Under Andrew Rein’s leadership, the CBC spearheaded the successful effort to create a New York City Rainy Day Fund, developed blueprints to manage city and state budgets during the pandemic, identified efficiencies to balance the Metropolitan Transportation Authority budget and recommended policies to increase housing production.

Now, with more people continuing to work from home since the Covid-19 pandemic, elected leaders in Connecticut and New Jersey say that tax money belongs to them, not New York—and they’re willing to fight for it.

As a mental health social worker, she’s been quickly able to find work in Florida, where the lack of state income tax was another big draw compared to New York — which had the highest taxes in the nation in 2021, according to the Citizens Budget Commission.

"Between school aid and Medicaid alone, you have well over half of the total state spending plan," Patrick Orecki, Director of State Studies at the Citizens Budget Commission, says. "They are by far the two biggest pieces. So, if you're looking for savings, you're going to start in the places where marginal changes are going to yield the biggest dollar amounts."

“The fiscal year 2028 gap widens to $9.9 billion, called ‘sizable’ by the governor. Yet, the state’s spending base is supported in part by at least $5.5 billion in temporary tax increases and pre-payments from prior year surpluses. Together, these reveal that the state’s structural gap is approximately $15 billion,” Andrew Rein

“We remain very concerned that planned spending is significantly short of what is needed to continue current services and urge the administration to be as transparent as possible by including the full costs of all programs in the budget and identifying which would have to shrink or stop due to lack of revenue to support them,” Ana Champeny.

Hochul’s budget chief, Blake Washington, said the program was something that needed to be “addressed,” during a Citizens Budget Commission forum.

State budget director Blake Washington spoke in Manhattan at an event run by the fiscal watchdog group, Citizens Budget Commission. He said the overall proposal will remain largely intact, but warned about future economic stability.

“I think that the acute problem the city of New York [has], at least in our understanding, really hits next year, as opposed to the current school year, or state fiscal year,” gubernatorial official Blake Washington told reporters following a breakfast hosted by Citizens Budget Commission. “So that’d be a dialogue that we’ll continue into next year.”

State Budget Director Blake Washington addressed both issues during a round of questions at an event put on by the Citizens Budget Commission.

Albany is actually handing out billions to people claiming to be in-home “personal care” aides with little training and practically no oversight. And — surprise, surprise — people are racing to milk the system for all they can get. They’re getting paid to care for their own parents.

New York and its localities ranked top in the nation in taxes and second for spending in 2021, according to a report by the Citizens Budget Commission. The state and its localities collected more revenue from all types of taxes — property, personal income, corporate, and sales — than 41 other states, the report also states.