December 12, 2024
Last week, Governor Hochul announced her intention to propose a kind of mini inflation rebate to New Yorkers within certain income categories in her upcoming State of the State announcement. The Empire Center (the same organization that last week wrote about the explosion of growth in NY’s Medicaid Program and is now suing the state due to its failure to turn over requested information the Center is seeking about New York’s Medicaid growth via a FOIL request) in a timely manner.
Today, Empire is writing about the sales tax funds the Governor proposes to use for a targeted ‘surplus’ rebate. See below.
The Governor’s ’25-’26 executive budget proposal is likely to be released on or around January 21. Here in Albany we are pushing hard for a meaningful increase (7.8%) that will allow us to address the deeply rooted economic injustice our staff face, serious access to care issues due to job vacancy rates that range anywhere from 20-30% annually (depending on the program type), two prolonged public health crises that continue to (needlessly) claim the lives of far too many New Yorkers, and a system of care that is hanging by a thread.
We are also laser focused on our request for a carve out of most outpatient mental health and substance use disorder services from Medicaid managed care, and (as you know) we have been pounding away with state regulators, state agency leads, the Governor’s Health and MH team etc. demanding that they hold the line on the upcoming January 1, 2025 implementation date for Part AA – the commercial rate mandate. I am a worrier. I think that in this case there is reason to be concerned that the plans have already or will shortly request a delay of the statutory implementation date. But you should know we are on it, pushing as if lives depend on a January 1 start date – because they do.
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Hochul Wants To Spend The Same Billions Twice by Ken Girardin Governor Hochul’s plan to mail $500 checks to millions of households has a problem: the sales tax “surplus” she wants to dish out doesn’t exist. Hochul on Monday said New York has a “one-time $3 billion surplus,” attributable to rising sales tax receipts, and that it “should be returned to 8.6 million households across New York later this year.” The governor proposed sending $500 “inflation refund checks” to married couples making up to $300,000 and $300 to individuals earning up to $150,000. Hochul yesterday reiterated that the state had an “inflation sales tax surplus.” But anyone looking for an extra ten-digit entry in the state’s ledger will be disappointed. New York’s 4 percent tax on certain goods and services is poised to bring in $20.4 billion in the current fiscal year (FY25), a modest 2.4 percent increase from last year. Receipts are poised to grow more slowly than the 3 percent inflation anticipated over the same period, and officials earlier this year noted “a slow-down in the growth of the sales tax base.” |