Public school funding is allocated to local school districts based on formulas specified in state law, primarily through a formula known as Foundation Aid. This brief explains the State’s rules that govern public school funding.
Under the fiscal year 2025 executive budget, inflation-adjusted state funding would fall for a third consecutive year. While State spending rose in response to Covid, it will return to its pre-Covid trend by fiscal year 2025.
The legislative one-house budgets come out firmly for higher Medicaid spending, restoring most of the governor’s cuts and offering significant rate increases. But how will they pay for it? The Senate and Assembly budget memos propose to raise $4 billion a year through an obscure mechanism: A tax on Medicaid managed care plans, the private insurance companies which administer most of the state’s Medicaid program.
Over the past five budget cycles, the upward revisions to revenue established at the Economic and Revenue Consensus meeting has ranged from 0.6 percent to 1.9 percent of annual state operating funds. While these numbers may seem small in magnitude, the dollar amounts are significant when compared to current cost saving measures proposed in the fiscal year 2025 executive budget. Annualized revenue adjustments average $972 million over the past 6 budget cycles (excluding 2020) compared to a proposed $454 million in school aid cuts and $600 million in cuts to the homecare program CDPAP in this year’s executive budget.
New York State has generated significant budget surpluses in recent years as its economy recovered more quickly than expected from the Covid pandemic. Like most other U.S. states, New York saved a considerable portion of these surpluses in its fiscal reserve funds, building a buffer against fiscal stress during future economic downturns. With the Division of the Budget projecting an economic slowdown and depressed revenue in the years ahead, the appropriate use of the State’s fiscal reserves is now a subject of debate. This post will provide an overview on why fiscal reserves exist, and how they can be used to smooth out fluctuations in the economic cycle and maintain stable public services.
New York’s fiscal year 2024 Enacted Budget Financial Plan, released June 2023, projected budget shortfalls for fiscal years 2025 through 2027. While future budget gaps are a perennial feature of New York’s budget forecasts, the most recent projected gaps exceed those generally projected in times of greater economic stability, aligning instead with gaps projected during economic downturns. These projections must be interpreted, however, in light of an improving economic outlook as well as the inherent uncertainty of fiscal forecasting.
More than 400,000 people are poised to lose unemployment benefits this weekend as eight states withdraw early from pandemic-era programs. While $300 a week federal supplements to state benefits are not ending until September, eight states (Alabama, Idaho, Indiana, Nebraska, New Hampshire, North Dakota, West Virginia and Wyoming) join seventeen others who have already cut this benefit or plan to do so soon, affecting about four million recipients altogether. Supporters of these cutoffs argue that the supplements are keeping workers from returning to the workforce, [...]
Two national groups put a spotlight on FPI's work with the Fund Excluded Worker Coalition that resulted in $2.1 billion toward allowing undocumented immigrants to get something like what others in New York got in unemployment benefits and stimulus payments. This was a historic victory that the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities and the Economic Policy Institute are encouraging other states to follow! CBPP: Whitney Tucker, Deputy Director of Research at the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, pointed to the fund as a prime [...]
The director of FPI's Immigration Research Initiative, David Dyssegaard Kallick, was invited to testify before the Congressional Small Business Committee about the role of immigrant businesses in the economic recovery after Covid. Kallick talked about two recovery scenarios: A Main Street-centered rebuilding that picks up on some innovations from the Covid period such as outdoor restaurants, expanded pedestrian areas, and bike paths that have transformed many downtowns and urban centers in very positive ways. This scenario would entail Main Streets as vibrant places where people [...]
Something different has happened during the COVID recession than is typical for other recessions: there has been noticeably more job loss among women than among men. Dr. C Nicole Mason, President of the Institute for Women’s Policy Research, coined the term “she-cession” to describe this gendered pattern of job loss that is the converse of what in 2008-09 was sometimes called a “mancession.” Women of color, as Mason notes, have been even more starkly impacted by job loss, a double impact since they started in [...]
New York State’s Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC) is a proven program that working New Yorkers rely on. The EITC keeps more money in workers’ pockets, providing more money to spend on essentials like food, transportation, housing, education, and child care. The EITC is a critical support for workers, their families, local economies, and the state! Before the pandemic, far too many New Yorkers were unable to earn a stable and sufficient income through work. This problem persisted despite the recent increases to our state’s [...]
Our state's Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC) keeps more money in workers' pockets, helping them pay for essentials including food, transportation, housing, education, and child care, as well as cover extra expenses. This tax credit is even more beneficial during the pandemic. The New York State Assembly's FY 2022 One-House Budget Proposal includes expanding the state EITC from 30 percent of the federal credit to 40 percent of the federal credit beginning in Tax Year 2021. That is a 25 percent increase to the maximum [...]
The New York State Assembly and Senate both support creating a fund to provide unemployment insurance to workers who are excluded from the unemployment insurance system, primarily undocumented immigrants and people leaving incarceration during the Covid-19 pandemic. Both houses included $2.1 billion in their one-house budgets this week, the starting points for negotiating the final state budget. This is an impressive commitment to a critical priority. However, matching the minimum level of benefits that other unemployed New Yorkers receive and extending the aid through the [...]
The American Rescue Plan Act of 2021 includes $350 billion in aid for the purpose of alleviating the fiscal stress caused by the COVID-19 pandemic. New York is estimated to receive a total of $24 billion, or seven percent of these coronavirus relief funds. Specifically, $13 billion has been allocated for the New York State government, $6 billion for metropolitan cities, $4 billion for counties, $825 million for local governments, and $350 million for state capital projects. These Coronavirus recovery funds can be used to [...]
The year 2021 began under the threat of a historic state budget shortfall of $15 billion. Compounded by municipal and county-level fiscal stress, it imperiled funding for public services and employees – a terrible risk as New York continued to experience the social, emotional, and fiscal impacts from the pandemic. The governor’s proposed Executive Budget featured an “if-then” scenario that reflected a minimum level of $6 billion in federal aid and assumed a remaining $9 billion difference. At the same time, the governor requested $15 [...]