New York State Budget Season

By Thomas L. LaBelle,
NYSAFC Executive Director

Budget season in Albany is always "interesting," to say the least. This year proved equally so. Since the late 1980s, Albany has been fixated with an on time budget. That fixation has translated to election campaigns and newspaper editorials. The budget process is complicated, even more so this year with Democrats and Republicans sharing leadership of the Senate.

It’s worth pointing out that the first issue is agreeing on how much money there is and how much there will be in the future. Imagine putting your household budget together, or trying to balance your checkbook, but you don’t know how much your next check will be or how much your "regular" monthly bills cost. All governments face this issue and the swings, particularly in New York, can be huge. One reason is that in New York we have such a huge financial market that a bad economy not only hits "Main Street," but also Wall Street, so we in New York lose out twice in tax revenues.

Also worthy of note is the fact that "on time" implies that the budget is a one-time thing. Quite often, if not every year, when the budget is passed by April 1, the Legislature has to come back and make changes in mid-year because their numbers are off. It becomes akin to the carpentry term of, "Measure twice cut once." By shooting for an artificial date without real numbers, chances are the budget is wrong and will have to be amended.

Because the fire service is predominantly funded through local tax revenue there aren’t necessarily a lot of money issues that interest us in the budget. However, how we administer property taxes, exemptions, and the overall economy certainly matter. Also, the budget has sections that are just what I would call policy. These are changes in how we govern, not how we pay for governing. These changes can and do have a fiscal impact, but not necessarily a direct budget number (other than projected savings).

As I wrote this update, budget bills were slowly coming out in print. And although it still looks like a timely budget will be done, it certainly won’t be as early as some thought.

The budget includes basically no increase in local aid. Although there is an increase in the budget overall by nearly $2.5 billion, there is no increase in funds headed to assist municipalities. There is also no true mandate relief in the budget, either.

There is a change to the pension system (not mandated, but an option) that will allow municipalities to average their contributions, which will keep the annual swing/change in contribution rates to less than one percent. Recent swings in the stock market have made it so that some municipalities needed to make no contribution one year and then double-digit contributions the next. This, of course, makes budgeting nearly impossible.

The governor’s proposal to increase fees for certain traffic infractions did get passed. This is significant to the fire service, as we receive NO percentage of these fees, while local police agencies do receive some funding from this revenue. Traffic accidents are certainly something the fire service has to mitigate. NYSAFC is starting to talk to our partners at the New York Conference of Mayors and other government organizations to find non-real property tax revenue streams for fire departments.

The governor did include a proposal for the second year in a row that will not make it into the final version of the budget. This would have amended the New York State Health Law to do two things – change the number of Regional EMS Councils from 18 down to 10 and remove the requirement from municipalities that receive a certificate of need for ambulances from reapplying every two years.

These issues, although out of the budget, are not "dead." Since they were cost savings measures they can be taken up again at any time, and likely will be. NYSAFC has long supported the CON measure for municipalities and will continue to work with other organizations to get this measure passed.

There continues to be funding ($75 million) for 911 in the budget; however, it appears that an additional $9.3 million for PSAPs didn’t make the final cut. The state continues to have revenues with no clear direction on how to move that money forward to achieve "interoperability" or even better versions of existing service. Federal mandates on things like narrowbanding of frequency are coming quickly and funding will be need.

As usual, a mixed blessing in the budget, but given the fiscal austerity that many states are facing, we may have fared well.