

As New York lawmakers continue to review the governor’s $216 billion proposed budget, this week they will focus on her plans to respond to growing environmental threats.  Broadly speaking, her plans are contained in three major categories: responding to climate changes resulting from global warming, protecting New York’s drinking water (and freshwater) supplies, and addressing the growing solid waste disposal crisis.

Climate change.  There is no greater challenge facing the world.  As a result of human activities, most notably from the burning of fossil fuels, the planet is heating up and doing so at an accelerating pace.  Earth’s global average surface temperature in 2021 tied with 2018 as the sixth warmest on record.  Collectively, the past eight years are the warmest years since modern recordkeeping began in 1880.  This annual temperature data makes up the global temperature record – which tells scientists the planet is warming.  According to NASA’s temperature record, Earth in 2021 was about 1.9 degrees Fahrenheit warmer than the late 19th century average, the start of the industrial revolution.

New York State has among the nation’s most aggressive goals promising to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.  In her budget plan, the governor adds to that effort with proposals to boost reliance on electricity to power transportation and to heat new buildings.  As the state’s grid gets “greener” due to a growing reliance on solar, wind, and other non-fossil-fuel forms of power, using electric cars, buses and trucks will drastically reduce the burning of fossil fuels.  Demanding that new building construction rely on electricity instead of natural gas for heating and power will also help reduce emissions.  The governor deserves support for those initiatives, although her timetable for action on the shift from fossil fuels to electricity for new building construction needs to be moved up to start by the end of 2023.  The state needs to be in step with the recently passed gas free law for New York City – the building capital of the state.

Of course, devoting resources to the mitigation and adaptation efforts to respond to global warming will take money.  Unfortunately, the governor does little to require that the oil and gas industries – who are responsible for our current predicament – pick up the financial tab for these costs.  That’s one place where lawmakers should fill the gap, by making the fossil fuel industry pay – and certainly eliminating any indefensible state financial supports for climate polluters.

And New York needs a comprehensive, easy-to-use, and easy-to-find climate ‘report card” so that policymakers and the public can monitor the state’s progress toward its climate goals.

Drinking water protection.  Across New York this winter, there is regular media coverage of water pipes bursting due to the age of the infrastructure as well as the pressures from changes in temperatures.  As the planet heats up, drinking water supplies will become increasingly more important to society and New York can ill afford to waste its supplies – or allow pollution threats to harm drinking water quality.

The governor does propose to spend hundreds of millions of dollars on upgrading water infrastructures.  Given the state’s surplus and the enormous sums of federal support, the final budget should double the governor’s plan and spend $1 billion to fix New York’s aging system. 

In addition, the governor’s plan to protect wetlands – which can often act as a filter for underground drinking water aquifers – is a good first step but leaves too many wetlands threatened by development.  Her plan only protects wetlands that exceed 12 acres; the final budget must do better than that.

Solid waste reduction.  The governor has advanced an innovative plan to reduce packaging waste.  She proposes the establishment of an “Extended Producer Responsibility” program that would require “producers, not taxpayers” to be responsible for reducing and recycling packaging wastes.  The plan is seriously flawed with a business-dominated Advisory Committee which could end up being the “foxes guarding the chicken coop.”  Lawmakers should substantially improve this proposal to ensure that any advice be developed by independent experts working in the public’s – not the industry’s – best interests. 

The governor’s solid waste reduction plan has one big flaw – it shifts away from the state’s best recycling program, the Bottle Deposit Law.  That 40-year-old law has led to huge reductions in litter and does a far superior job at making “producers, not taxpayers” pick up the costs of beverage container wastes.  Lawmakers should demand the inclusion and expansion of this successful Extended Producer Responsibility program.

These are just some of the environmental and public health issues facing the state.  It’s the job of state lawmakers to dig deep into the governor’s proposals and reject those that do not work, demand accountability for performance toward environmental goals, and make sure that taxpayers are protected from the costs of irresponsible corporate behavior.

It’s political science 101: The executive proposes and the legislative branch disposes.  Last week, Governor Hochul proposed her $216 billion state budget.  Her plans include not only spending proposals, but policy changes as well.

This week the Legislature begins its review of the governor’s plans.  In its first hearing, lawmakers will examine the governor’s proposed spending on public protection and general government.  Among the hundreds of pages of bill language, lawmakers will examine the governor’s plans to reform New York.

The proposal that is likely to draw the most attention is the governor’s proposal to replace the state’s ethics watchdog, the Joint Commission on Public Ethics (JCOPE).  The Joint Commission has been plagued by allegations of its failures to enforce the law, being too secretive, and for too often bending to the will of the state’s political leaders. 

Why?  The agency was not created to be independent.  Albany’s political elite wanted an agency that would be accountable to them, not free to enforce the ethics laws without political fear or favor.  And that’s what they got and that’s why it failed.

Now Governor Hochul wants to strengthen ethics.  She’s reported to have remarked that she wants to “blow up JCOPE.”  And in her reform proposal, she’s done that, sort of.

While leaving much of the existing law in place, the governor’s plan focuses on eliminating the existing Commission’s membership and replacing them.  She changes the name to the “Independent Commission on Ethics and Lobbying” and requires it to operate more openly.

How does she make the new entity “independent”?  Here’s where the governor’s plan starts to go astray.  The key problem has always been about who chooses the leadership of the ethics agency.  In the previous incarnations, the governor and the other political leaders of the state chose the ethics agency leadership.  In effect, the regulated were choosing their regulators.

Governor Hochul has come up with a different approach.  Instead of the new commissioners being chosen by Albany’s political leadership, her plan empowers New York’s law school deans to do it. 

Relying on “trusted outside” decisionmakers is one way to solve the independence problem.  Yet law school deans are not – as a group – free of political pressure.  All report to institutions, either larger universities or boards, which can be pressured.  Moreover, these institutions and boards are not – first and foremost – accountable to the public. 

Furthermore, all law schools are involved in lobbying of state and local governments and the new ethics agency will be regulating state and local lobbying.  Thus, reliance on a “trusted source” model must have its own protections from political influences if it is to be viewed – and actually be – politically independent.

Here the governor’s plan falls short.  Simply by dint of being a law school dean, these individuals are selecting the new ethics commission membership.  There are no conflict-of-interest provisions, no swearing of an oath to ensure that their decisions are for the public’s best interests, no restriction on their conversations with political players.  Even law school deans need ethics guardrails.

Whether lawmakers are interested in strengthening the governor’s plan or using its weaknesses to simply keep the status quo remains to be seen.  Given the scandals that have plagued the state, New Yorkers deserve action.  The governor attempts to solve the ethics oversight problem by creating an ethics commission selection committee of the state’s law school deans.  These deans would make the decisions on who would serve on the new ethics commission.  It is clear that the governor is correct to replace the current Commission.

Yet, the plan is flawed and should be strengthened by the Legislature.  What the Legislature should not do is use criticism of the governor plan’s flaw as an excuse for inaction.  Inaction or tinkering around the edges is simply unacceptable. 

New Yorkers should applaud the first step taken by the governor, but demand that her plan be improved upon.  Failure to strengthen New York’s democracy should be unacceptable.  Lawmakers are elected to solve problems, to the greatest extent possible, and New York’s democracy is in desperate need of reform.

New York’s democracy has been badly damaged by a steady drumbeat of scandals and corruption.  The governor and lawmakers must act to restore integrity and public trust in government.

It’s a political truism that budgets are about priorities.  This week, Governor Hochul will show New Yorkers hers.  The debate over the governor’s budget plans will be the most critical action of the current legislative session. 

The state’s finances had been fragile going into the pandemic and were made much, much worse during the COVID lockdown in 2020.  Going into last year’s budget, the state was facing a $15 billion deficit.

Yet tone yearlater, Albany is breathing easier thanks to tough state budget decisions as well as massive financial assistance from the federal government.  The federal aid (over $12 billion) fueled a dramatic increase in the size of the state’s budget.  Last year, the state’s budget grew to $212 billion, a ten percent increase from the previous year.

In addition, state lawmakers agreed to a budget that added two tax brackets which increased taxes on rich New Yorkers making over $5 million.

The impact of federal assistance and state budget decisions – coupled with a booming stock market – have resulted in an enormous financial turnaround.  Instead of a state teetering on the financial brink, Albany is now sitting on a big surplus that looks like it will last through 2025.

Last week, state Comptroller DiNapoli released an update on New York’s budget.  According to the Comptroller, state tax revenue exceeded its forecasts by nearly $13 billion.  New York’s personal income tax receipts for the first three quarters totaled $49 billion and continue to exceed the most recent projections by $1.9 billion.  Income tax revenue has been boosted by a strong stock market and higher taxes on millionaires. 

Wall Street profits for the first half of 2021 surged to $31 billion before taxes from a year earlier, a gain of 13%.  Those strong profits boost income taxes paid by Wall Street traders.

Despite the glowing report, the Comptroller urged budgetary caution.  A substantial portion of those strong number may have more to do with the timing of when those taxes were paid.  Thus, those big surpluses may be smaller once the final numbers are in. 

In addition, the Comptroller stated, “Tax collections performed well in December, and the state’s economy and finances continue their recovery.  But there is continuing uncertainty about the impact of the ongoing Covid-19 surge, economic risks, and the need for continuing financial support for those still struggling to find their footing.” 

There is no denying, however, that the report is overall positive news for the governor.  Budgets with surpluses still force tough decisions.  There are unlimited budget demands, but there are only limited resources.  However, negotiating a budget with a surplus is less tense than negotiating one with a deficit.

The Comptroller’s report must have eased some of the Hochul Administration’s anxiety as it approaches release of its first budget.  The new governor will have to tackle real budget problems, but she will be doing so from a position of financial strength.

The governor gave the public an inkling of her budget plans when she released her State of the State message two weeks ago.  Expect big spending on health care and education – the two largest sectors of the state budget in any year.  Given the challenges facing health care providers, the cost of dealing with COVID in K-12 schools, and higher education institutions facing the financial abyss, an infusion of additional state support can make all of the difference.

But the needs exceed the state’s financial grasp even though its coffers are flush.  A big question will be what does the governor propose to ensure financial accountability?  Does she develop ways to measure the state agencies’ performance?  Does she propose a climate scorecard to measure the state’s progress toward its environmental goals?  While no one challenges the need for additional support for health care, going into the pandemic, New York’s hospitals performed near the bottom of the nation in terms of federal quality of care data.  Will the Hochul health plan include measures to strengthen medical care?

These questions and more will soon be answered.  Once the governor shows us her priorities, it will be up to the rest of us to embrace those that are shared by the public. And it will be up to the rest of us to make sure that budgetary priorities are matched with improved performance.