The State Capitol, Albany NY.
ALBANY – New York State has a new budget in place.
State lawmakers rushed Tuesday night to meet the midnight deadline for passage of the $142 Billion state budget. The Senate wrapped up its work with a half-hour to spare, while Republicans in the Assembly pushed final passage of the last bills into the start of the new fiscal year — technically breaking a four-year record.
The day began with several large pieces of the $142 billion puzzle missing, including final language detailing the ethics fixes and educational reforms that Gov. Andrew Cuomo had insisted on seeing passed.
In the end, both of the hot-button measures ended up being folded into the Education, Labor & Family Assistance bill, which rolled out at midday just behind the long-delayed release of school aid “runs.” Cuomo had initially withheld the breakdowns as part of his attempt to condition added money on the adoption of reforms.
The late arrival of the bills — less than 12 hours before the deadline — raised the hackles of many lawmakers and required numerous “messages of necessity” from Cuomo to bypass the usual three-day aging process for legislation.
The final votes came after Cuomo linked his proposals to a $1.33 billion increase in base education aid with additional funds directed to the state’s most troubled schools.
The Democrat-dominated Assembly, which has been closely aligned with state teachers unions, voiced concern with Cuomo’s tactics but ended up agreeing to a budget that also requires new teachers to maintain good evaluations for four years before they can achieve tenure, up from the current three-year novice period.
Some unknowns remain: The state Board of Regents and the Education Department, which they oversee, have been tasked with developing a new evaluation system by the end of June.
The ethics reform largely hewed to what had been described previously by Cuomo administration officials, with a few captivating details — such as the fact that documents identifying certain legal clients of elected officials will need to be kept in a “locked box” by the state Office of Court Administration.
A new pay commission that will periodically set salary increases for lawmakers, statewide elected officials and top agency officials was revealed to be essentially an expansion of the current panel that sets salaries for judges. Its decisions, released every four years, will have the force of law unless overruled by the Legislature.
New York’s lawmakers, who earn a base salary of $79,500, haven’t had a pay raise in 15 years, although they remain among the top-paid legislators in the nation.
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