Tuesday, January 30, 2024
Year : 2, Issue : 5
ALBANY, New York: Schools are facing spending cuts, and taxpayers could be paying more to provide services for the surge of migrants. Republicans want voters to blame Democrat Tom Suozzi.
House Republicans and their campaign arm are seizing on Gov. Kathy Hochul’s $233 billion budget proposal that would boost migrant-related aid by $500 million and lead to spending cuts for hundreds of school districts — many located in crucial House seats.
The National Republican Congressional Committee has sought to tie Hochul’s budget to Suozzi, a moderate who is running for the Queens and Long Island district he once held and left vacant by the expulsion of Republican George Santos.
“Tom Suozzi needs to answer whether he agrees with Hochul’s budget cuts to schools in order to clean up their border crisis,” NRCC spokesperson Savannah Viar nt. “Extreme Democrats like Suozzi are the reason we’re in this mess to begin with.”
State-level policies have been successfully wielded in recent election cycles by Republicans in key races. The tactic has been a frustrating one for Democrats, especially those running in House races where the office being sought has little to no impact on the decisions of state government.
Republicans are defending four seats flipped that year on Long Island as well as in the Hudson Valley — two areas of the state that concerns over migrants and school funding could be especially persuasive for suburban voters.
Cutting school aid — which could happen if Hochul gets her way to recraft the distribution formula — is one of the third rails of local politics. The school funding fight was an unexpected wrench in Democrats’ hopes of a relatively quiet year in Albany in a critical election year.
New York Democratic Chair Jay Jacobs, an ally to both Suozzi and Hochul, doubted the Republican criticism would work — or that the message would land with voters.
Suozzi’s campaign, in response, also pointed to discrepancies in Pilip’s federal and county financial disclosure forms. Senior advisor Kim Devlin said it “raised serious questions about a lack of vetting” by Republicans. Pilip campaign spokesperson Brian Devane called the attacks a mischaracterization.
And Democrats are also quick to point out the nuance of Hochul’s budget — a wide-ranging and complicated fiscal plan.
Her budget would raise education spending overall by more than $800 million, but also changes how the state sends direct aid to school districts by taking enrollment reductions into account. The move would lead to $167 million in spending cuts to more than half of the state’s 673 school districts.
The additional $500 million in spending for the migrant crisis, which part of a $2.4 billion plan that includes money for emergency shelters and legal services, is coming from a surplus pot of money unrelated to school aid.
Hochul has defended the proposal as necessary, given the outdated way in which schools are funded by the state. Many of the schools impacted have millions of dollars in surplus accounts.
New York Democratic Chair Jay Jacobs, an ally to both Suozzi and Hochul, doubted the Republican criticism would work — or that the message would land with voters. Suozzi’s campaign, in response, also pointed to discrepancies in Pilip’s federal and county financial disclosure forms. And Democrats are also quick to point out the nuance of Hochul’s budget — a wide-ranging and complicated fiscal plan.
Her budget would raise education spending overall by more than $800 million, but also changes how the state sends direct aid to school districts by taking enrollment reductions into account. The move would lead to $167 million in spending cuts to more than half of the state’s 673 school districts.
The additional $500 million in spending for the migrant crisis, which part of a $2.4 billion plan that includes money for emergency shelters and legal services, is coming from a surplus pot of money unrelated to school aid.
All the more awkward is the past animosity between Hochul and Suozzi, who left his House seat in 2022 to run against the governor unsuccessfully in a Democratic primary. Both Democrats publicly set aside their differences late last year before Suozzi launched his bid for his old seat.
Source: Politico
