Faculty and Staff

2010-11 State Legislative Highlights

• On November 29, the State Legislature, during a special session, rejected Gov. David A. Paterson's request to close the projected $315M budget deficit for this current year by cutting 2% across the board. The Governor stated that he doesn’t intend to call the Legislature back into another Special Session before the end of the year unless the Legislature agrees beforehand to act on his proposals. This is highly unlikely. Therefore, this projected deficit will have to be dealt with in next year’s budget which already has an over-$9 billion projected deficit. Unfortunately, there will have to be many cuts to balance the FY11 budget.

  The 2010-11 budget had anticipated $1.1 billion in federal funds although it was unclear whether these funds would materialize. Although the State received approximately $800 million in expected federal funding, it fell approximately $300 million short of the $1.1 billion in budgeted funds.

  The Division of Budget (DOB) released a contingency plan to balance the state budget. This measure allowed the DOB to apply across-the-board reductions to so-called "local programs", which included our higher ed programs. It applied reductions of 1.1 percent to current year funding that had not yet been disbursed. This reduction affected programs such as TAP, Bundy, HEOP, STEP/CSTEP, Liberty Partnerships, community college based aid, and other higher education programs.

  cIcu worked with various state agencies to accelerate payments to reduce the effect of these cuts to higher education programs. In spite of their efforts, the following cuts were implemented:

  • Tuition Assistance Program - $3.5 million
  • Direct Institutional "Bundy" Aid - $151,563
  • Higher Education Opportunity Program (HEOP) - $278,925
  • HESC Scholarship Programs - $302,488
  • Aid for Part-time Study - $71,669
  • STEP/C-STEP - $133,776
  • Liberty - $123,131

  cIcu prepared a chart which provides more details on these and other cuts. cIcu has asked the Higher Education Services Corporation how they expect to administer the TAP cut. They are reviewing the issue and will soon communicate directly with the University.

• The final piece of the budget, the revenue bill, passed Tuesday, August 3. One of the key items holding up the passage of the revenue bill was the SUNY Empowerment bill. The Assembly, Senate and Governor stated that they do have an agreed upon framework that they can use later when they hammer out the details. As part of the revenue bill the Legislature also approved a plan to raise more than $1 billion through an across-the-board 2% cut to state programs should Congress fail to approve an increase in Medicaid financing this year. State funded programs at SU would certainly be affected if this across-the-board cut were enacted. Additionally, the legislature passed a 1 year extender for the Power for Jobs program, of which SU is a participant.

• As of the end of June, the Governor made good on his promise and began vetoing all the additional funding that was included in the Education, Labor and Family Assistant budget bill that had been passed by the Legislature. The Governor cited 6,900 items in the legislature’s budget bills to be vetoed. The Governor has targeted for veto $185-$190 million in re-appropriated member items. This action will have an impact on SU’s last year’s member items which have not been either executed or fully spent down. Both houses are said to be discussing a possible override, however each house will need a 2/3 majority to override the Governor’s vetoes. Failing that, there is no clear plan what the Legislature will do.

• On February 9, Governor Paterson released his “21-day amendments”, which complete the 2010-11 Executive Budget. New York State now has to address an additional $750M deficit through the end of 2010-11, due to the continued revenue deterioration. Therefore, the total projected deficit that the budget must address is $8.2B, up from $7.4B when the Executive Budget was released. (The additional $750M deficit will be closed through some $1.2B in new resources that the Governor has identified.) Here are a few provisions of the 21-Day Amendments of interest to SU and the higher education community.

• On January 19, 2010, Governor Paterson released his Executive Budget for the 2010-2011 state fiscal year. Certainly some higher education programs were cut, as were some smaller NYSTAR programs, but on the whole the budget was not as severe for higher ed as we had feared. Please see our summary and budget chart for specific allocations to programs of interest to SU and higher education. (The proposed funding for each program is in the green column.)

• On Wednesday, January 6, 2010, Governor Paterson delivered the annual State of the State address to a joint session of the Legislature, as required by statute. Acknowledging the state’s continued economic troubles and calling this a “winter of reckoning,” Governor Paterson warned the Legislature that the old ways of governing, of developing budgets, and “living on the margins of our means” were finished. Several times he declared to “special interests” that they could no longer badger New York State into “trampling the rights” of other New Yorkers. See complete summary of the Governor's speech.