Senate votes to accept Governor’s School Aid cuts (Updated)
Monday, March 22nd, 2010 at 9:13 am by Robert Lowry
Today, the State Senate’s Democratic Majority introduced a resolution outlining its plan for a 2010-11 state budget. The plan accepts the Governor’s proposed cuts to School Aid.
UPDATE: March 22, 5:22 pm — On a 32-29 vote (all Democrats in favor, all Republicans present opposed, one Republican excused) the Senate just passed the resolution outlining its state budget plan. As a resolution, the action is a statement of intent, not an actual bill –if the Assembly passed an identical resolution it would not have legal effect.
Last week, half the Senators in the 32-vote Democratic Majority signed a letter to Governor Paterson saying, “We cannot, in good conscience, vote for a final budget that includes any cuts to education.”
Asked about the disparity between last week’s letter and this week’s resolution, Senate Democratic Conference Leader John Sampson said,
I think our colleagues understand the fiscal reality, and have been dealing with that, with this, in conference in going over this. This is a road map to basically, to get the discussions going and hopefully reaching a bipartisan agreement that all parties can live with, with respect to those cuts.
“We know that health care and education comprise around 53 percent of our budget.
The actual Senate budget resolution is available here. Education provisions begin on p. 15.
No word yet on the details of an Assembly plan, or when one might be released.
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March 23rd, 2010 at 5:32 pm
Why in the world would you, our elected officials, even begin to agree with the Governor’s devastating cuts to the educational system in our state? School districts are NOT sitting on a lot of extra money and with the needs of the children and the watchful eye placed upon test scores, schools should be the very first priority in New York State. Please make cuts in the prison system where there is ample waste with too many employees and other aeas that you know are wasting money. You should all be working at funding education in other ways rather than placing the burden on taxpayers, too. Please give this inexcusable dicision to go along with the Governor more thought and think of what YOU expect from our young people for the future of New York. Cutting funds to education is setting our state back and hurting the very population that depends upon adults to educate them and teach them how to prepare for the future. Education should be a priority and NOT A POLITCAL football!!!