Governor Cuomo and legislative leaders reached a framework budget agreement late Sunday night and say they hope to work out remaining details and begin passing bills today to meet the midnight Tuesday deadline.
The deal includes around $1.5 billion dollars in school aid to help the state’s poorest performing schools, and a plan for the state education department to design new teacher evaluations.
An ethics reform deal will require greater disclosure of legislators’ private law clients, as well as outside income.
Assembly Speaker Carl Heastie, who has been leader of the Assembly for less than two months, says he’s pleased with the result.
“I’m very happy. This is the largest schooling increase in almost seven or eight years. There’s significant resources for Upstate, for the City of New York, for Long Island. There are a couple of disappointments we’d like to see in the minimum wage, but outside of that, I think this is a pretty good budget.”
The minimum wage is one of a host of items sought by Cuomo that was ultimately dropped from the budget. The governor says he’ll pursue the rest of his agenda when the spending plan is passed.
An announcement released Sunday from Governor Cuomo’s office further outlined the spending categories decided upon in the Budget agreement for the 2015 and 2016:
- Total State Operating Funds: $94.25 billion; 2.0% growth
- School Aid: $23.5 billion; 6.1% growth
- Medicaid: $17.741 billion; 4.6% growth
- Funds from financial settlements: $5.4 billion (including $1.5 billion for the Upstate Revitalization Initiative and $500 million to make New York the first in the nation to have statewide broadband)
According to Cuomo’s press release, Cuomo said this Budget agreement does implement "real ethics reform" .
"[The Budget puts] in place the nation's strongest and most comprehensive rules for disclosure of outside income by public officials, reforming the long-abused per diem system, revoking public pensions for those who abuse the public's trust, defining and eliminating personal use of campaign funds, and increasing transparency of independent expenditures."
INSTANT REACTIONS FROM EDUCATION
Even before the final details of the education changes in the budget are revealed, teachers’ unions are already claiming partial victory in their war of words with Governor Cuomo.
The President of New York State United Teachers Karen Magee says her group and the state legislature has beaten back what she calls the worst of Governor Cuomo’s agenda. The governor sought new teacher performance reviews that would rely more heavily on standardized testing. In the end, the state education department will device new teacher evaluation criteria. And education aid will increase by over one and a half billion dollars.
Magee says the governor’s effort to “ try to bully changes in education” has been pushed back.
Cuomo has won approval of a plan to put failing schools in receivership, though the schools may have a year to turn things around.
Magee says the union will also be taking steps to convince parents that their children should opt out of standardized tests associated with the controversial Common Core standards.
“To say that these tests indicate what students have learned, is similar to blaming your dentist for cavities,” said Magee. “It makes no sense, there’s no connection.”