ALBANY – Lawmakers in Albany have reached a late-night deal on a nearly $ 140 billion state budget.
The bills have gone into print, which clears the way for a Monday vote and for New York State to have its fourth consecutive on-time budget.
The budget will include $ 300 million in universal pre-kindergarten funding for the city.
The may had initially wanted a tax on wealthier New Yorkers to pay for it, but that will actually not be in it.
There will also be additional state certifications required for teachers in this universal pre-K program, something that’s being touted as a big win for the teachers’ union.
In addition, there will be protections for charter schools.
According to state Senate co-leader Jeff Klein, who spoke exclusively to NY1, the co-location problem has been solved, and that is because for schools that want to co-locate in public school space, assuming that they’re denied that co-location, it is incumbent on the city to find them additional space.
However, one outstanding issue in the bill is campaign finance reform.
“During this budget process, we still need to do campaign finance reform with a public match,” Klein said. “We waited a long time. This is a very important issue. Now is the time to make sure we have real campaign finance reform with a public match.”
“Hopefully, they still can address comprehensive finance reform and impose limits on people like the governor, whose fundraising situation is not affected at all by this proposal,” said Bill Mahoney of the New York Public Interest Research Group. “It’ll be difficult for them to do them in the budget at this point without a message of necessity, which would be unfortunate because the public then wouldn’t have time to read this and weigh in.”
All bills in Albany need to age for three days, which is why there was a rush to get the bills into print Friday night so that they would be ready for Monday.
Clearly, the campaign finance component, even if there is an agreement, will not be ready to go Monday, so NY1 was told that it could be done as a stand-alone bill sometime in the middle of next week.
http://ift.tt/1rPNocC
via Great Local News: New York http://ift.tt/1iZiLP1
No comments:
Post a Comment