As the state Senate and Assembly build on Gov. Kathy Hochul’s proposal to help New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani dig the Big Apple out of a fiscal hole — proposing tax hikes the governor has so far resisted in their one-house budget resolutions — upstate lawmakers have continued their push to see New York’s other municipalities find something closer to equal footing.
After Hochul proposed an additional $1.5 billion for New York City to help manage its budget deficit and only $150 million in temporary aid for upstate localities in her 30-day amendments to the executive budget last month, multiple lawmakers from outside the city told Spectrum News 1 they intended to make it a budget issue.
Hochul’s initial executive budget proposal included $27.3 billion in funding for New York City, and $715 million in aid to municipalities, or AIM funding, for the rest of the state and additional money for distressed cities.
The Senate’s one-house proposal adds just over $600 million in AIM funding over the next two years for cities across the state, including New York City, which has been excluded from AIM funding since 2011. Of that $600 million, New York City would receive about half.
Upstate’s larger cities — including Rochester, Yonkers, Syracuse and Albany — would receive $125 million in general assistance, as well as between $15 million and $40 million in “miscellaneous financial assistance.”
The Senate also wants to create a $250,000 task force to overhaul how the state calculates AIM funding and explore pathways to include New York City in AIM. Mamdani and others have flipped the script, arguing that New York City’s exclusion as the state’s economic engine is the real injustice.
In the Assembly’s proposed one-house budget, New York City would receive $1 billion over three years, while other distressed cities in the state would receive $452.7 million, also over three years, on top of Hochul’s proposal.
Assembly Speaker Carl Heastie said that while the lower chamber consulted with Mamdani and his staff to develop a plan that would help make up ground in aiding the city, they also attempted to take the concerns of upstate communities into account.
“We tried to put forth a one-house budget that did right by the city of New York, and we also feel like we tried to do right by some of the other major cities around the state,” he said.
Assemblymember John McDonald of Cohoes was a vocal critic of Hochul’s 30-day amendment proposal.
“I think this is an effort to balance things to make sure local governments in non-New York City areas, particularly upstate, receive more AIM aid,” he said. “Local governments are not immune to having challenges, and if we don’t provide that AIM increase, it’s local taxpayers who end up picking up the tab.”
State Sen. Jeremy Cooney of Rochester told Spectrum News 1 that it will take some work from upstate representatives to ensure the increase for localities outside the city — along with other upstate funding boosts — survives budget negotiations and makes it into the final enacted package.
“What I would like to do is make sure the upstate Senate majority members who represent the big five cities — Buffalo, Rochester, Syracuse and Albany — get together and push back a little bit and say, ‘Look, we want our neighbors and our friends in New York City to get what they need, but we also need to make sure our residents get their fair share,’” he said.
Cooney said that will require a united front, considering Mamdani can single-handedly advocate on behalf of 8 million New Yorkers, while the remainder of New York’s nearly 20 million residents do not have a single corresponding advocate.
“There are tens of hundreds of mayors and villages and town supervisors and city council members and village board members and trustees — all of those people do not have that united voice or the platform that the New York City mayor has,” he said.
Assemblymember Sarah Clark, also of Rochester, was critical of Hochul’s plan and characterized the Assembly’s counterproposal as a step in the right direction.
“It’s not a permanent fix, but it will go a long way toward equalizing some of the issues our upstate cities and towns face, and I’m really happy we were able to come up with a way, particularly for Rochester, to make up for years of inequitable funding,” she said.
The governor’s initial proposal was well received by many municipalities across the state, and her office has pushed back on criticism, pointing out that what she proposed in her 30-day amendments for upstate represents a substantial increase over previous years — which is what these cities have asked for.
“Gov. Hochul wants all of New York’s municipalities to succeed, which is why she is tripling the assistance available to cities, towns and villages across New York state and providing an additional $20 million for financially distressed municipalities as part of her executive budget,” a spokesperson told Spectrum News 1 in a statement last month. “This funding is crucial to keeping New Yorkers safe and allowing local leaders to continue providing the vital services their residents rely on — and we look forward to working with the Legislature to pass this record-level funding for upstate municipalities.”