ALBANY — Gov. Cuomo’s $168.2 billion budget proposal unveiled Tuesday afternoon includes provisions to pass the Child Victims Act and a study on whether to legalizing marijuana in New York.
The election-year budget also seeks to close a $4.4 billion budget deficit that Cuomo warned could be made worse by federal health care cuts and the GOP tax act that he says unfairly targets high-tax blue states like New York.
“Washington hit a button and launched an economic missile and it says ‘New York’ on it and it’s headed our way,” Cuomo said. “You know what my recommendation is? Get out of the way before it lands.”
Cuomo’s budget would raise total spending by 2.3%, though state taxpayer supported spending would grow by 1.9%, the eighth straight year it has been under the governor’s self-imposed 2% cap.
To close the deficit, Cuomo wants at least $1 billion in new fees and taxes — including on opioids, vaping products, and insurance companies that benefit from the federal tax law — while increasing spending on education by 3% and health care by 3.2%.
“You can’t possibly get anywhere near you want to be on education and health care unless you raise revenue; it’s just too big a deficit,” Cuomo said.
He also will propose a major retooling of the state tax code to deal with the federal tax changes and seek increased reserves in anticipation of further cuts from the feds.
“This is going to be the most difficult challenge that we’ve had to take on because it is the most complicated,” he said during a 39-minute budget address. “It comes at a difficult time, a difficult economic time, a difficult social time, and a difficult political time.”
The inclusion of the Child Victims Act, which would make it easier for survivors of child sex abuse to bring cases as adults, is a huge victory for advocates who have lobbied hard for it.
Including the measure in the budget could provide more leverage against Senate Republicans, who have blocked passage of the bill for a dozen years, by allowing it to be tied to issues the GOP is seeking during the budget talks.
“What the governor is doing is really getting behind it and flexing his political might and demonstrating that he’s passionate about justice,” said Kathryn Robb, a child sex abuse survivor and long-time advocate for the act.
The bill, which goes further than the one he supported last year that passed the Assembly, would allow survivors to bring civil cases up to 50 years from the attack and would eliminate the statute of limitations for any felony sexually related offense committed against someone under the age of 18. Currently, they have until their 23rd birthdays to bring cases.
Cuomo did not mention the Child Victims Act in his budget address.
“We think we owe it to the victims to get the best possible package,” Cuomo counsel Alphonso David said afterward.
Asked why Cuomo would introduce a bill that is tougher than the one the Senate GOP refused to take up in 2017, David said that “last year didn’t have the same social and political climate with respect to people subjected to abuse.”
The bill also includes a one-year window to revive old cases and treats public and private institutions the same. Currently, those abused in a public setting like a school have just 90 days from the incident occurring to formally file an intent to sue.
Religious groups like the Catholic Church and Orthodox Jewish community oppose the provision that would open a window to revive old cases.
Siena College in a new poll released Tuesday morning found that 76% of New Yorkers support passage of the Child Victims Act while just 17% oppose it. The strong support is the same across political, geographic, and religious lines, including 77% of both Republicans and Catholics.
Cuomo’s call for a Department of Health study to look into legalizing marijuana is a bit of a turnaround for the governor, who oversaw the enactment of the state’s medical marijuana program but has opposed the idea of legalizing recreational use.
He said Tuesday the study should review the health, economic, and criminal justice impacts of legalizing pot, the state of the law, and what it would mean for New York if it was legal in Massachusetts and New Jersey.
U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions recently announced the repeal of a 2013 Obama-era policy that protected legalized marijuana programs in various states from federal prosecutor intervention.
“This is an important topic, it’s a hotly debated topic…and it would be nice to have some facts in the middle of the debate,” Cuomo said in pitching the study.
As Cuomo indicated Monday, the budget did not include a specific long-term plan to help raise revenue for the cash-strapped MTA. Cuomo said a proposal for a congestion pricing plan that would charge tolls to drive into a specific zone of Manhattan will be released later in the week by a Fix NYC panel he created.
Mayor de Blasio said he still prefers hiking taxes to help fund the MTA over congestion pricing.
The budget does include half the funding for a $836 million MTA short-term repair plan. Cuomo has said the city should pay the other half, something de Blasio has fought. A portion of the state share would be covered by $194 million from legal settlement money the state received.
There were also few specifics when it comes to the state’s response to the federal tax act. Cuomo’s tax department said it would release a preliminary report Wednesday outlining options for state tax reforms, including replacing the bulk of the state income tax system with a new employer-paid payroll tax and possibly the creation of charitable non-profits that people can donate to help fund the government.
The proposed budget would defer most business tax credits between 2018 and 2020 while moving ahead with the phase-in of a middle class tax cut enacted previously.
It would also impose several new taxes and fees. One tax would be a 2-cents per milligram of active opioid ingredient in prescription drugs.
Saying that the federal tax law gives health insurers a 40% cut on their corporate taxes while transferring health care costs to the state, the budget would impose a 14% tax on health insurer gains. The money would be reinvested in the state health care system, the budget says.
Another tax would be an “internet fairness conformity” tax that would require online marketplaces such as Etsy and Amazon to collect sales taxes on any transaction involving buyers from the state. A similar proposal died last year.
He’s also seeking to impose a 10-cents per fluid milliliter tax on vape products at the distributor level and a $120 “safety inspection fee” that will be charged to privately operated ambulettes, large passenger vans, and motor coaches.
Senate Majority Leader John Flanagan (R-Suffolk) said the budget was “pretty good” but expressed reservations about Cuomo’s revenue actions and the payroll tax proposal.
“I think the details on that are incredibly important so we need to flesh it out,” Flanagan said about the payroll tax. “Fundamentally, that’s the kind of thing we’re opposed to.”
Assembly Speaker Carl Heastie (D-Manhattan) called the governor’s plan “a very Democratic budget” but added that “this is the beginning.”
“Now it’s the Legislature’s turn to go through it and respond,” Heastie said.
Assembly Minority Leader Brian Kolb, who has announced he will seek the Republican nomination for governor, accused Cuomo of trying to pass off the state’s problems on Washington.
“Oppressive taxes, a high cost of living, and financial pressures that drive residents away are not new issues,” Kolb said. “Unfortunately, today’s Executive Budget presentation was long on finger-pointing, yet short on financial details.”
