Jobs urged as welfare deadline looms
May 16, 2001. An article by Elizabeth Benjamin, Albany Times-Union, related to a briefing prepared by the Campaign for the Empire State Jobs Program: a state-subsidized program would aid thousands reaching end of 5-year benefits limit. Labor unions and activists on Tuesday called on lawmakers to approve a $190 million program to provide 8,000 state-subsidized jobs for people who will hit a five-year time limit for federal welfare benefits in December. The program proposed in a bill sponsored by Sen. Nicholas Spano, R-Yonkers, and Assemblywoman Catherine Nolan, D-Queens, is designed to help longtime welfare recipients who have few or no [...]
School Finance Reform Victory
January 10, 2001. Today, the Campaign for Fiscal Equity, a coalition of parent organizations, community school boards, concerned citizens and advocacy groups won a major victory at the State Supreme Court in their challenge to the way in which New York State funds elementary and secondary education. In his 180-page decision, Justice Leland DeGrasse gave the New York State legislature until September 15, 2001, to draw up a new funding system that meets the following five requirements: Ensuring that every school district has the resources necessary for providing the opportunity for a sound basic education. Taking into account variations in [...]
Building a Ladder to Jobs and Higher Wages
October 1, 2000. New York's public and private leaders can create more jobs, expand training and educational opportunities, and ensure that work is a path out of poverty. This report from the Working Group on New York City's Low-Wage Labor Market examines the current nature of the city's low-wage labor market and includes a comprehensive set of policy recommendations to address the labor market problems of New York City's growing low-wage labor force. FPI was a member of the working group, which consisted of policy analysts from government, non-profit organizations and academia, specialists in worker training and representatives of business [...]
Family Needs Far Exceed the Official Poverty Line
September 13, 2000. An article in the New York Times by Nina Bernstein, focusing on a new report on what families really face in terms of basic expenses - The Self Sufficiency Standard for New York. Carol Williams did not need an economic study to prove that her $24,000-a-year job as an administrative assistant could not support three children in New York, even when squeezed into a one-bedroom, $600-a-month apartment in the Bronx. "By the time I paid my car payments and my car insurance and some bills, I was broke," said Ms. Williams, a widow. "Most of the time [...]
Hold Adelphia responsible if promises don’t pan out
June 15, 2000. A call for accountability from Buffalo News columnist Rod Watson. OK, let's make a deal. You give me mucho, mucho bucks and I'll give you . . . what? A promise? Sound good? Do you know of any business that does business like that? No, only government does business like that. So welcome to the Adelphia Communications waterfront project. New York State already has tossed $75 million of public money into the pot, $50 million of it new dollars, to help get the new communications center erected on the waterfront. And that's not all. Erie County and [...]
Briefing on How Federal Spending Priorities Affect New York State
June 2, 2000. Remarks by Ed Bloch, Director, The Interfaith Alliance of New York State at The Impact of Federal Spending Priorities on New York State, an educational briefing: As the technological capability to achieve weapons of mass destruction (and, in fact, incineration of the planet) continue to evolve, we are confronted with a fundamental ethical question. Where does true security lie and where shall we spend our treasure to achieve it??? Compelling evidence demonstrates that technology cannot provide dependable security. We will find security only when people outside our borders and within them can achieve the scriptural demands of [...]
The Impact of Federal Spending Priorities on New York State: An Educational Briefing
June 2, 2000. New York State receives $3.9 billion less per year from the federal government in key budget areas than it did in 1980. Meanwhile, while military spending grew by $10.7 billion. Representatives of Statewide Youth Advocacy, the Interfaith Alliance of New York State and the Fiscal Policy Institute joined Greg Speeter and Pam Schwartz of the National Priorities Project in presenting an educational briefing today on how federal spending priorities impact New Yorkers. Press release: A new report, "New York 2000: Critical Needs, Federal Priorities," by the National Priorities Project finds that, over the past 18 years, after [...]
Robin Hood in reverse
May 1, 2000. An editorial in the Albany Times-Union: New York state is taking federal welfare money to pay for middle-class subsidies It's been a while since a welfare scandal made headlines. Something like a welfare mother driving a Cadillac or someone collecting checks under several different names used to make for such easy political points. All that stopped, ostensibly, when President Clinton and Congress made good on their determination to end welfare as we once knew it. Misuse of welfare funds is now as different as the new laws are from the old ways. The money being squandered now [...]
Federal Welfare Windfall Frees New York Money for Other Uses
April 23, 2000. Raymond Hernandez reporting for the New York Times quotes FPI's Frank Mauro. In the four years since the overhaul of the nation's welfare laws, New York has taken at least $1 billion given to it by the federal government for new antipoverty programs and used it instead to indirectly finance huge tax cuts and other programs that appeal to middle-class voters, according to government and private estimates. The budgetary switch has been employed by other states, prompting Congress to open an investigation to determine the scope of the practice nationwide. But New York, with the nation's second-largest [...]
Inside the New State Budget: A Welfare Slush Fund
April 17, 2000. An update from City Limits Weekly (No. 224), New York's urban affairs news magazine. Reported by Annia Ciezadlo. Add a new one to the list of behavioral changes wrought by welfare reform: the TANF land grab. Since the old welfare program was replaced with the more flexible Temporary Assistance to Needy Families block grant in 1997, and since declining welfare rolls have left a hefty surplus of unspent funds, states have been using this cash much more creatively-including using the money to pay for programs traditionally funded by state government rather than putting it in welfare recipients' [...]
Catholic Conference opposes TANF ‘raid’
April 12, 2000. A story by Jamie D. Gilkey in the Troy Record. In the midst of efforts to reach a final deal on the state budget, opposition grew Tuesday to a proposal that would use more than $100 million originally intended to aid poor families to supplement the wages of health care workers. Among the new critics of the plan is the New York State Catholic Conference, which The Record has learned sent a letter to all state legislators opposing the state Senate backed proposal. "The Bishops of New York state support genuine welfare reform that strengthens families, encourages [...]
Critics call plan ‘raid’
April 11, 2000. A story by Jamie D. Gilkey in the Troy Record. FPI's Frank Mauro is quoted. With state budget negotiations making rapid headway towards a final agreement, a proposal that initially would have diverted $165 million from a fund meant to help welfare recipients is running into resistance from a scattered group of health care and community activists, according to information obtained by The Record. Sources say that negotiators for the state Senate presented a scaled-down version of the plan during an initial round of budget meetings last week. That smaller plan would use $109 million from the [...]
How Much Additional TANF Spending Can New York Afford?
March 27, 2000. New from the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, and specific to New York: How Much Additional TANF Spending Can New York Afford? New York Can Increase Use of TANF Funds While Maintaining A Rainy Day Reserve Early in 1999, Congresswoman Nancy Johnson, chair of the Human Resources subcommittee of the Ways and Means committee, sent a letter to all governors that urged them to spend more of their TANF funds or risk having Congress take some portion back. This warning was made more concrete by several congressional attempts later in the year to rescind some unspent [...]
New York's Income Tax System Among the Best for Working Families in 1999
Most Relief Comes from the State Earned Income Tax Credit Enacted in 1994 New York has among the lowest income tax burdens in the country for low-income working families.1 Of the 42 states with income taxes, only Vermont and Minnesota do a better job than New York in shielding both poverty-line incomes and minimum wage-earnings from income taxation. New York is one of only four states in which near-poor two-parent families of four — those with incomes at 125 percent of the poverty line — receive a refundable tax credit rather than having an income tax liability (32 states) or [...]
Counterbudget 2000-2001: The Budget Reform Section
March 2000. FPI prepares the Budget Process Reform section of Counterbudget, which is coordinated and published each year by SENSES, the Statewide Emergency Network for Social and Economic Security. Counterbudget provides an analysis of the Governor's Executive Budget Proposal and its impact on low-income New Yorkers focusing on the programs and policies identified as priority issues by the SENSES network of over 2500 human service, religious, labor, economic development and low-income organizations - issues including economic development, public assistance, health care, hunger and nutrition, housing, taxes and revenues, and the budget process. For a copy of the complete report, please [...]
Counterbudget 2000-2001: The Revenue Section
March 2000. FPI prepares the Revenue section of Counterbudget, which is coordinated and published each year by SENSES, the Statewide Emergency Network for Social and Economic Security. Counterbudget provides an analysis of the Governor's Executive Budget Proposal and its impact on low-income New Yorkers focusing on the programs and policies identified as priority issues by the SENSES network of over 2500 human service, religious, labor, economic development and low-income organizations - issues including economic development, public assistance, health care, hunger and nutrition, housing, taxes and revenues, and the budget process. Highlights below; for a copy of the complete report, please [...]
Letter from Nancy L. Johnson sent individually to all 50 governors
March 15, 2000. A copy of the letter below was sent to each of the 50 governors. Ms. Johnson is the chairman of the Subcommittee on Human Resources, Committee on Ways and Means, U.S. House of Representatives. The Honorable Don Siegelman Governor of Alabama State Capitol 600 Dexter Avenue Montgomery, AL 36130-2751 Dear Governor Siegelman: As you may recall, I wrote last year urging you and other governors to increase the rate at which TANF money is spent, because there is so much states can do to increase self sufficiency. After 60 years of failed attempts to bring people out [...]
McCall, agency spar over accountability
March 6, 2000. William Tuthill reports in the Capital District Business Review: New York state's array of economic development programs, in which millions of dollars are annually loaned or given to spur businesses and create jobs, lack adequate means of measuring their own effectiveness, according to a report by State Comptroller H. Carl McCall. There are not enough tools in place to show whether funded projects have resulted in the increase or retention of jobs, the report said. It is an argument McCall has made before since taking office in 1993, as did his predecessor, former Comptroller Edward Regan. The [...]
Balancing Revenues, Expenditures and Human Needs in the 21st Century
February 14, 2000. FPI Executive Director Frank Mauro takes a look at the revenue side of the 2000-2001 Executive Budget. Governor George Pataki's first Executive Budget of the new century avoids some of the most counter productive cuts of his previous budgets. The 2000-2001 Executive Budget, for example, does not propose cuts in Tuition Assistance for the neediest of students, and it avoids what had come to bean annual battle over Medicaid. BUT this latest Pataki budget fails miserably in seizing the opportunities provided by the boom on Wall Street, the Tobacco Settlement monies, and the "Welfare Windfall" that the [...]
An Agenda for a Better New York: Improving New York State's Utilization of its TANF Block Grant and Related “Maintenance of Effort” Resources
February 9, 2000. A report by Frank Mauro and Carolyn Boldiston. The current TANF surpluses provide New York State with a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to fight poverty and lift poor families towards independence and self-support. This includes liberalizing the earned income disregard, providing a long overdue grant increase, and making new efforts to reach hard-to-serve parents and children. New York is more likely to continue to meet work participation rates if it invests in activities that have proven successful in helping people to move from welfare to work. The report is supplemented by a glossary, given below. The PDF version of [...]
Broad Attacks Needed on Income Gaps
February 1, 2000. An op ed by FPI's Trudi Renwick, in Newsday. A new study by the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities and the Economic Policy Institute reports that New York has the most unequal income distribution of the 50 states. Concerted action by both the public and private sectors is needed to reverse this imbalance. The average income of the top 20 percent of New York families is 14 times as large as the average income of the poorest 20 percent. New York also has the third widest income gap between the rich and the middle class, behind [...]