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New York State Budget
CSEA provided testimony at the Joint Legislative Public Hearing on Workforce Development. Our union’s testimony focused on recruitment and retention of public employees, including reforms to the Civil Service system and fixes to Tier 6. Our union’s full testimony can be found here.
CSEA recently sent the State Legislature several budget memos on key issues. Click on the links provided for more information.
- Circumventing Civil Service Merit and Fitness Requirements
- Health Care Professions Oversight
- Work Zone Safety
- Probation
- Office of Mental Health Inpatient Beds
- Investments in Child Care
- Preventing Violence Against Public Employees
Click here for summary of the governor’s proposed budget
The final budget is due April 1. One of CSEA’s top priorities is rebuilding the public workforce. See the Civil Service tab for more information.
Check back for more information or sign up for This Week In Albany e-newsletter for updates.
Civil Service
CSEA is asking the New York State Legislature to include many civil service priorities in the final budget in order to recruit the next generation of employees and retain the trained employees of today. Download and share this flyer.
Check back for more information or sign up for This Week In Albany e-newsletter for updates.
VOICE Child Care
Since 2017, 15% of all home based providers have closed in New York State. This has resulted in the loss of 18,000 affordable and quality child care slots.
CSEA will be active this legislative session to continue to make child care more affordable for New Yorkers while investing in the child care workforce to ensure that the state has the capacity to handle all families in need of care.
- Send an email to the State Legislature to include additional funding for child care
- Click here to read VOICE testimony before the NYS Legislature on Jan. 26, 2023
- See VOICE’s 2023 Legislative Agenda
CSEA sent the State Legislature memorandums. Click on the links to read more.
Check back for more information or sign up for This Week In Albany e-newsletter for updates.
Federal Government
President Biden’s State of the Union address
President Joe Biden delivered the State of the Union address on February 7. The President focused on his accomplishments, including bipartisan infrastructure investments and the Inflation Reduction Act. He also advocated for the PRO Act, which would help level the playing field for workers who want to organize a union and to continue strengthening the middle class.
Debt ceiling
On January 19, the U.S. government hit the nation’s debt ceiling. The Treasury Department is using “extraordinary measures” to continue paying the government’s obligations but will exhaust those efforts by June.
House Republicans have said that they will not vote to raise the debt ceiling without massive budget cuts, which will impact CSEA members and retirees. Moreover, failure to raise the debt ceiling could be devastating to world financial markets.
Check back for more information or sign up for This Week In Albany e-newsletter for updates.
CSEA works with our international union, AFSCME, and the AFL-CIO, on many federal priorities.
Local Government
CSEA sent the State Legislature the following memorandum. Click on the link to read more.
Legislative Victories
See how you helped our union succeed!
Pension Reform
Thanks to the activism of CSEA members, the 2022-23 enacted budget includes the first positive large-scale pension reforms in over 20 years. This includes reducing the time to vest and exclude from contribution calculations the massive overtime members accumulated during the pandemic.
These are great first steps, but CSEA will continue to push pension reforms.
Health Care and Direct Care Bonuses
The FY 2022-2023 State Budget authorized a health care and direct care bonus payment program. Under the program, frontline health care and direct care workers who provide hands-on health or care services, and employees who support patient-facing care in a patient care unit or hospital or other institutional medical setting, are eligible for payments of up to $3,000.
For additional details, visit the state website.
Frequently asked questions about the program
The CSEA Legislative and Political Action Department conducted a webinar on this topic:
View a recording of the webinar
Child Care Provider Direct Deposit
Governor Hochul signed legislation to require all counties to offer child care providers the option to be paid by direct deposit!
OPWDD Care Pilots
Legislation was enacted to continue OPWDD Care Pilot Programs. These programs offer state operated community based programs for the developmentally disabled. These programs include community habilitation, in-home respite, pathways to employment, supported employment, and community pre-vocational.
Federal Updates
Inflation Reduction Act
President Joe Biden recently signed the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) into law, which is considered to be a historic win for working families across the country. To help you better understand the parts of the IRA that are most relevant to CSEA/AFSCME members, AFSCME has put together fact sheets that describe how the law lowers health care costs, addresses climate change, invests in green energy and creates a fairer tax system. You can find the fact sheets here.
Additionally, this legislation achieves goals long promoted by President Biden, including allowing Medicare to negotiate with prescription drug manufactures to lower the costs of prescription drugs, creating a 15% minimum tax for corporations that make $1 billion in annual profit and new investments in programs to combat climate change. In addition, this legislation extends subsidies under the Affordable Care Act for three additional years to keep health insurance affordable for working families, and caps insulin prices for Medicare recipients.
Infrastructure Bill
In 2021, Congress passed the bipartisan infrastructure bill, which includes about $170 billion in funding for projects in New York. Here is an initial breakdown of how that will be spent:
Highways: $12.5 billion
- $11.5 billion for roads and highways. (reauthorizations)
- $1.9 billion for bridge repairs
- $142 million for electric vehicle charging infrastructure
Airport funding: $937,030,865
- JFK — $294,682,575
- LGA — $ 150,008,970
- Long Island MacArthur — $21,595,630
Rail: $58 billion
- $22 billion for Amtrak improvements, including the Gateway tunnel project under the Hudson River
- $24 billion for Northeast Corridor modernization
- $12 billion for intercity passenger rail, including high-speed rail.
Water: $90 billion
- $14.7 billion for the EPA’s Drinking Water State Revolving Fund, which provides grants and loans for infrastructure projects (includes: $10 billion in grants to address emerging contaminants).
- $14.7 billion for the EPA’s Clean Water State Revolving Funds, which provides loans to states for water-quality improvement.
- $55.4 billion in supplemental emergency appropriations
Mass Transit: $9.8 billion
- $9.8 billion for clean buses and mass transit.
Many of these funds will be distributed through state agencies under existing programs. We are hopeful that the funding will lead to increased employment for CSEA members working in these fields.