Write a commentLast week, the New York State legislature passed the state’s 2016-17 budget. The state budget is due on April 1st. In effort to provide the Governor and Legislative leaders the political victory of claiming the budget was passed on time, both the State Senate and Assembly worked all night on Thursday in effort to get it passed. However, due to the sheer size of the budget, its complexity and the complete lack of transparency during budget negotiations, it took the Assembly until 8 p.m. Friday, April 2nd to pass the final budget bill.
Earlier this year, there had been hope that in light of the fact that both the Speaker of the Assembly and Senate President had been convicted of corruption, that this year’s budget process would be different. There was hope that New York State would get away from the traditional “three men in a room” budget negotiations and rather have a more transparent process that would include rank and file legislators. Unfortunately for the state, these hopes were quickly dashed when the Governor showed no interest in changing the process. In fact, rather than improving over prior years, even incrementally, many commentators have pointed out that this was one of the most secretive budgets ever negotiated in New York State.
The Governor again this year relied on the use of Messages of Necessity which bypasses the three-day aging requirements for budget bills. As a result, legislators and staff received a number of the budgets bills in the middle of the night, only hours before we were expected to vote on them. Some of these bills have thousands of pages. This process made one of my colleagues to remark on the floor that this process was reminiscent of how Obamacare was passed in Congress when then Speaker Nancy Pelosi quipped “we have to pass the bill so that you can figure out what is in it.”
Setting aside the terrible process by which this year’s state budget was negotiated and passed, there were some positives in the $154.9 billion budget. This year was the 6th year in a row in which overall spending increased by 2% or less. Also, this budget substantially increases school aid and it contains tax cuts for the middle class. On the negative side, it mandates a substantial increase in the state’s minimum wage to $15 an hour for Downstate NY and New York City and to $12.50 an hour Upstate (which could, at the discretion of the Director of the Division of Budget, rise to $15 an hour). It includes a 12-week paid family leave mandate which provides no exemption for small businesses. The 12 weeks is twice as long as any other paid family leave program in the country. Finally, it does little or nothing to lower the crushing burden of property taxes on Upstate property owners nor does the budget contain any ethics reforms.
In the end, I voted against much of this year’s budget based on as much as what was in the budget as what was left out. This year’s budget will not be transformative for Upstate New York. Rather, it contains the same type of policy mandates, mostly driven from NYC, that have hurt our economic competitiveness Upstate and which have led us to continue to bleed jobs and people. If we really want to improve conditions in Upstate New York, we cannot just keep going along as we always have. The state budget process is one way of implementing policies that could help. Unfortunately, this year’s budget does no such thing.
If you have any questions or comments regarding these or other state issues, please contact me. My office can be reached by mail at 200 North Second Street, Fulton, New York 13069, by email at barclaw@assembly.state.ny.us, or by calling (315) 598-5185. You also can friend me, Assemblyman Barclay, on Facebook.
