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State budget's a done deal April 28, 2005 SEE ALSO: Budget Overview In an 11th hour deal, Gov. Pataki and the Legislature last night reached agreement on a final $106.6 billion state budget - avoiding painful vetoes of education and health funding added by the Legislature. For the first time in recent memory, school boards will have final state aid projections before adopting their spending plans for the upcoming year. In recent years, late state budgets have forced school districts to guess how much state aid they would receive before the mid-May statewide school budget voting day. The favorable state aid package is expected to enable many school districts to restore proposed budget cuts and lower their tax levies. K-12 Education For K-12 education, the budget increases school funding by $848 million, more than the $526 million increase Pataki proposed. BOCES aid was fully restored and the Legislature rejected the governor's plan for special education cuts. You can link to district-by-district school aid estimates via stateaid.nysed.gov. For more details on the K-12 education budget, check the bulletin posted by NYSUT's Research and Educational Services: Higher Education For higher education, the Legislature increased operating aid by $121.7 million for the State and City University systems - and rejected plans to increase tuition by $500 and cut opportunity programs. State funding will replace tuition increases. Higher ed union leaders said this is nowhere near enough to fill holes left after years of underfunding. Community colleges will receive an increase of $115 per full time equivalent student, bringing the level of state aid to $2,350 per FTE (nearly $20 million total increase). For more details on the higher education budget, check the information bulletin posted by NYSUT's Research and Educational Services: Health Care For health care, the Legislature approved a $2 million nursing recruitment and retention program in the higher ed budget, including a loan forgiveness program for nurses seeking graduate degrees. Also for health care, the Legislature approved home health care demonstration grants proposed by the governor to encourage more people to receive health care at home. In the end, Gov. Pataki vetoed only three items: two involve changes the Legislature made to the governor's proposals for lawyers handling death penalty cases; a third strikes down the Legislature's plan to control money collected through fees from utility ratepayers. - Sylvia Saunders |
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