ALBANY---It's no April Fool's Day joke.

The State of New York actually has a budget in place. While the $121 billion spending package technically wasn't in place by the April 1 midnight deadline, the Legislature met in a special Sunday morning session for its passage.

The budget includes $1 million for cell phone tower improvements along the rural portions of the Adirondack Northway in upstate New York and according to Sen. Betty Little, it is hoped that temporary service will be in place within several months while efforts continue towards a more permanent solution.

The lack of cell phone service in areas of northern New York made national news in late January when a Brooklyn man froze to death after he and his wife became stranded in their car for nearly three days on an isolated section of the Northway in Essex County. Two weeks later, in a snow storm, a trucker suffered a heart attack and died because his wife said she couldn't call for help due to no cell phone service.

Governor Eliot Spitzer said that the enacted state budget shifts spending priorities in ways that will benefit New York for years to come.

The budget will distribute education aid according to need instead of politics, Spitzer said. "It controls runaway growth in health care spending, while focusing Medicaid dollars to Medicaid patients. It makes the state's property tax relief program progressive. It provides a major infusion of resources to distressed cities. And it funds a series of high tech initiatives and cuts overall business taxes", Spitzer said.

These and other initiatives are part of the 2007-08 enacted budget, a $120.9 billion plan that increases overall spending by 7.3 percent. The $51.6 billion budget supported by State tax dollars (General Fund) proposes growth in spending of 4% percent, as compared to 10% last year.

Key initiatives in the enacted state budget include:

$1.76 billion in new education funding, bringing total funding to $19.64 billion. The aid will be allocated according to a new Foundation Aid formula and tied to new accountability measures.

More than $1 billion in cost savings, reducing the growth of Medicaid from an average of 8 percent to about one percent;

$165 million over two years for an expansion of the Child Health Plus program, providing access to health coverage for all 400,000 currently uninsured children in New York and streamlining enrollment procedures for 900,000 Medicaid-eligible New Yorkers.

$1.3 billion in additional property tax relief, including an income-based benefit targeted to middle class homeowners statewide and additional benefits for senior homeowners, the first phase of a three-year plan to provide $5.3 billion in property tax relief; and, $50 million in performance-based aid increases ranging from 3-to-9 percent targeted to cities, towns and villages, meeting certain criteria, the first installment in a four-year $200 million program. A total of $20 million in State aid also is provided to New York City and another $2 million will be distributed to municipalities that previously received aid, but did not meet the distress criteria.

The budget enacts proposals to eliminate certain tax loopholes and tax shelters, many of which have already been addressed by other states and the federal government, Spitzer said. These specific provisions are not tax increases, but rather limit the ability of taxpayers to take advantage of unintended provisions in law to reduce their tax exposure through sophisticated tax planning techniques. These tax code changes will increase revenues by $405 million in 2007-08. At the same time, the budget provides $150 million worth of targeted business tax relief in the form of a rate cut for all corporations and targeted relief for manufacturers.

The enacted budget maintains nearly $3 billion in total reserves, equal to 5.6 percent of General Fund spending. It includes deposits into both the Debt Reduction Reserve and the new Rainy Day Reserve, established as part of the recent budget reform agreement.

Details regarding the education, health care, property tax relief and distressed municipalities aid and other components of the budget are provided in the following:

Schools To Receive Historic Investment Of Resources
State Provides Access To Health Coverage For All Children
Enacted Budget Includes Expanded Property Tax Relief
Enacted State Budget Includes Expanded Aid To Distressed Cities
Enacted Budget Cuts Business Taxes

4-1-07

© 2007 North Country Gazette