Today, Governor Andrew M. Cuomo used his veto pen to strike 184 items from the 2015-16 Enacted Budget.
In some cases – such as $53,000 in re-appropriations for Bronx settlement house programs – funds were fully expended.
The vetoes include 30 reappropriations for items that had previously been fully paid out. Thirty one additional reappropriations with remaining undisbursed balances under $1,000 are also vetoed – twenty of which are Community Projects Fund grants with undisbursed balances of $100 or less. For many of these items, the original appropriation was created many years ago.
Cuomo’s office claimed that thirteen reappropriations were duplicates, two had been vetoed previously and therefore could not be reappropriated, one item is a new appropriation improperly characterized as a reappropriation, and six items are unconstitutional alterations of the Executive’s reappropriations. One capital reappropriation was vetoed because the associated projects have been completed.
Monday morning, the New York Daily News reported that Cuomo was poised to veto a $22.2 million upgrade of SUNY Stony Brook’s Kenneth P. Lavalle stadium (named after a sitting Long Island state senator) that was slipped into the new state budget. Before surreptitiously changing the appropriation last month, the money was originally earmarked in 2008-09 to fund a “computational biomedicine visualization and drug development magnet facility” at SUNY Stony Brook in Suffolk County. The Governor’s office said that particular reappropriation was unconstitutional.
An additional 42 reappropriations are more than seven years old and are vetoed because there have been no disbursements during the period. Fifty one reappropriations in the State Operations bill and five reappropriations in the Aid to Localities bill pertain to functions that are fully supported by new appropriations in the Enacted Budget and are therefore deemed unnecessary.
Finally, two reappropriations added by the legislature are vetoed because the organization, ACORN, is no longer in business. The reappropriation totaled $24.339.
The full list of vetoes is available here.
Bronx Organizations Affected:
Claremont Neighborhood Centers, $62,073 (Fully Expended)
Kingsbridge Heights , $20,428 (Fully Expended)
Citizens Advise Bureau (Bronxworks), $15,099 (Fully Expended)
Mosholu Montefiore ……………… $13,323 (Fully Expended)
Riverdale Neigh. House ………….. $13,323 (Fully Expended)
SCAN NY ……………………….. $30,485 (Fully Expended)
Southeast Bronx Neigh Centers ………. $91,034 (Fully Expended)
Maritime Campus-wide Projects/Pier Replacement …………….. $10,700 (Unconstitutional Alterations of Executive reapprops)
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