Governor Andrew Cuomo, who frequently cites his success in producing “on-time budgets,” is once again behind schedule in releasing the statutorily required Mid-Year Update to New York State’s financial plan.

The Mid-Year Update for fiscal 2014-15 was due Oct. 30, last Thursday, under Section 23.4 of the State Finance Law.* As of this Election Day morning, no update had appeared on the website of the governor’s Division of the Budget (DOB). 

This is the fourth consecutive year that Cuomo has failed to issue the mid-year financial report on time. In 2011, it was two weeks late. In 2012, it was 29 days behind schedule. Last year, it was eight days late.

Another deadline in the budget process looms tomorrow. As explained here:

Under reform legislation passed in January 2007, a “quick start” budget process was instituted to help provide an earlier understanding of the state’s available funding resources. By November 5, the Division of the Budget, the Assembly, the Senate, and the comptroller release detailed forecasts of revenues and expenditures. After a public meeting with the respective staff members of these parties, DOB, the Senate, and the Assembly release a consensus forecast of the state’s financial position by November 15.

Last year, however, state Comptroller Thomas DiNapoli was the only player in the budget process who filed his revenue estimate on time.

Why does all this matter?

The Mid-Year Update represents a significant point in the state’s April 1-March 31 fiscal year. Assuming DOB doesn’t choose to conceal too much, the report can provide an early sense of the state’s ability to hit its revenue and spending targets in the current year, and of trends that will affect the budget for next year.

If the last few years are any guide, when the mid-year report is released, it will add little or nothing in the way of new information to the First Quarterly Update issued in July.

What makes Cuomo’s delay especially puzzling this year is that—unlike his father before the 1994 election, or Gov. George Pataki before the 2002 election—he would seem to have nothing to hide. By all indications, state tax revenues are coming in on target, if not slightly ahead. The state has also begun to collect an enormous, unbudgeted windfall in the form of roughly $5 billion in penalties that must be paid by New York-based banks charged with, among other things, helping clients engage in illegal transactions with Iran, Sudan and other countries.

Cuomo has yet to present a detailed, comprehensive plan for allocating the windfall. It’s been argued here that the money should be invested in infrastructure rather than plowed into recurring budgetary expenses.

* The relevant language reads as follows: Quarterly, throughout the fiscal year, the governor shall submit to the comptroller, the chairs of the senate finance and the assembly ways and means committees, within thirty days of the close of the quarter to which it shall pertain, a report which summarizes the actual experience to date and projections for the remaining quarters of the current fiscal year and for each of the next two fiscal years of receipts, disbursements, tax refunds, and repayments of advances presented in forms suitable for comparison with the financial plan submitted pursuant to subdivisions one, four, and five, of section twenty-two of this article and revised in accordance with the provisions of subdivision three of this section. [emphasis added]