All Articles Tagged "state budget"
New York State Passes Budget
(Wall Street Journal) — A day ahead of the deadline, New York adopted a $132.5 billion budget, giving Gov. Andrew Cuomo his most significant victory since he took office in January. Just after midnight Thursday, Mr. Cuomo and lawmakers approved a budget that lowers total spending by about 1%, but counts on billions of dollars in cuts that have yet to be spelled out. It does not contain any major new taxes or borrowing. Passage of the budget, which won broad, bipartisan support in both chambers, marked the first time since 2006 that Albany completed the task by the April 1 due date. “Tonight the legislature not only passed an on-time budget, but a historic and transformational budget,” Mr. Cuomo, a Democrat and former attorney general, said in a statement.
New York State Passes Budget
(Wall Street Journal) — A day ahead of the deadline, New York adopted a $132.5 billion budget, giving Gov. Andrew Cuomo his most significant victory since he took office in January. Just after midnight Thursday, Mr. Cuomo and lawmakers approved a budget that lowers total spending by about 1%, but counts on billions of dollars in cuts that have yet to be spelled out. It does not contain any major new taxes or borrowing. Passage of the budget, which won broad, bipartisan support in both chambers, marked the first time since 2006 that Albany completed the task by the April 1 due date. “Tonight the legislature not only passed an on-time budget, but a historic and transformational budget,” Mr. Cuomo, a Democrat and former attorney general, said in a statement.
Mayor in a Stew over State Budget
(Crain’s) — While the state budget agreement reached Sunday has Albany lawmakers dancing in the halls of the Capitol, Mayor Michael Bloomberg is stewing in City Hall. The mayor got little of what he asked for in the state’s spending plan for the fiscal year beginning Friday: No power to collectively bargain with city unions for pension reform. No change to the last-in, first-out method of laying off teachers. Not a penny of the $300 million in revenue-sharing funds that the city used to get. No end to the $12,000 “Christmas bonuses” for uniformed retirees, which costs the city $200 million annually. “We said we’d absorb our fair share of cuts provided we got reforms that would allow us to save money,” Mr. Bloomberg said at a City Hall press conference Monday. “Instead, we got cut disproportionately and got no reforms.”
Mayor in a Stew over State Budget
(Crain’s) — While the state budget agreement reached Sunday has Albany lawmakers dancing in the halls of the Capitol, Mayor Michael Bloomberg is stewing in City Hall. The mayor got little of what he asked for in the state’s spending plan for the fiscal year beginning Friday: No power to collectively bargain with city unions for pension reform. No change to the last-in, first-out method of laying off teachers. Not a penny of the $300 million in revenue-sharing funds that the city used to get. No end to the $12,000 “Christmas bonuses” for uniformed retirees, which costs the city $200 million annually. “We said we’d absorb our fair share of cuts provided we got reforms that would allow us to save money,” Mr. Bloomberg said at a City Hall press conference Monday. “Instead, we got cut disproportionately and got no reforms.”
Ill. Republicans Want $5 Billion in Cuts to Education, Health Care, Pensions
(Chicago Sun Times) — To stave off more state borrowing and tax hikes, Senate Republicans Thursday called for $5 billion in state spending cuts that could hit education, health care programs for the poor and government pensions. Senate Minority Leader Christine Radogno (R-Lemont) offered 15 votes from her caucus — half of what’s necessary to pass a bill in the Senate — to back a plan she said would create a budget surplus of $4 billion within four years without having to borrow or eventually make the temporary 67-percent income tax increase permanent. “Nobody in this building ever thinks beyond a year or two,” Radogno told reporters at the Capitol. “Out of all the things that we’ve identified, we are willing to put half the votes on those. We are not just talking about cuts somebody needs to make somewhere. We are willing to actually vote on these cuts.”
In Albany, Battle Lines Are Drawn Over the Budget
(New York Times) — Both houses of the State Legislature passed budgets on Tuesday that rejected crucial provisions of Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo’s overhaul of Medicaid and restored hundreds of millions of dollars in proposed cuts to education, drawing sharp battle lines with the governor two weeks before the deadline to pass a spending plan. The Democratic-controlled Assembly also proposed extending a temporary state tax surcharge on annual income over $1 million, signaling its intent to advance a proposal that Mr. Cuomo, a Democrat, and the Republican-controlled Senate oppose. The Assembly speaker, Sheldon Silver, called the tax surcharge a “priority” for his members and said the Senate should “look at it and take it seriously.” “We are taking the state’s spending problem seriously and making significant cuts,” said Mr. Silver, a Manhattan Democrat. “But we can’t lose a generation of children in our schools, and we have to give them the resources in order to educate them to be able to compete in this global economy.”
Shortfall Hits Day Care Center
(Chicago Tribune) — A day care center set up amid the first-floor classrooms at Morton East High School allows teenage mothers and fathers to remain students while they tackle an even tougher subject: how to be young parents. Debbie Jimenez, 18, tiptoed in during school on a recent morning, prompting her 3-year-old son, Angel, to run into her hug even as he tugged at his coat hanging near the door. ”No, we’re not leaving yet, baby. I’ll be back for you later,” Jimenez said, smoothing the child’s hair before the fourth-period bell summoned her to another class.
Since it opened in 1991, the Children’s Center at Morton East has provided child care for more than 1,000 teenage parents who have gone on to earn diplomas, officials said. At least five other high schools in Cook County, as well as a handful of others across the state, offer similar programs, according to Illinois Action for Children, a non-profit that works with low-income families, including teen parents.
Prisoners Help States Fix Finances
(New York Times) — Before he went to jail, Danny Ivey had barely seen a backyard garden. But here he was, two years left on his sentence for grand theft, bent over in a field, snapping wide, green collard leaves from their stems. For the rest of the week, Mr. Ivey and his fellow inmates would be eating the greens he picked, and the State of Florida would be saving most of the $2.29 a day it allots for their meals.
Prison labor — making license plates, picking up litter — is nothing new, and nearly all states have such programs. But these days, officials are expanding the practice to combat cuts in federal financing and dwindling tax revenue, using prisoners to paint vehicles, clean courthouses, sweep campsites and perform many other services done before the recession by private contractors or government employees.
In New Jersey, inmates on roadkill patrol clean deer carcasses from highways. Georgia inmates tend municipal graveyards. In Ohio, they paint their own cells. In California, prison officials hope to expand existing programs, including one in which wet-suit-clad inmates repair leaky public water tanks. There are no figures on how many prisoners have been enrolled in new or expanded programs nationwide, but experts in criminal justice have taken note of the increase.
More Pain in Quinn’s Budget
(Chicago Sun Times) — Despite January’s income-tax hike, the $52.7 billion budget Gov. Quinn proposed Wednesday relies on near-historic amounts of borrowing and cuts programs that pay for prescriptions for the elderly, health care for the poor and bus service for Illinois schoolchildren. Quinn billed his 2012 spending plan as a pathway to “financial stability” and “economic prosperity,” but critics from both parties described the governor’s budget package as financially out-of-whack, and human-service providers predicted the state’s most vulnerable citizens would face a “devastating” blow.
“While we have taken strong action to stabilize our budget, we are still in a tough fiscal situation. As a result, the spending reductions I am presenting today are tough, as well,” the governor said during a sober, 27-minute budget address to the General Assembly. “The difficult choices we make today will ensure that we are able to provide essential services to families and businesses across the state,” he said. The governor did not call for any new tax or fee increases and wants to impose spending cuts of about $1 billion. More than half would come from the state’s Medicaid program that provides health care to the needy.
Future of NY Schools, Teachers on Line in Budget
(AP) — New York’s lawmakers will get their hands on the part of Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s proposed budget most dear to many of them: School aid. Tuesday’s budget hearing in Albany will set the course for some of the year’s most heated confrontations between the popular new governor and the Legislature. Cuomo proposes a historic cut of 7.3 percent in school aid. Public school advocates say that will force thousands of teacher layoffs, larger classes and hurt students the most. Lawmakers, led by Assembly Democrats, are listening. A poll released Monday shows New Yorkers who support Cuomo’s hard-times budget least want to see any cuts in school aid.
