News and Info for NYS Council Members
April 3, 2025
For Advocates:
Message from the Coalition on Human Needs. Their Webinars are always very informative and useful.
This Webinar is today at 3:30!
Please join us for a special training on Thursday, April 3, at 3:30 pm ET when we will equip state and local advocates with the talking points and state data needed to engage their congressional delegation and push back against devastating cuts to Medicaid and SNAP in the ongoing budget reconciliation negotiations. We’ll also provide a timely update on the state of play in Congress.
The proposed cuts would harm millions of families, and we must act now to stop them. Our experts will break down the latest threats and show you how to use new data sets that illustrate just how catastrophic these cuts would be for communities across the country. Making the case against extreme cuts should include facts about how constituents will be affected, and also how the community and state will be hit hard economically – we’ll give you data to make these points.
We’ll start with our Capitol Hill update from Ilene Stein with the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities – very timely, with the Senate expected to take up its new budget resolution on Thursday.
Meredith Dodson and Deborah Weinstein of CHN will take you through talking points you can use to show how damaging cuts to Medicaid and SNAP would be to your state or congressional district. For each point, we’ll show you exactly where to find your state or local info.
Our Special Guest: Leighton Ku, Director, Center for Health Policy Research, Department of Health Policy and Management, Milken Institute School of Public Health, George Washington University: co-author of the new report from the Commonwealth Fund: How Potential Federal Cuts to Medicaid and SNAP Could Trigger the Loss of a Million-Plus Jobs, Reduced Economic Activity, and Less State Revenue (you’ll learn how to add this powerful data showing job losses by state to your points).
This briefing will also provide an opportunity to ask questions directly to experts and strategize on how to mobilize against these harmful proposals.
Your voice is essential in this fight—join us and take action to protect these critical programs.
Zoom link: Https://us02web.zoom.us/j/82818154071?pwd=WSdvYEzgGFIaWk6JZA5W0NNkSjkPaX.1
- Meeting ID: 828 1815 4071
- Passcode: 770298
- One tap mobile: +16469313860,,82818154071#,,,,*770298# US
- Dial by your location: +1 646 931 3860 US
—————————–
Preparing for the pain of possible mid-year budget cuts in New York
SSusan Arbetter, State of Politics, 4/3BY Susan Arbetter Albany
PUBLISHED 7:30 PM ET Apr. 02, 2025
Albany is moving through the familiar choreography of creating an annual state spending plan while it’s quite possible that whatever the leaders come up with will be blown to bits later in the year by federal cuts.
Republicans in Washington are looking to cut fraud, streamline government and make the 2017 tax cuts permanent before they expire at the end of the year. To do that, they will need to pass deep cuts to the federal budget, including to Medicaid, education and transportation.
The financial pain is still theoretical at this point. Bill Hammond, senior fellow for health policy at the Empire Center, doesn’t believe the cuts are a certainty because the House and the Senate are not on the same page.
“It’s not clear what Washington is going to do,” Hammond told Capital Tonight.
Patrick Orecki, director of state studies at the Citizens Budget Commission (CBC), agrees, but urged the state to take some action now during budget talks.
“They need to at least prepare for the possibility of federal cuts by doing two things. First of all, setting aside some money right now while they’re making the budget for next year. We think at least $2 billion is absolutely possible,” he said.
The second task is to do the work of setting priorities.
“It’s good to start thinking through that exercise now,” Orecki explained.
Ed Ra, ranking minority member on the Assembly’s Ways and Means Committee, agrees with Orecki.
“Democrats keep warning about thunderstorms while driving with the top down on the convertible,” he told Capital Tonight in an emailed statement. “The impacts of federal fiscal actions are speculative at this point, but it’s prudent to be cautious and prepare for potential fiscal uncertainty. The Majority’s actions speak much louder than their rhetoric.”
But the Hochul administration is standing firm, promising to call the legislature back into session if and when cuts take place.
“We have a statutory constitutional deadline to pass a budget,” Budget Director Blake Washington told reporters on Monday. “We want to deal with the facts as they are today, not what could or could be in two months from now. And that’s what the plan is, to just to continue to engage with the legislature and address if there are any shortfalls.”
HEALTH CARE
In February, the House passed a budget resolution that directs the House Energy and Commerce Committee to make $880 billion in budget cuts over 10 years to many programs under the committee’s jurisdiction, one of which is Medicaid. The Senate doesn’t have a target anywhere close to that.
Regardless of the specific numbers, New York is especially vulnerable to cuts to health care: In FY 2026, the state is expecting to receive $70.9 billion from Washington for Medicaid and the Essential Plan/Child Health Plus.
It’s an issue that will affect every House member. The group Medicaid Matters recently created individualized Medicaid fact sheets by congressional district.
In New York, 7 million people out of a population of 20 million are Medicaid enrollees. The largest cohort are women and children. Seniors represent a far smaller group in numbers, but according to Bea Grause, president of the Healthcare Association of New York, they make up the greatest per capita spending.
“Three-quarters of the spending in nursing homes (in New York) is Medicaid spending,” Grause said, which means any cuts will hit an already anemic nursing home sector hard.
Advocates warn that facility closures, staffing shortages and Medicaid underfunding are creating “nursing home deserts,” leaving seniors and their families struggling to find care.
“There have been dozens of nursing homes that have closed in New York state,” Mark Olson, executive director of Shaker Place Rehabilitation & Nursing Center told Spectrum News 1’s Corey James. “What is happening is patients are backing up into the hospitals because they can’t be placed due to the lack of beds.”
The Empire Center’s Hammond explained that the last time Congress and the Trump administration attempted anything like these changes was back in 2017 with the goal of repealing and replacing the Affordable Care Act.
“The proposals on the table then…would have implemented cutbacks gradually, so that the first few years would have had a relatively modest effect on New York,” Hammond said. “So that’s a possibility here as well, that whatever they do will be phased in.”
But Hammond is scratching his head over why the governor opted to increase Medicaid spending by 17% in her executive budget in January, and why both houses of the legislature pushed that increase even further.
“I do think it’s reckless for the governor and the legislature to kind of plow ahead with a budget that calls for a big increase,” he said.
“I don’t see the justification for it other than politics. The healthcare industry is politically influential, and the governor wants them on her side when she runs for reelection.”
Hammond speculated that if the state needed to respond to federal cuts, the governor might ask all sectors to “take a haircut” – a flat percentage cut across the board.
CONSTRUCTION AND TRANSPORTATION
In FY 2025, New York received $2.4 billion from the federal government. New York State Department of Transportation capital funding this year is $4.8 billion, including Governor Hochul’s $800 million add.
Mike Elmendorf, the president and CEO of Associated General Contractors of New York State (AGC-NYS) is worried about a few different issues, including the ripple effect of tariffs on the construction industry. In the immediate short term, though, Elmendorf thinks transportation funding is stable.
“Within the existing program, we don’t expect them (the federal government) to cut the formula funds for road and bridges,” he said. “That’s the lion’s share of money that we get for roads and bridge funding. That seems to be OK,” he said.
Future funding is another story.
There have been conversations among Trump administration officials about changing how the federal Department of Transportation disburses money for roads and bridges; officials are now discussing prioritizing communities with high birth and marriage rates, something that will not benefit New York State.
Elmendorf is also worried about some of the big signature projects that New York depends on the federal government for, like the M.T.A..
“What’s going to happen with Gateway? What’s going to happen with the Kensington Project out in Western New York? No one really knows what they’re going to do, so I want to be careful about speculating out loud to the press not to panic people,” he said.
A major concern for Elmendorf is CHIPS and Science Act funding.
“There’s been chatter about the CHIPS Act, and what means for Micron. That, in and of itself, is going to be a massive construction project and then there’s obviously a lot of indirect construction that’s going to pop up around it because you’re going to have to build out the infrastructure, transportation, social, environmental around that project.”
A more under-the-radar concern is around the U.S. government’s newly fraught relationship with higher education, specifically the larger colleges and universities in New York.
“They are a pretty significant market generally for the construction industry,” he explained. “Columbia, Cornell, you know, you name it, right? They always seem to be building something.”
Uncertainty is a headache that links all these issues, according to Elmendorf. Construction is an industry that relies on planning, and the new tariffs aren’t helping.
“I described it as the tariff hokey pokey, right? They’re on, they’re off, they’re this, they’re that, they’re aimed here, so in some ways, the underlying policies are problematic,” he said.
EDUCATION
Even with record-high education spending in New York state, this week the Berlin Central School District announced staffing reductions in next year’s school budget “in light of our fiscal circumstances.”
No cuts are more personally relevant to taxpayers than school staffing cuts. If those changes take place in midyear (unlike Berlin’s), they are especially disruptive to students and teachers.
Luckily, it doesn’t happen often.
“Over the past few decades, there have only been a handful of scenarios where midyear cuts have been relevant or applicable,” said Brian Fessler, director of governmental relations at the New York State School Boards Association.
In most of those situations, it was the federal government that came to the state’s rescue. That’s not the case now.
“I know we’re hearing from the administration that a lot of the main federal funding streams, Title I and IDEA (Individuals with Disabilities Education Act), are OK right now for lack of a better term, but I think that remains to be seen for FY25-26. Perhaps more relevant is the concern for state aid caused by federal funding reductions that would impact the state more broadly.”
In other words, while education may not be targeted directly by Congress, the state may have to backfill cuts to other areas, like Medicaid.
“With so many unknowns, it’s difficult to plan directly, and certainly we are still waiting on a state budget to fully lock in school aid numbers from the get go, but I think a lot of districts are focusing on where their federal dollars are, and what are the areas of their budget that might be most at risk if the state has to adjust to funding reductions at some point in the future,” Fessler explained.
RAINY DAY FUNDS
Currently, the state has about $20 billion in its rainy day fund, but according to the CBC’s Patrick Orecki, even if there are federal cuts, dipping into the fund isn’t a good idea.
“About half of the state’s savings are in a statutory lock box that can’t be used except in a true economic downturn or in some kind of catastrophe,” he told Capital Tonight. “The other half, about 10 billion dollars, would be available but that really isn’t the reason that rainy day funds are there.”
The fund exists to deal with a one-time kind of shock. Cuts to federal funds are ongoing until a new president or a Congress reverses them.
“You’re looking at a recurring cut, so you can’t really use a non-recurring resource like rainy day reserves for that,” he said.
———————
Opinion article from City & State on public policy alternatives to Involuntary Commitment:
—————————-
Many thanks to NYS Council member agency CEO Bill Gettman from Northern Rivers for his steadfast leadership and endless energy!
State of Politics
Mental health staff: 7.8% raise, not more forced treatment, would ease crisis
Behavioral health workers said Wednesday lawmakers must significantly increase their pay in the budget to address a rise in severe mental health issues as state leaders debate Gov. Kathy Hochul’s proposal to expand the criteria for coercive treatment when a person’s condition could result in serious harm.
Advocates are pushing for a 7.8% increase for nonprofit behavior and human service workers based on inflation, and argue the governor’s plan to broaden the involuntary commitment statute with an inadequate pay raise would make the state’s mental health crisis worse.
“Because you won’t have the services and the treatment necessary to care for the individuals who need mental health support,” said Bill Gettman, CEO of Northern Rivers Family Services.
Budget negotiations continue to crawl along amid the controversial debate, and others like discovery reform and a potential mask ban — further delaying the late spending plan.
Gettman is one of several people who has rallied outside the legislative chambers every day, chanting “We can’t wait for 7.8.”
He said the need for mental health support for children and families is greater than ever, with hundreds of people on waitlists for clinics and home-based services.
“[A raise of] 7.8% allows us to give back to our workers who make, quite frankly, less than $20 an hour, which is $38,000 a year,” Gettman said.
Lawmakers are growing frustrated without budget language from the Second Floor, and said the lack of specifics is making negotiations more difficult.
“We are still caught up in discovery and some of the other policy issues that have been injected into the budget,” Assemblyman Andrew Hevesi told reporters Wednesday. “There has been no discussion of money so far is my understanding.”
Many Democrats have opposed Hochul’s proposal to clarify the information clinicians should consider, including a person’s inability to provide essential needs like food, clothing, medical care, safety or shelter when deciding they need court-ordered care. Several local officials have come out in favor of the plan.
Lawmakers agree with staff that changing the policy without the proper pay increase for workers would have a counter effect.
“You’re not going to keep people forever, and we don’t have eough beds to do it anyway,” Assembly Mental Health Committee chair Jo Anne Simon told Spectrum News 1. “I mean, people who are looking for beds who need treatment who are not opposed to receiving treatment can’t get beds.”
Simon said clinicians and untrained emergency personnel will misinterpret the law, and wants the state to focus on more housing for people with severe mental health issues.
For months, lawmakers against the plan have cited data that show expanding involuntary commitment is not the most effective intervention tool and will not ease the rise in severe mental health conditions.
“That’s clearly not going to be successful because it’s not successful already,” Simon said. “…You can pass any law you want, but if you’re not paying people enough to keep people or attract people to the field, you’ve got nothing. So we don’t want that to happen, either. It’s a real issue.”
The Senate and Assembly budgeted for a 7.8% cost of living increase for mental health and human services workers in — up from the governor’s slated increase of 2.1% — arguing staff must be paid more to give people the services they need.
Senate Mental Health Committee chair Samra Brouk is leading the fight for over $20 million in the budget to implement Daniel’s Law statewide and require a crisis team to respond to emergency calls involving a mental health or substance abuse issue.
“Most of us have been touched by mental illness in some shape or form,” Brouk said. “We understand that simply removing someone’s civil rights or coercing them into treatment should always be the last resort.”
The senator has repeatedly expressed concern that involuntary commitment disproportionately impacts people of color, and expanding the statute would exacerbate the disparity for vulnerable communities.
Hochul’s top aides have said the governor is standing her ground to pass her top budget priorities she announced at the beginning of the year.
“In January, Gov. Hochul proposed a bold agenda to put money back in New Yorkers’ pockets and keep our streets and subways safer,” Hochul’s Press Secretary Avi Small said in a statement. “The governor is committed to achieving those key priorities as the latest round of budget negotiations continue with our partners in the Legislature.”
The Legislature supports Hochul’s proposal to spend $10 million for seven new clubhouses for people with serious mental health issues, $4 million to create a hospital-based “peer bridger” program and expand Intensive and Sustained Engagement, or INSET, teams.
—————-
More on last night’s release of the Senate Republican Budget Resolution (blueprint):
Senate Republicans have a new budget blueprint to jump-start President Donald Trump’s legislative agenda, and Majority Leader John Thune wants to adopt it by Saturday. It’s looking like he’ll make it happen, but things aren’t so clear in the House.
Here’s a rundown of where things stand:
Senators are digesting the budget plan. While we’re not seeing sufficient defections to tank it, some key players have questions. Senate Appropriations Chair Susan Collins, for example, says she’s undecided on a key aspect of the idea — the “current policy baseline” proposal that would treat an extension of the 2017 Trump tax cuts as costing nothing — and is concerned that the House’s budget guidelines would force Medicaid cuts, Jordain Carney reports.
What’s in it? In addition to making tax cut extensions costless, it would let Senate Finance draft another $1.5 trillion of tax relief. It would green-light a $5 trillion debt-ceiling hike that GOP lawmakers hope will get them through the next election (though Sen. Rand Paul wants to force a vote to shrink that). Senate committees would have to cut the deficit by only a few billion dollars, while the House would have to do it by $1.5 trillion — underscoring the lingering political divides between Republicans in the two chambers.
Some Republicans believe Trump might be needed to seal the deal in the Senate.
“He had to do it for the House budget,” Sen. John Kennedy told Jordain. “He may have to do it for the Senate. But that wouldn’t be anything new.”
You will probably not be surprised to learn that the outlook is less rosy in the House.
Though Speaker Mike Johnson told our Meredith Lee Hill that he plans to push through the budget next week, he’s seeing defections over the Senate’s changes to what the House adopted in February. It comes after he lost control of the House floor this week in a clash with fellow Republican Rep. Anna Paulina Luna over proxy voting for new parents.
House Budget Chair Jodey Arrington ripped the Senate’s plan as fiscally irresponsible and predicted it wouldn’t fly with his colleagues, our Brian Faler reports.
Trump praised the Senate budget during his Rose Garden trade event Wednesday and later in a post on Truth Social, urging Republicans to “UNIFY.” He attempted to smooth out concerns from the Senate’s deficit hawks in a meeting on Wednesday morning.
Adding to the pressure is rising Republican anxiety about the midterms after Tuesday’s landslide loss in Wisconsin’s Supreme Court race and underperformance Florida’s special elections for two House seats. Some Republicans, including vulnerable members like Sen. Thom Tillis, are now cautioning that Trump’s shock-and-awe governing strategy could backfire at the ballot box and are calling for a major recalibration.
One bright spot for Trump and Republicans here: Johnson just grew his majority by two after swearing in Florida Reps. Randy Fine and Jimmy Patronis Wednesday night. He can now lose up to three Republicans on a party-line vote.
————————-
Senate Dems beginning with Minority Leader Schumer and including Senate Dems Appropriations Chair Patty Murray came out strong against the Senate R’s blueprint, arguing that the plan it has come up with to lessen the draconian cuts envisioned in the House blueprint is by blowing up the national debt and passing along the cost of the President’s tax cut to generations to follow.
Senate Republicans unveil retooled budget blueprint
GOP leaders want to adopt the resolution this week, where it would face an uncertain future in the House.
Jordain Carney, Politico
04/02/2025, 3:29pm ET
Senate Republicans unveiled their new budget blueprint Wednesday as they race to take the next step toward enacting President Donald Trump’s preferred “one big, beautiful bill” to implement his domestic agenda.
Majority Leader John Thune wants to adopt the budget resolution on the floor this week, allowing the House to try to adopt it before heading home for a two-week Easter recess. The Senate could take a vote as soon as Thursday to begin consideration of the blueprint, kicking off a marathon session known as a vote-a-rama that could spill into the weekend before a final vote
Both chambers need to adopt identical budget resolutions — something they’ve struggled to do for months — before they can draft and pass Trump’s tax, border, energy and defense bill later this year through the party-line reconciliation process. The Senate already adopted a budget resolution weeks ago, and this new framework represents the party’s second attempt to advance a plan that can pass muster in the House.
“Today is one of the most important steps toward ensuring the Republican majority fulfills its promise to the American people that we will secure our border, strengthen our national security, make President Trump’s tax cuts permanent, and reduce spending,” Senate Budget Chair Lindsey Graham said in a statement unveiling the new budget resolution text. Trump told reporters the plan “has my complete and total support.”
The plan would give Senate committees a minimum floor for deficit reduction of only a few billion dollars. It also keeps the House’s $1.5 trillion floor for its own committees to cut spending, which has sparked heartburn in some corners of the party over possible Medicaid cuts.
The Senate budget resolution would also green-light a $5 trillion hike of the debt ceiling that GOP lawmakers hope will get them through the 2026 midterms.
Graham is heading off any angst within his conference about the debt limit increase, reminding colleagues that the $5 trillion number is expected to clear the politically thorny issue off the table until after the midterm elections – and won’t require Republicans to negotiate with Democrats on a bipartisan compromise to avoid default.
“This is the best way to do it,” Graham told reporters just as the resolution text was made public. “Because if you have to rely on Democratic votes, the price will go way, way up.”
The Senate also would set a $1.5 trillion cap for its tax writers. That number assumes Republicans will use an accounting tactic known as current policy baseline to make it appear as though an extension of Trump’s 2017 tax cuts cost nothing. In a notable shift, Senate Republicans indicated this week they will not get the Senate parliamentarian’s formal blessing that the strategy complies with strict budget rules.
Thune, in a statement, said that the parliamentarian had reviewed the Senate’s budget blueprint and “deemed it appropriate for consideration under the Budget Act.”
But critics of the strategy warn that sidestepping a formal parliamentarian ruling for now only raises the risk that the tax bill might not comply with budget rules until it’s too late to course-correct. Democrats blasted the accounting tactic as trying to minimize the overall costs of the the GOP’s plan.
“Republicans blowing up our national debt to dole out massive tax cuts for billionaires is nothing new, but their attempt to use a ridiculous budget gimmick to try and evade longstanding budget rules and pretend their billionaire tax giveaways are somehow free is some next-level stuff,” said Sen. Patty Murray (D-Wash.), the top Democrat on the Appropriations Committee.
The Senate budget resolution would give committees until May 9 to write their portions of the massive bill. Separately, the Senate Finance would have until May 16 to propose how to increase the debt ceiling.
Speaker Mike Johnson wants to get a package to Trump’s desk by Memorial Day, though some GOP senators believe it will go months longer, especially as Republicans in both chambers continue to squabble over the scope of spending cuts.
Katherine Tully-McManus and Benjamin Guggenheim contributed to this report.