New York and its local governments will soon be showered with tens of billions of dollars in federal stimulus cash—and yet the new state budget will pump even more money into New York’s biggest capital pork-barrel slush fund.
A $385 million appropriation for the State and Municipal Facilities Program (SMFP) was tacked onto the bloated 1,053 Capital Projects appropriations bill set for passage by the Legislature today as part of a total state budget that may top $200 billion (on an All Funds basis) for the first time. In the past, SMFP spending has been funded with bonds issued by the state Dormitory Authority (DASNY).
The SMFP was created in 2013 with an initial appropriation of $385 million and expanded in each budget through FY 2019, giving Cuomo and state lawmakers access to a total of nearly $2 billion. The program has not received fresh funding since FY 2019, and Governor Cuomo’s FY 2022 Executive Budget included only a reappropriation of about $1.9 billion in previously authorized but unspent SMFP funds. The reappropriating also is included in the agreed-upon budget bill.
As described in the lengthy appropriations language, SMFP funds can be used to underwrite almost any capital construction or equipment purchase a state or local politician can think of, including the vast category of privately sponsored “economic development” projects. Most SMFP grants are designed to allow state legislators to take credit for financing local amenities such as skateboard parks, walking trails, school athletic fields, and improvements to municipal buildings of all kinds. Prior to 2013, these were never regarded as state-level capital funding priorities.
There is no provision of law explaining how SMFP projects are selected, or who ultimately controls the process, and there is no requirement for disclosure of the elected official who is directing the money to an individual project.
In practice, however, most SMFP funds are requested by state lawmakers, funneled through legislative leaders to the governor’s Division of the Budget (DOB), which controls the timing and flow of financings by DASNY. While legislators lay claim to most of the money, some of the biggest SMFP outlays have been for Cuomo’s own projects, including $160 million in further subsidies for Tesla’s $1 billion, state-funded solar panel plant in Buffalo, and $25 million for the privately developed and now struggling Empire Outlet mall in Staten Island.
Through 2020, DOB had cleared 4,499 SMFP objects totaling $1.6 billion, as detailed in a searchable database at Empire Center’s SeeThroughNY.net transparency website.
President Biden’s $1.9 trillion American Rescue Plan included $350 billion in direct cuts to states and local governments. New York’s cut of that cash will total nearly $24 billion, including $10.8 billion for counties, cities, towns and villages. Local governments have broad leeway to spend the money for purposes including water, sewer, or broadband infrastructure. Money being fungible, the ripple effect will be to free up huge amounts of capital capacity for the sorts of projects that have been covered by SMFP.
So why, for the first time in three years, is more money being added to the program now? Perhaps the governor and Legislature expect to push more pork out the door in the year ahead, and are afraid of running out of appropriations authority as they approach the 2022 elections.
You may also like
The 411 On New York’s 911 Skim
New York for decades has collected, under various names, a special tax on mobile phones. The tax, which today shows up on customer bills as the “public safety communications surcharge,” devolved from being a fee to pay for 911 services to a general revenue source with 911 services as a near second thought. Since 2009, almost half the surcharges paid by customers for public safety communications—more than $1 billion—have been redirected to New York’s general fund. Read More
Immigrant Enrollment in ‘Emergency Medicaid’ Surges to 480,000
One of the biggest drivers of New York's Medicaid enrollment growth over the past decade has been "emergency Medicaid" for undocumented immigrants, newly released state records show.
Read More
Medicaid’s Missing Million
The Health Department has been either unable or unwilling to document the eligibility status of almost one million Medicaid recipients, raising further concern about the possibility of large-scale over-enrollment. Read More
New York’s Medicaid Spiral Is Worse Than Hochul Admitted
Although Governor Hochul said last week that the current trajectory of Medicaid spending is "not sustainable," the upward trend is even steeper than she and her budget director have acknowledged.
Read More
NY’s Road To Electric School Buses Gets Bumpy
New York in 2022 told school districts they’d be barred from purchasing gasoline- or diesel-powered buses after 2027, and instead have to buy electric buses at more than double the upfront cost.
“The purchase of new electric buses will help grow the market,” officials later pledged, “which will in turn help reduce prices.”
Unfortunately for taxpayers, those reductions aren’t materializing—because state officials put the prices, and future increases, on cruise control. Read More
Hochul Shows a Jarring Lack of Direction on Health Care
Financing and regulating health care delivery is one of the biggest responsibilities of state government, yet Governor Hochul had remarkably little to say on that topic in her State of the State speech on Tuesday.
Read More
Hochul’s Pushing Affordability. It Would Cost A Lot.
Governor Hochul is hammering an “affordability” theme in the leadup to Tuesday's 2025 State of the State address. But her campaign, dubbed "Money In Your Pockets," has so far featured little that would reduce the cost of providing, and therefore buying, goods or services in New York.
Instead, the biggest announced and expected elements reflect Albany's waning interest in growing the state economy—and a greater appetite to redistribute what it produces. Read More
Unions Reprogram NYS To Do Less With More
Governor Hochul on Saturday signed an innocuous-sounding bill to “regulate the use of automated decision-making systems and artificial intelligence techniques by state agencies.” But the “Legislative Oversight of Automated Decision-making in Government,” or LOADinG Act, wasn’t about protecting New York from self-aware computers trying to wipe out humanity. Instead, it was an early Christmas present for the state's public employee unions—and a lump of coal for New Yorkers hoping for more efficient state government. Read More