The budget balancing act
UPDATED 7:05 PM ET Apr. 12, 2021
The just-passed $212 billion state budget is the largest in New York history. Depending on who you ask, the spending plan is either “a mid-2020s fiscal disaster in the making,” as the Empire Center’s E.J. McMahon recently wrote on his blog, or it’s “a couple steps toward liberation” as Assemblyman Ron Kim told members of the media last week.
It won’t be known for years whether the budget is a spend-fest or a long-awaited correction to the tax code. But what is known is that members of the progressive community and advocates for the poor are downright thrilled.