A tax increase on New Yorkers making more than $5 million a year, Cuomo said, will raise $3.5 billion in revenue next year and $4.3 billion in 2023, Middle class New Yorkers will get a tax cut, he said.
This means is that New York City residents who pull in over $25 million a year would have a combined city and state tax rate of 14.8%, the highest in the country.
State Sen. Liz Krueger, who represents parts of Manhattan, told Politico she's comfortable with passing taxes on the rich.
"We are asking people who have been doing the absolute best in our economy to give us slightly more in tax revenue," she said. "It won't hurt them; they've already seen a significant cut in their taxes during the Trump administration."
Here's what else is in the budget.
Details on a long-awaited COVID-19 Emergency Rental Assistance Program to address the mountain of rent debt that has accumulated since the start of the pandemic. The $2.4 billion pot of mostly federal monday is roughly 20 times larger than the previous state-funded rent relief effort, which reached only a fraction of eligible New Yorkers, in part due to its stringent eligibility requirements.
School aid, child care funding, excluded workers
15 Years After A Historic Court Ruling, Equal Education Funding
The budget restores direct foundation aid to New York's schools to the tune of $1.4 billion.
It's a long-sought goal by education advocates in the state and is part of a record $29.5 billion going to schools.
The budget also includes a major infusion of cash for education, including billions of dollars of stimulus money to reopen schools, and an increase in annual state funding for districts.
As a result, the state will finally meet its obligations to schools under a lawsuit filed by New York City parent—called the Campaign for Fiscal Equity—15 years ago.
“This is absolutely monumental and this has been a long, long fight to get us here,” said Jasmine Gripper, executive director of the Alliance for Quality Education.
In 2006, the courts called on New York to increase funding for schools statewide, but that increase was put on pause after the 2008 recession, and the state ultimately cut funding instead.
Now the additional money, called “foundation aid,” will be phased in over the next three years, to be covered by the new taxes on millionaires and billionaires.
That ongoing funding increase comes on top of a massive stimulus package for schools.
Roughly $13 billion in federal aid will also go to the state's school to address disruptions from the COVID-19 pandemic.
De Blasio called the direct aid — 75 percent of which will go toward high-need school districts — nothing less than the restoration of fairness for schools.
"Our kids are going to benefit over the next years in a way they've deserved for a long, long time," de Blasio said.
The city's share has yet to be announced, but as the largest school district in the state and country it likely will be significant.
The state budget also directs $2.3 billion in federal aid toward child care.
A first-in-the-nation proposal to direct cash payments to New Yorkers who did not receive federal stimulus checks and unemployment benefits in the last year. The $2.1 billion program was initially aimed at an estimated 274,000 people who were left out of aid because of their immigration status
"Essential workers never stopped working during the pandemic and kept the city and state running while putting their own lives and their families at risk," the Legal Aid Society said in a statement. "Despite their incredible sacrifice, they had to fiercely fight for this fund for over a year and overcome attempts from Governor Cuomo to sabotage the fund. Their hard-fought victory came on the heels of a 22-day hunger strike."
Major projects in the city
New York City construction projects will receive a large slice of $36 billion addition infrastructure funding in the budget.
Cuomo's controversial proposed "Empire Station Complex" in Midtown — a major revamp of the area surrounding Penn Station — received $1.3 billion in the budget. But lawmakers appeared to restrict its use for transportation, rather than the soaring skyscrapers many city leaders feared would be pushed through without local input.
The governor on Wednesday largely confined his talk about the project to its benefits for transportation in Manhattan and other West Side developments, including a 50 percent expansion of the Javits Center.
"We build a new Empire Station Complex with more rail lines, more residential and commercial development," he said. "It connects to a new Javits Center. It connects to a new Pier 76. It is an entire comprehensive west side redevelopment that we think will make a major difference in New York City, which sorely needs it."
Other projects in the city that Cuomo highlighted were the extension of the Second Avenue subway all the way to 125th Street in Harlem, direct truck access to Hunts Point to eliminate vehicle pollution in the south Bronx and road work in Queens.
There are lots of good things the lawmakers agreed to, like $2.4 billion in rent and homeowner relief and tighter oversight of nursing homes. The $29 billion earmarked for green economy investments looks promising.
But side by side with the good stuff are some serious missteps.
The legalization of sports betting, like all state-sponsored gaming schemes, is a tax on the 1% of the population who happen to suffer from a particular illness called gambling disorder. These unfortunate New Yorkers are far more likely than the rest of us to spend beyond their means, bankrupting their families or ending up in dire situations that involve embezzlement or suicide.
There may be as many as 400,000 problem gamblers in our state — more than the number of alcohol abusers, according to one University of Buffalo study. The International Center for Responsible Gambling estimates that as much as 6% of all college students have the disorder, and warns that “teenagers and college-aged young adults are more impulsive and at higher risk for developing gambling disorders than adults.”
Given the state government’s deep involvement in gambling, from the daily sucker bets of the lottery to the hopeless odds offered at casinos around the state, Controller Tom DiNapoli has wisely suggested an annual assessment of the harm suffered by compulsive gamblers. We’ll see if that happens.
The state also plunged into the recreational marijuana business with scant concern for what might happen as this powerfully, addictive substance makes its way into general circulation. Dr. Yasmin Hurd, director of the Addiction Institute at Mount Sinai, has warned that the concentrations of THC in modern marijuana make it a much more potent substance than even 10 years ago.
Scores of businesses, many of them traded on Wall Street, are waiting in the wings to sell this stuff by the ton — to your kids, your neighbors, maybe the guy driving your cab.
Confronted with the important question of how to measure, detect and prevent impaired driving, the lawmakers punted, referring the question to a panel that will look into the matter. Legalization first, public safety later (we hope).
So we go into the new fiscal year with a government that will spend more than $6,700 per second over the next year, more than $58 million each day. We will watch tens of thousands of New Yorkers fall into the trap of addiction and make money from their pain.