Gov. Andrew Cuomo, under the guise of bracing for the impact of federal cuts to health care spending, proposes a 14 percent tax on New York health insurers in his 2018-19 budget.

At the end of last year, NYC Health + Hospitals was worried about meeting its $114-million biweekly payroll thanks to its chronic cash crush and a dispute between the Cuomo administration and City Hall over hundreds of millions of dollars in past billing for charity care.

That short-term crisis was resolved with the intercession of organized labor, which brokered a resolution that ensured H+H could meet its obligations.

“This year the Feds did give H+H a reprieve, but now when the cuts are slated to kick back in in Fiscal Year 2020 and 2021, they will be bigger,” said Charles Brecher, research director for the Citizens Budget Commission, a non-profit, business-supported fiscal monitor. “But when it comes to how Albany handles those DSH payments there’s still an unaddressed grievance that New York City is not getting the fair share” considering its volume of uninsured patients, Mr. Brecher said in a phone interview.

Liberal advocacy groups on Friday called for the passage of a tax on stock transfer buybacks, hoping to get the Republican-controlled Senate on board with a move they say would generate an extra $2 billion for the state.

But some budget watchdogs warn the tax could have a detrimental impact.

"The tax would basically drive stock traders out of out New York," said David Friedfel of the Citizens Budget Commission. "The cap on state and local tax deductions at the federal level has already made New York less competitive than it was before. Driving up taxes would make New York less competitive."

A Bronx legislator said Friday he would fight “tooth and nail” to prevent the de Blasio administration from continuing a program that pays select school bus drivers millions in seniority benefits that aren’t part of their contract.

By June, the city will have handed over $136 million — completely voluntarily.

Gregg Bishop, commissioner of the Department of Small Business Services, claimed that the grants are need to ensure safety.

“This program helps get our kids to school safety and helps maintain a well-trained staff of drivers,” he said.
But the Citizens Budget Commission wasn’t buying that line.

“The City Council should reject the grant program, which . . . increases costs to taxpayers without enhancing services,” the fiscal watchdog recommended.

One of the state's oldest fiscal watchdogs supports Gov. Andrew Cuomo's plans to re-work the tax code to "thwart" federal limits on the deductibility of state and local taxes but said state lawmakers should reject several of his other budget proposals.

The Citizens Budget Commission, a non-partisan, business-backed think tank, issued its recommendations today and urged lawmakers to push back on Cuomo's proposed expansion of unilateral budget powers and new economic development spending.

The group has joined other advocates in calling for more transparency in how New York directs economic development funds. It said Cuomo's push for a new life sciences laboratory and a loosely defined $300 million pot "should be rejected and a moratorium on new economic development projects imposed until more transparency and documentation of results are achieved for the existing programs."

The group supports the Democratic governor's proposal to require large Internet marketplaces to collect and remit a sales tax.

The new CEO of the city’s beleaguered Health + Hospitals (H+H) public hospital system, Dr. Mitchell Katz, testified in front of the City Council’s new hospitals committee, and its chair, Carlina Rivera, for the first time on Wednesday, discussing the progress of the “One New York” plan to 'transform' and improve the system.

H+H has faced numerous fiscal challenges over the past few years. When the original One New York report was released in 2016, its intention was to reduce an anticipated budget deficit of $1.8 billion in fiscal year 2020, which begins July 1, 2019.

Last fiscal year, the de Blasio administration provided $1.8 billion in city aid to H+H as its interim leadership also took measures to overhaul its operations and finances, before Katz was brought in from Los Angeles to accelerate that work. (That was an increase from $607 million in fiscal year 2011, according to the Citizens Budget Commission.)

Gov. Andrew Cuomo reminds us at every opportunity that Congress and the Trump administration aimed a "missile" at New York with its tax reform legislation. Never mind that most middle-class New Yorkers will see their federal taxes go down, and that the state already faced a budget gap of $4.4 billion before Washington lifted a finger.

And with so much uncertainty about the federal funding picture, you'd think the governor would put forth a cautious, even austere, spending plan for 2018-19.

You'd be wrong.

Cuomo's $168.2 billion budget proposal increases school aid by 3 percent, continues to pour hundreds of millions of dollars into economic development programs and funds dozens of new policy initiatives. The governor also preserves the phase-in of a middle-class tax cut passed in 2016

New York City should take a hard look at its own fiscal practices given diminished aid from Washington and a pending economic downturn, according to city Comptroller Scott Stringer.

“We don’t have a friend in Washington,” Stringer said Wednesday night as he received the Citizens Budget Commission’s medal for high civic service. “Now that we’re on our own more than ever, what are we doing today to prepare for what comes tomorrow?”

Former Federal Reserve Vice-Chairman Stanley Fischer received the Felix G. Rohatyn Award at the nonprofit budget watchdog’s 86th annual awards dinner at the Pierre Hotel in Manhattan.

The city for the first time is listing the guarantee as a $50 million line item in the budget, according to a new analysis by the Citizens Budget Commission.

“The City’s pension funds assume 7 percent rate of return on investments; however, the TDA fixed funds continue to provide 8.25 percent returns to some members. The preliminary budget for fiscal year 2019 proposes an additional $50 million contribution to the pension fund annually to account for the difference,” the CBC analysis said.

“While this may appear to be fiscally prudent, it does not address the broader issues: The benefits offered by the TDA are fiscally irresponsible and unsustainable,” the CBC report, to be released Monday, says.

For the fourth time since September, a good-government group has asked an obscure Albany agency to investigate the leadership of the Metropolitan Transportation Authority.

A former Sanitation Department honcho is pulling in an astonishing $285,047-a-year pension — more than twice what he was making on the job, according to newly released data.

There are only 853 active Tier 1 members left in Gotham, according to the Comptroller’s Office.

But the eye-popping pensions still show the city should move toward defined contribution systems like 401(k) plans instead of such unsustainable schemes, according to Citizens Budget Commission vice president Maria Doulis.

“This is sweet for the retirees. A little bitter for the taxpayers,” Doulis said.

“Pension costs are now a $10 billion expense in the city budget,” she added.

The Citizens Budget Commission is criticizing Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s education aid proposal, saying that it does not sufficiently distribute aid to the neediest school districts.

Cuomo’s Executive Budget proposal calls for increasing education aid by $769 million to $26.4 billion. Of that, the biggest portion of the increase is a boost of $338 million in Foundation aid, which is awarded to districts on a per-pupil basis based upon their income and property wealth.

While the plan directs a larger share of the increase to the neediest school districts, the nonpartisan organization that analyzes state and New York City finances says it does not go far enough.