Cuomo has proposed a roughly 3% boost in aid to local school systems by increasing funding from $27.7 billion to $28.5 billion for the 2020-21 school year.

But several teachers’ unions and other educational advocacy groups are expected to push for an even bigger increase at a hearing Tuesday.

The state has also been holding hearings into whether to tweak a formula that determines a school district’s state funding. Some groups, including the non-partisan Citizens Budget Commission, say the formula gives too much funding to wealthy communities.

A city non-profit focused on the wellbeing of children is worried the state budget will neglect the health of the city’s most needy, including those on Staten Island’s North Shore.

Citizens’ Committee for Children of New York Executive Director Jennifer March said parts of Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s budget proposal, especially those related to Medicaid, would severely shift cost burdens to New York City, negatively impacting its most needy.

In New York, which has one of the nation’s most generous programs, the city and other localities have long borne one of the nation’s largest cost burdens. A 2018 report from the Citizens Budget Commission estimated that localities paid $7.6 billion that year with $5.3 billion coming from the city, and $2.3 billion coming from New York’s other 57 counties.

New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio delivered a smorgasbord of new initiatives as he gave his State of the City address on Thursday.

In a town-hall stylemeeting at the American Museum of Natural History, the mayor outlined plans to expand housing affordability, help small businesses survive, improve education, keep down crime and fight the effects of climate change.

The Citizens Budget Commission said the mayor’s plans for the future relied on many of the same strategies that were used in the past.

“After making the case that despite some successes his strategies for the past six years have not solved fundamental problems, Mayor de Blasio outlined a plan to ‘Save Our City’ that largely doubled and tripled down on those same strategies,” said Andrew Rein, President of the CBC. “The key to New York's future will be the same as the past — cultural, economic and neighborhood dynamism. In the desire to improve neighborhood stability, some of the proposals risk promoting stagnation.”

On Sunday, Hollywood stars will convene for the biggest night of their year: the 92nd Annual Academy Awards. But whatever major motion picture you’re rooting for to take home a statue on Sunday it’s the state of New York that has a good chance of declaring victory. Seven films that were at least partially shot in New York state and qualified for the state’s film production tax credit are nominated for a combined 37 Oscars this year: “Joker,” “The Irishman,” “Marriage Story,” “Little Women,” “Harriet,” “The Lighthouse” and “A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood.”

But fiscal policy experts say the film tax credit, which is funded with $420 million per year amounting to a total industry subsidy of about $7.4 billion projected through 2024, is a wasteful corporate giveaway that needlessly incentivizes film and TV production in New York, when the state’s built-in talent base and iconic location already do that work on their own. “It’s definitely bad tax policy,” David Friedfel, director of state studies at the fiscal watchdog group Citizens Budget Commission, told City & State last year. “Economic development, particularly economic development that is targeted to a specific industry, should be done to help that industry get established in New York. Once it’s established, it should become self-sufficient.”

A beleaguered Mayor de Blasio struggled Friday to explain how he planned to finally “save our city” from the shortcomings of his own administration’s first six years.

Hizzoner started his day on NY1’s morning program, where anchor Pat Kiernan asked de Blasio: “Couldn’t you have saved the city last year — or the year before?”

Housing experts said the policy proposals and tweaks de Blasio rolled out Thursday — like renovating and legalizing 10,000 basement apartments — were helpful, but do not match the scale of the housing shortfall.

“I don’t think they go far enough,” Sean Campion, a Citizens Budget Commission housing expert. “It helps, it’s a good start, but I think [we need] more ambitious proposals.”

A New York bill that would impose a 0.5% tax on all corporate stock buybacks of shares has been introduced in the state Senate, a move the bill's sponsor said could raise $3.2 billion in revenue for the state.

S.B. 7629, introduced Monday by Sen. Jen Metzger, D-Rosendale, would amend the law to impose the 0.5% tax on the redemption or reacquisition of a corporation’s own shares based on the value paid by the corporation. The tax would be imposed even if a corporation ended up canceling the stock once reacquired, and it would go into effect immediately if signed into law, according to the bill.

Aside from technical issues the tax could raise, it could chase away the state’s finance industry, said David Friedfel, director of state studies with the New York policy think tank Citizens Budget Commission.

“This bill would provide another incentive for Wall Street firms to locate outside of New York state, and take jobs and associated tax revenues with them,” Friedfel said. “Stock trading is a very mobile business and does not have to be in New York.”

Mayor Bill de Blasio promised Friday that reforms to the city’s lopsided property tax system will get done before he leaves office, but the politically treacherous task faces a tough road ahead — and much of it is out of the mayor’s control.

The reform commission de Blasio convened with the City Council a year and a half ago proposed an overhaul on Thursday that would shift the tax burden away from modest homeowners who pay more than their fair share under the current system, and hit owners of more expensive properties with higher tax bills. The preliminary plan came after months of delay on an issue de Blasio first vowed to address during his 2013 mayoral campaign.

“There are still a lot of details to be ironed out and you need to know what those details are to really assess what the implications will be,” said Ana Champeny, director of city studies at the Citizens Budget Commission, a fiscal watchdog. “When we say, ‘let’s have a circuit breaker,’ what do we mean?”

There are two legislative sessions left before de Blasio leaves office, and given the open-ended nature of the initial plan, it’s unlikely much progress will be made at the state level this year. Benjamin and Champeny are hopeful a more concrete plan will be complete by the time the 2021 session rolls around.

Bill de Blasio’s mayoralty is shrinking.

Throughout more than six years in office, including a short, ill-fated run for the presidency, de Blasio has taken a decidedly nonconfrontational approach with the 51 members of the City Council and hasn’t vetoed a single one of their bills.

With the Council increasingly restive, and its speaker eyeing the mayor’s office himself, de Blasio’s approach has invited a power grab by ambitious lawmakers intent on seizing control of the legislative agenda for the administration’s final two years.

Carol Kellermann, former president of the Citizens Budget Commission, wrote in an op-ed over the summer that city agencies must now abide by nearly 850 of these laws — more than 50 of which were enacted by the Council last year alone, according to a POLITICO review of legislation.

“In the end of his administration, is the mayor going to get even more conciliatory toward the Council, or is he going to think about the shared legacy he will have with all of these impositions on small businesses and city agencies?” Kellermann said in an interview.

Albany should cut costs instead of sticking local governments with the state’s growing bill.

For years, New York State has operated one of the most generous Medicaid programs in the country, a point of pride in a state with a long tradition of investing in the social safety net.

The good news is that Gov. Andrew Cuomo, who is in charge of administering the federal program, has moved to rein in costs.

The bad news is that he has said localities will have to pay for increases in local Medicaid spending above 3 percent. That’s unfair and unrealistic. Local governments in New York already pay more mandated Medicaid costs than local governments in any other state, a dynamic that’s been in place since the program began in the 1960s. That’s not unusual in New York, where Albany relies on New York City’s tax base to fund the bulk of state services from education to commuter rails.

In 2018, local governments in New York sent $7.6 billion to Albany for the program, according to a 2018 report from the Citizens Budget Commission. In Fulton County in upstate New York, for instance, the local Medicaid bill for 2016 amounted to more than 15 percent of the county budget. In New York City, the annual Medicaid tab is roughly $5 billion, or nearly 5 percent of the city’s budget.

Gov. Andrew Cuomo has touted the state’s record-high spending on education during his administration.

But over the past three decades, including under Cuomo’s leadership, the state has picked up a smaller portion of the tab for New York City schools, according to a report on school spending from the city’s Independent Budget Office, or IBO, released Monday.

The state’s share of the city’s school budget has dropped by more than 11 percentage points over the past three decades and just under 2 percentage points since Cuomo took office in 2011, the report shows. The city’s share of spending has grown by nearly 14 percentage points.

At the same time, with some fluctuation, both the city and state have boosted how many dollars they’re investing in the system at a rate that surpassed inflation, said Dave Friedfel, director for state studies at Citizens Budget Commission. The state spent $11.2 billion on city schools last year, $3 billion more than in 1990, while the city spent $20 billion last year, or $11.6 billion more than in 199

Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s Medicaid plan could blast a roughly $1 billion hole in the city budget, de Blasio administration officials said Wednesday.

The new estimate is nearly double what City Hall bean-counters originally projected after the governor unveiled his spending plan earlier this month. It marks the latest salvo in a high-stakes budget war that will play out ahead of the new fiscal year.

But since the redesign team has yet to put forward any proposals it is difficult to independently assess the state's numbers.

State Comptroller Tom DiNapoli has said that the state is primarily responsible for growth in Medicaid costs. And because of the limited control the municipalities such as New York City have over how the program is run, the Citizens Budget Commission has characterized the way Albany shares costs with localities as an unfunded mandate.

New York City Comptroller Scott Stringer blasted Mayor Bill de Blasio’s housing policy as fuel for gentrification Wednesday, but experts raised questions about his own plan for affordable housing.

“This is a broken system. But instead of fixing it, we keep doubling down because we’re told this is the best we can do,” Stringer said. “I refuse to accept that.”

Stringer called for an expanded affordable housing mandate that would cover all new developments — even those without government subsidy or additional height to build more market-rate units.

Additionally, he demanded an end the state’s controversial 421a policy that provides developers with massive property tax breaks for including affordable units in their developments.

He said the change would provide up to $1.6 billion in new revenue for the city’s affordable housing program.

“The economics of it are challenging,” said Sean Campion, a top analyst with the Citizens Budget Commission.

“The inequities of the property tax system are such that it is nearly impossible to build rental buildings because of the tax rates.”