Numbers crunch
Corona costs & cuts loom in budget
ALBANY — The fiscal future of New York remained uncertain Tuesday evening as budget negotiations between Gov. Cuomo and the Legislature went down to the wire and the state grappled with the coronavirus pandemic.
The governor was confident a spending plan of some sort would be in place by Wednesday morning as lawmakers worked into the night amid a potential $15 billion economic hit as COVID-19 ravages the state.
“We are where we are; the numbers are what they are,” the governor said during a press briefing in Albany. “The numbers don’t lie. The numbers leave you few alternatives.”
A day earlier, Cuomo braced New Yorkers for sweeping cuts to education and other big-ticket items as he seeks the authority to unilaterally shift spending throughout the year based on how much revenue the state brings in.
Budget bills began to take shape throughout the day as the midnight deadline marking the end of the fiscal year fast approached. Early agreements were reached on measures including a $420 million tax-break program for films and TV shows made in New York that was on track to be extended through 2025 and a new law defining certain hate crimes as acts of domestic terrorism.
A measure legalizing ebikes and electric scooters was also expected to be included in the final budget after Cuomo vetoed a separate bill in December. Also expected to be included is language eliminating the socalled “pink tax” by banning gender-based price disparities for similar goods and services.
Plans to legalize adult-use marijuana were scrapped, Cuomo admitted.
“We’re just about 90% there,” one Albany insider said as the clock ticked down.
Contentious issues such as changes to the state’s recently enacted bail reforms, proposed Medicaid changes and the governor’s push to legalize paid gestational surrogacy remained unresolved as of Tuesday evening, another source said.
Cuomo’s request to reassess spending throughout the year also left some lawmakers uneasy.
“We’re meant to be an equal branch of government, but this plan would give the executive full power of the purse,” a Democratic lawmaker said.
Senate Majority Leader Andrea Stewart-Cousins (DYonkers) said in a recent radio interview that she would never support giving the executive branch “wide latitude” over certain budget decisions without legislative involvement.
As state coronavirus cases climbed past 75,000, with more than 1,550 deaths, hospitals, health care providers, city officials and cashstrapped counties all expressed fear over changes to the state Medicaid program that could shift the economic burden of the epidemic to the local level.
Prior to the pandemic, the state was already facing a potential $6 billion Medicaid-induced budget gap.
Despite Cuomo priding himself on passing ontime budgets, it was unclear exactly when the final spending bills would be revealed, and Democrats, in control of both the Senate and Assembly, were expected to vote into the night and possibly Wednesday as they observed social distancing rules in the two chambers.
Cuomo, Stewart-Cousins and Assembly Speaker Carl Heastie (D-Bronx) are also hoping to see more help come from the federal government as the response to the coronavirus crisis stretches the state’s coffers.
State budget director Robert Mujica said New York will likely be forced to borrow money in the short-term to cover immediate costs due to lost revenues and the federal government’s decision to delay the tax-filing deadline to July.
“We’ll have to potentially borrow resources to bridge that gap temporarily,” Mujica said.