BREAKING NEWS:Cuomo, Legislature Reach Budget Accord

Fifth straight on-time budget achieved

Governor Andrew M. Cuomo, Senate Majority Leader Dean Skelos and Assembly Speaker Carl Heastie today announced an agreement on the 2015-16 State Budget. The Budget agreement includes landmark education reforms and investment, an ethics package with the nation’s strongest disclosure laws for legislators with outside income, and new investments in rebuilding and growing the state’s economy, including $1.5 billion for the Upstate Revitalization Initiative and $500 million to make New York the first in the nation to have statewide broadband.

The Budget agreement holds spending growth below two percent for the fifth consecutive year, continuing a record of fiscal discipline that has reversed decades of state budgets where spending grew at a higher rate than inflation or personal income growth.

Spending

The Budget agreement includes spending in the following categories:

· Total State Operating Funds: $94.25 billion; 2.0% growth
· School Aid: $23.5 billion; 6.1% growth
· Medicaid: $17.741 billion; 4.6% growth
· Funds from financial settlements: $5.4 billion, including $1.5 billion for the Upstate Revitalization Initiative and $500 million to make New York the first in the nation to have statewide broadband.

Full details and language to be released Monday.

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