Well, that was fast: Robert Mujica, the state budget director, reached out Friday to clarify that the pork-barrel spending discussed in that morning’s editorial (“Cuomo’s Shameful Top Priority”) will not be going out the door this year after all.
More, he has instructed the Dormitory Authority, through which some of New York’s most egregious pork outlays flow, not to enter into contracts without explicit approval from the Division of the Budget.
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.
That info was shocking, because the state has quite properly withheld $4 billion in non-pork funds for local governments to balance its pandemic-devastated books. But we relayed the news without confirming with Mujica’s office, which had not commented publicly on the Empire release.
Now the budget director tells us that he has not given the final OK for those spending commitments, and it “absolutely will not happen this year.”
That news may disappoint the state lawmakers whose pet projects are now on hold — some of whom, like state Sen. Pete Harckham, have already announced the outlays in recent weeks. But it’s at least a small win for the taxpayers and for more-deserving beneficiaries of state spending.
“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
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
The New York State Department of Health has concluded that an executive order requiring nursing homes to readmit coronavirus patients, issued by Governor Andrew Cuomo, was not the driving factor behind coronavirus deaths in the state’s nursing homes. Read More