{"id":2041,"date":"2018-03-26T06:54:27","date_gmt":"2018-03-26T10:54:27","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.nypirg.org\/capitolperspective\/?p=2041"},"modified":"2018-03-26T06:54:27","modified_gmt":"2018-03-26T10:54:27","slug":"the-state-budget-deadline-looms-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.nypirg.org\/capitolperspective\/the-state-budget-deadline-looms-2\/","title":{"rendered":"The State Budget Deadline Looms"},"content":{"rendered":"

Governor Cuomo and state lawmakers are now into the final week of the fiscal year.\u00a0 New York\u2019s fiscal year starts on April 1st<\/sup>.\u00a0 Given the holidays this year, there is a push to get a budget agreement in place by Thursday, March 29th<\/sup>.<\/p>\n

During the Cuomo tenure the state budget agreement has occurred either by April 1st<\/sup> or within hours of the deadline.\u00a0 Getting a budget in place more or less on time has been used by the governor to make the case that he has brought order to chaos in Albany.\u00a0 Yet last year, the budget was nine days late. \u00a0Was last year an aberration or the beginning of a new trend?<\/p>\n

New Yorkers will soon see.<\/p>\n

Of course, there are other metrics to measure whether chaos besets state government \u2013 such as the number of public officials indicted and convicted of corruption, which tells a different story.\u00a0 But the governor does rightfully get credit for pushing through state budgets that are \u201con time\u201d or close to it, while keeping spending within growth estimates set by the governor.<\/p>\n

This year\u2019s budget, however, is being crafted in the shadow of the tax changes enacted by the Trump Administration and the Republican Congress.\u00a0 And those tax changes could have a big impact on some New Yorkers.\u00a0 Thus, how New York\u2019s political leadership reacts to those changes (if at all) is one of the big questions looming over budget talks.\u00a0 The governor has proposed significant tax changes to respond to the new federal laws, most of which have been untested, and which have not \u2013 to date \u2013 been publicly debated in Albany.<\/p>\n

But the challenges created by Washington are not the only problems the governor and the legislature must tackle.\u00a0 There are a number of big state issues still under consideration.<\/p>\n

First, what will the state do about climate change?\u00a0 The biggest issue facing the planet is the result of the burning of coal, oil and gas.\u00a0 New York took an important step forward a few years ago when it became the first state with any appreciable natural gas reserves to ban fracking.\u00a0 The state has taken some additional steps \u2013 some forward and some backward \u2013 when it comes to allowing the development of new fossil fuel infrastructure \u2013 like pipelines \u2013 within New York.\u00a0 Allowing such construction slows down the movement toward a fossil fuel free future since new pipelines are usually financed in a way that requires decades of use before debts can be paid off.<\/p>\n

The world does not have years to wait for an end to the reliance on fossil fuels.<\/p>\n

The track record of the Cuomo Administration\u2019s investment strategies when it comes to new renewable power generation is also mixed.\u00a0 The state has made many promises to push to generate half of its energy from renewable power (solar, wind, geothermal), but so far the investments don\u2019t match the administration\u2019s rhetoric.<\/p>\n

The renewable power that the state touts is almost entirely generated by aging hydroelectric plants.\u00a0 The state generates only one percent of its power from solar, for example.\u00a0 Other states are doing much better, for example California generates about 10 percent of its electricity from solar; neighboring New Jersey gets nearly four percent of its electric from solar power.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s up to the governor to push New York into a national leader in solar power.\u00a0 His first opportunity is this week, as New York wraps up its budget.\u00a0 New York needs to invest more in solar power and it needs to do so now.\u00a0 Will the new budget change that?<\/p>\n

Second, will the budget reverse the Cuomo Administration\u2019s cuts to college financial aid programs for struggling low-income students?\u00a0 Last year, the governor advanced the Excelsior scholarship program, which made State University tuition free for those with incomes up to $125,000 and helped many middle income New Yorkers attend public college.<\/p>\n

Yet, he has frozen state support for higher education overall and proposed cuts to programs to help lower income students.\u00a0 Will the legislature reject the governor\u2019s cuts on programs that are proven to help low-income students and will they reverse the governor\u2019s stagnant support for SUNY?<\/p>\n

Third, will anything happen to curtail political corruption?\u00a0 A top member of the governor\u2019s staff was recently convicted of corruption and the former top Senate and Assembly leaders will be retried for corruption in the next few months. \u00a0The governor\u2019s proposed measures would add new ethics oversight, but by entities that are reportable to him, not independent watchdogs.<\/p>\n

Given the silence surrounding reform plans, will Albany kick the can again?<\/p>\n

Budgets are about meeting the demands of the public.\u00a0 With limited resources, and faced with unlimited demands, budgets are also the government\u2019s primary tool to set policy priorities.<\/p>\n

How Albany answers the budget this year will determine the quality of life for all New Yorkers, not just those who rely on the state for direct public help.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Governor Cuomo and state lawmakers are now into the final week of the fiscal year.\u00a0 New York\u2019s fiscal year starts on April 1st.\u00a0 Given the holidays this year, there is a push to get a budget agreement in place by Thursday, March 29th. During the Cuomo tenure the state budget agreement has occurred either by […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2041","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nypirg.org\/capitolperspective\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2041","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nypirg.org\/capitolperspective\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nypirg.org\/capitolperspective\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nypirg.org\/capitolperspective\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nypirg.org\/capitolperspective\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2041"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.nypirg.org\/capitolperspective\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2041\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2042,"href":"https:\/\/www.nypirg.org\/capitolperspective\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2041\/revisions\/2042"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nypirg.org\/capitolperspective\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2041"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nypirg.org\/capitolperspective\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2041"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nypirg.org\/capitolperspective\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2041"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}