WIN FOR ANDY
Budget boosts his virus battle powers
ALBANY — New York lawmakers are granting Gov. Cuomo sweeping new powers to control spending as the state responds to the coronavirus outbreak.
The Democratic-controlled state Legislature shored up a state budget Thursday, two days after its April 1 deadline, that will give the governor unprecedented authority to tweak everything from education spending to Medicaid cuts in the face of a potential $15 billion dollar deficit due to the epidemic.
“The budget that we are passing is not the budget that any of us had hoped to pass at the beginning of this session,” said Senate Majority Leader Andrea Stewart-Cousins (DYonkers) as she addressed a nearly empty chamber. “Our state’s financial situation has been thrust into a true economic crisis, and I know everyone understands that.”
Many lawmakers cautioned that the numbers in the final fiscal plan, which kept education spending essentially flat and cut billions from the governor’s initial proposal, were little more than a rough blueprint for the year.
Controversial Medicaid cuts proposed by a Cuomo-appointed task force that could see millions stripped from city hospitals were included in the spending plan, but could be pushed back, according to Budget Director Robert Mujica.
“We have the ability to delay them,” Mujica said Thursday.
Advocates and lawmakers to the governor’s left, many of whom had hoped for a tax increase on the state’s wealthiest residents rather than spending cuts, were not pleased with the final product.
Paulette Soltani, the political director for VOCAL-NY, accused the governor of trying to “exploit a crisis to advance austerity and policies that exacerbate inequality.”
“By demanding the ability to enact ‘rolling budget modifications’ he consolidated state power, stifled democracy and now can unilaterally impose cuts with little or no oversight,” she said.
Fiscal watchdogs, meanwhile, expressed concerns about the way borrowing is structured in the budget, fearing the state could pile debt upon debt.
The budget deal is set to include at least $8 billion in short-term borrowing to help the state bridge a threemonth gap as the tax deadline was delayed to July 15, but that number could balloon to more than $10 billion.
“While it makes sense for the state to issue short-term debt to cover delayed tax payments due to the changing tax filing date, the budget approves debt of up to $11 billion that could be repaid by issuing more debt,” said David Friedfel of the Citizens Budget Commission. “If the state takes this approach, New York taxpayers could end up paying for this year’s school aid to wealthy districts and state operations costs for the next 30 years.”
Cuomo, Stewart-Cousins and Assembly Speaker Carl Heastie (D-Bronx) have said they would like to see more money come in from the federal government to help the state as it struggles to recover from coronavirus.
Policy-wise, the budget was a major win for the governor, who saw a number of proposals he introduced earlier in the year included in the final bills.
The Latin motto “E pluribus unum,” which means “out of many, one,” will be added to the state seal and flag. Tweaks to bail laws, paid gestational surrogacy, paid sick leave requirements, a ban on the sale of flavored vaping products and Styrofoam containers, were also included as well as a public financing system and higher threshold making it harder for third parties to qualify for the ballot.
“This is essentially the governor’s budget,” one Albany insider said. “He got everything he wanted.”
Retiring Senate Minority Leader John Flanagan (RSuffolk), in what could be his final speech from the floor of the Senate, questioned the need to include so many policy proposals given the dire straits the state is facing.
“We do have to pass our budget and we do have to meet our obligations, we just think it should have been done in a different way,” he said.
Cuomo, meanwhile, praised his fellow Dems for passing a sweeping spending package amid a pandemic.
“That the Legislature and the executive got this budget done with all the initiatives that are in there is an extraordinary feat of government accomplishment,” the governor said.