Gov. David Paterson’s emergency spending bill released Friday would force the Legislature to cut aid to schools and other long-protected programs and to finally accept his efforts to cap local property taxes and free the public universities to set their tuition increases.
The bold stroke to put the long blocked policy changes into the last weekly emergency spending bill on Monday would force lawmakers to accept the policy changes or shut down government.
Baruch College politics Professor Doug Muzzio said Paterson, a lame duck governor even rank-and-file lawmakers once said should resign over scandal and for incompetence, has emerged as “Lazarus on steroids.”
“Not only did he rise from the dead, he rose mightily from the dead and he’s smiting his enemies. It’s almost Biblical,” Muzzio said.
Paterson’s plan would eliminate the state’s $9.2 billion deficit and allow wine to be sold in grocery stores while temporarily ending an exemption on the state’s 4 percent sales tax for clothes and shoes costing less than $110.
Paterson’s plan also would empower the State University of New York and City University of New York to set their own tuition to a maximum each year up to 8 percent a year for doctoral degree granting colleges and up to 5 percent a year for others. But Paterson also would increase the Tuition Assistance Plan cover about half the increase to help poorer students, a major concern for powerful Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver…
“The biggest problem for the state is the enormous, recurring structural budget gap starting next year and into the future,” said E.J. McMahon of the conservative-leaning Empire Center. “Cuomo clearly hopes that starting in 2021, (Democratic presidential candidate Joseph) Biden and a Democratic Congress will provide states and local government a couple of year’s worth of added stimulus. Read More
Ed McKinley
ALBANY — When the New York Constitution was reorganized nearly 100 years ago to give the governor more power over the budget process, noted there was a risk of making “the governor a czar."
M Read More
Michael Gormley
ALBANY — A new study by a conservative think tank says President Donald Trump’s 2017 tax law gave most New Yorkers a tax cut, even as Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo insists on repealing the measure because he says it will cost New Yo Read More
Johan Sheridan
ALBANY, N.Y. () — The Empire Center filed a against the state Department of Health on Friday.
“This case isn’t about assigning blame or embarrassing political leaders,” said Bill Hammond, the Empire Center’s Read More
The Empire Center first reported Tuesday that grants — 226 of them, totaling $46 million, to recipients selected by the governor and individual state lawmakers — seemed to still be going ahead. Read More
With lingering questions about how the novel coronavirus killed thousands of New Yorkers who lived in nursing homes, a group of state lawmakers is pushing to create an independent commission to get answers from the state Department of Health. Read More
“The importance of discussing this and getting the true facts out is to understand what did and didn’t happen so we can learn from it in case this happens again,” Hammond said. Read More
No doubt, the Health Department and the governor would like this report to be the final word on the subject.
But if it’s all the same with them, we’d still like a truly independent review. Read More