Once again, the legislature is passing the budget in a piecemeal fashion, with little input from rank-and-file members or the public. As a result, New York City legislative leaders have crafted a portion of the budget that provides no mandate relief for schools and local governments or property tax relief for beleaguered homeowners this year.
In addition, the budget bill does not provide our State colleges and universities with the flexibility and tools they need to become leaders in creating new jobs and fostering the economic growth necessary to revitalize New York’s 21st century economy. Our State colleges and universities are invaluable to the upstate economy and need to be allowed to grow.
To make matters worse, downstate Democrats chose for purely political reasons to include language in this legislation that will deliberately lower the population of the Upstate region in the census by counting prisoners in their home communities, not in the prison in which they are incarcerated. This will lead to more state and federal aid going to downstate, where these criminals predominately come from, while our upstate communities continue to have fewer resources to deal with the cost associated with the crime and public assistance related to the release of the inmate to our local community and the relocation of the criminals’ family here.
At the end of the day, I could not support this bill because it is a blatant attack on upstate New York’s way of life and still has no fiscal plan to support this increased spending.
