Listen...Can You Hear it Coming?

[Chris_Wendt]

Governor Andrew Cuomo will release The Excutive Budget of the State of New York today.

Under the landmark Court of Appeals decision in Pataki vs. Silver, et al, the NYS Legislature must deal with the Executive Budget; under the NYS Constitution, the Legislature may not write their own budget.

The absence of a draft budget in Wantagh is quite understandable at this time. The forthcoming Executive Budget will be most telling about the state of Wantagh's finances for the coming school year. Until we all see the Executive Budget and until the Board of Education receives guidance from our State Senator and has the first computer runs from the independent State Aid Data Analysis Group, there would be little use of publishing a draft budget.

I want to emphasize that the most important element of information upcoming will be the initial comuter runs, distilling the State Budget to projected dollars for the Wantagh School District.

Stay tuned!
It is about to get very interesting.

Chris Wendt

[lilly]

It's here.
_______________________________
www.newsday.com/long-island/politics/cuomo-budget-calls-for-more-than-3b-in-cuts-1.2652928

Cuomo budget calls for more than $3B in cuts

"Perhaps the most significant cuts: slashing $1.5 billion in aid to local schools, or about 7 percent, and slashing aid to the State University of New York by 10 percent. That would include eliminating state subsidies to SUNY's three teaching hospitals, including Stony Brook University."

[Chris_Wendt]

"Read it...and weep."

Well, with that, and the 2% Tax Cap in the offing, I can't think of who has the worst of it. The school board members trying to cobble together a budget that will result in a tax levy increase not in excess of a 2% cap, or, the union executive board members trying to negotiate a successor contract with those school board members?

This is fantastic, not meaning 'good' fantastic, but meaning I am awestruck with the reality of what is now in front of all of us...Wantaghvians, Long Islanders, New Yorkers.

Positively awestruck.

Chris Wendt

[lilly]

Here is the presentation. Education starts on page 16.

Sounds like accountability and race to the top-like initiatives are flavored throughout and may become pervasive in securing (decreased) aid.

www.scribd.com/doc/47975415/Briefing-Book

[Chris_Wendt]

Thanks for posting this Lilly.

Interesting that, in my opinion, by proposing in his budget things such as accountability and "Race to the Top" initiatives, Governor Cuomo is meddling and may actually be interfering with the Regents and the Commissioner, who have constitutional authority over education; the Regents and the Commissioner are all wards of the NY State Assembly.

Also, by proposing those new concepts of governing which are not in current law, but upon the adoption of which his budget is based, the Governor has ceded ultimate control of the State Budget process by requiring 'buy-in' from the Legislature in order to implement his initiatives. If the Legislature won't buy into his initiatives, his budget is meaningless, and the Legislature can then claim he has not met his constitutional responsibility to present a proper budget, and therefore, here is the Legislature's budget, thank you very much.

It is a long way until April 1, and Skelos was on the radio today saying this year's will be the latest budget ever out of Albany, and that the delay will be mostly because of Assembly Speaker Silver.

Great theater!

Chris Wendt

[lilly]

An earlier version of this article commented on the Assembly passage. This article has been updated about 3 times so far today. The reference I am looking for is now out of the article but it was something about the governor can pass pieces of the budget under emergency legislation taking him out of the tough spot Paterson and former gov's were put in i.e., giving the gov more power and less fruitless antics up in Albany. Of interest, the current version talks about the outcry from the unions about this proposed budget.