Following the release of Governor Hochul’s proposed Fiscal Year 2024 budget for the State of New York, New York City Comptroller Brad Lander issued the following statement:
“With state revenues higher than expected, economic uncertainty on the horizon, and so many families facing affordability pressures, the state must invest in programs that will shore up working families and share prosperity among New Yorkers. While the Governor’s executive budget prioritizes important new investments in childcare and mental health services, and includes much-needed funding to support asylum seekers, in several other key ways this budget does not yet provide a solid foundation for the challenges we face ahead.
“As New York City welcomes thousands of asylum seekers, Governor Hochul is stepping up significantly to assist the City of New York’s efforts to provide shelter and services to our newest residents. I joined with a majority of New York City elected officials in urging the state to budget aid for the City of New York and am pleased to see this commitment. As in past generations, immigrants have been at the center of New York’s economic and cultural success, and the State is delivering much needed help as our latest newcomers find their footing.
“At the same time, however, the Governor’s budget would require the City of New York to chip in nearly half a billion dollars more for the Metropolitan Transit Authority. Just as the shift to remote and hybrid work hit the MTA’s farebox revenues, so too it hit the City’s commercial property tax revenues and redistributed them to the rest of the region. Rather than fare hikes, an increased share of payroll taxes, revenue from new casinos, and the implementation of congestion pricing are the right ways to replace farebox revenue and make long-overdue upgrades to ancient signal technology and repairs. The State should not stick the City with the bill to sustain our regional public transit system.
“Governor Hochul rightly put confronting our housing affordability crisis front-and-center. All communities across the state must do their part in meeting this urgent challenge – especially in Long Island, Westchester, and in plenty of parts of New York City that have long resisted doing their fair share. But market production alone will not help families facing eviction in the Bronx, where eviction rates are the highest by far, or give young working-class families a path to affordable homeownership and stability that Mitchell-Lama gave their grandparents. A comprehensive effort to alleviate the housing issues facing must include good cause eviction protections, rental assistance vouchers for low-income and homeless families, target subsidies to the level of actual affordability, and dramatically expand pathways to affordable cooperative homeownership.
“The Governor proposed a four-year extension to access the excessive 421-a tax giveaway for developers who applied before last year’s deadline. If anyone needs a property tax break, it is overtaxed outer-borough homeowners. New Yorkers deserve property tax reform that brings fairness for homeowners, simplifies our opaque tax code, and targets relief to actual affordability.
“I look forward to reviewing the Governor’s budget in detail and advocating for the investments New York City needs to flourish.”
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