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Cuomo's 2013 Budget Raises Minimum Wage, Shortens DMV Waits
By
Garth Johnston
Published Jan 22, 2013
Modified Jan 22, 2013
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By
Garth Johnston
Published Jan 22, 2013
Modified Jan 22, 2013
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Governor Cuomo proposed his $136.5 billion New York State budget today and it has lots of interesting nooks and crannies. While proudly eliminating a $1.3 billion budget gap with "no new taxes or fees," it also has some very welcome bits in there. Like, oh, raising the minimum wage from $7.25 to $8.75—a full quarter above what Shelly Silver was proposing this time last year.
Though it was overshadowed by gun control, Cuomo actually first proposed the minimum wage increase in his State of the State speech earlier this month. If approved, the change would kick in on July 1st and would increase wages for more than 705,000 workers to the tune of some odd $1.01 billion per year.
Of course, that wasn't the only thing Cuomo talked about today. "By making difficult decisions over the past two years we have brought stability, predictability, and common sense to the state's budget process," Cuomo said while outlining his budget. "For the third consecutive year we are closing the deficit with no new taxes or fees and putting forward a budget that holds spending growth under two percent." And holding spending growth down doesn't necessarily mean bad things!
Some of the other notables in the sprawling budget include spending 4.4 percent more on education aid (helping bring up the average spent per student by more than $300 per year), streamlining improvements at the DMV to cut wait times to 30 minutes top (!) by next year, "right-sizing prison capacity" by closing Bayview in Manhattan and Beacon in Dutchess County since our prison population is dropping and consolidating, to the tune of nearly $1 billion, other government agencies (think: putting Medicaid administration into the Department of Health, putting the Homeless Housing Assistance Program into the Office of Homes and Community Renewal). In addition, assuming federal Sandy aid comes through, the Governor had a number of ideas for how to spend some $5 billion of that towards things like Community Reconstruction and Mitigations Plans and efforts to ensure that all rebuilding is done to modern building standards. Not to mention an extra $358 million for the MTA!
And that's honestly just the tip of the iceberg. The whole budget, along with the Governor's presentation and more, can be found right over here.
Tagged
Albany
andrew cuomo
budget
dmv
governor cuomo
minimum wage
new york state
state budget
Garth Johnston
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