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 After months of public protests and private negotiations, Mayor Michael Bloomberg and Council Speaker Christine Quinn announced a deal on New York City’s budget for FY2011-12 which began on July 1st. The agreement, which was announced late on Friday June 24th, avoids teacher layoffs and firehouse closings. It also avoids many, but certainly not all, cuts to human service programs.
“The budget results are mixed for human services,” said Allison Sesso, Deputy Executive Director of the Human Services Council of New York. “It could have been worse but it also could have been much better.”
Advocates and providers were still working on rumors and verbal reports of the final outcome as we went to press with written documentation only expected to be coming with an expected vote by the City Council on June 28th.
A variety of savings offered up in the form of concessions by city employee unions were believed to have helped the overall budget situation and reduced the level of cuts ultimately sustained by human service programs. Advocates had feared that the City Council, which is typically left to restore funding for a large number of non-baselined human service programs, would now be required to restore funding for teachers and firehouses instead.
“I give a lot of credit to the unions, particularly UFT President Michael Mulgrew, and the Speaker for working so hard to come to a deal that would reduce the need for the Council to use the bulk of their funds to restore education and fire cuts,” said Sesso. “I don’t think people recognize the connection between this deal and the outcomes for human services. The two are strongly linked. Had this deal not gone through we would have been much worse off.”
Preliminary reports of funding cuts and restorations – at least according to the rumors – were as follows:
Literacy
• Family literacy was cut completely;
• Adult Literacy: $2.5 million restored out of a proposed $5 million cut.
Aging
• $14 million in funding was baselined for senior centers;
• Case Management: A proposed 30% cut ($6.6 million) was reduced to 15% ($3.3 million).
Youth
• Beacons: $2 million of a $6.7 proposed cut was restored;
• OST I: $9 million of a $20 million cut was restored;
• OST II: $2.2 million was restored out of a $4.65 million cut;
• Runaway Homeless Youth: The proposed $6 million cut was fully restored;
• Council discretionary money for youth reduced but by an uncertain amount.
• Summer Youth Employment: No new City money added.
Child Care
• A net loss of $9 million after the Mayor restored $40 million and the Council restored $42 million.
Mental Health
• Geriatric Mental Health: $2 million fully restored;
• Alcoholism and Substance Abuse Services: $335,000 cut completely;
• Children under 5 Mental Health Initiative: Fully restored at $1.25 mm;
• Council Autism Initiative: Fully Restored.
HIV/AIDS
• All HASA supportive housing money ($5.1 million) reportedly has been restored;
• HIV/AIDS Food and Nutrition program was restored ($852,000).
Homelessness Services
• Rental assistance cut completely.
“We are relieved that, while painful cuts are still going to be made, many damaging cuts originally proposed in the Mayor’s FY 2012 budget were averted,” said Nancy Wackstein, Executive Director of United Neighborhood Houses. “We are gratified that the City Council and the administration recognize that services like child care, after school, adult literacy and senior centers are crucial to the well-being of our City. However, we need to move beyond the notion that the City’s budget can be balanced by cutting services that directly benefit working and poor families; we need to adopt additional revenue measures to help support essential human services. We must recommit ourselves to creating a better and more equitable City for all New Yorkers.”
“During City Budget negotiations New Yorkers came out in droves to oppose massive cuts to children’s services,” said Jennifer March-Joly, Executive Director of the Citizens’ Committee for Children of New York. “We witnessed high turnout at rallies, saw a strong willingness to call elected officials directly, and facilitated thousands of electronic messages to policymakers urging restorations to child care, youth services, and children’s health and mental health services. These actions demonstrated that New Yorkers are paying close attention to the budget choices made by the City Council and the Mayor. While the budget process was difficult and significant service reductions will occur, CCC remains cautiously optimistic and thankful that the New York City Council will vote to restore millions of dollars to children’s services this week.”
“Given how bad of a year it is I am glad to see that some significant cuts were avoided,” says HSC’s Sesso. “However, it is very disappointing that the very real and viable revenue options that we were fighting for and that nearly 20 council members publicly supported were not truly considered. These options could have avoided all of the cuts. Had they just done one or two of them fewer cuts would have been needed. But instead of looking at these ideas – a number of cuts to programs for which there is a growing need were reduced. The unions had to step up while the banking industry was once again let off the hook – despite the fact that they caused this crisis.”
“Choosing to cut funding for programs that serve vulnerable New Yorkers to balance the city’s budget without adopting revenue options is neither fair nor cost-effective,” said Fatima Goldman, Executive Director of the Federation of Protestant Welfare Agencies. “Frail and home-bound elders who receive timely and proper case management – a relatively inexpensive service - are much less likely to require more costly services like emergency room visits and nursing homes. Troubled youth who receive help from outreach and social workers are less likely to drop out of school, disconnect from their families, and become homeless, saving the City thousands of dollars in emergency shelter and crisis services.”
“We will continue to work on extending the millionaire’s tax in Albany, along with other revenue proposals offered by the May 12th Coalition in the ‘People’s Budget’ plan, as an alternative to cuts,” said Sean Barry of VOCAL-NY. “We also plan to continue the strategy of working closely with other human services advocates and labor unions to maintain solidarity in the face of proposed cuts, which was an important factor in this year’s budget outcome.”
“While we wish the restoration included more money for early childhood classrooms and family child care providers, we believe this deal is much better for our City’s working families than the May Executive Budget and a tremendous amount better than the initial budget presented in February – thanks to the leadership of many of our elected officials, including Mayor Bloomberg, Council Speaker Christine Quinn, Council General Welfare Committee Chair Annabel Palma, and Council Youth Services Committee Chair Lewis Fidler,” said UNH’s Nancy Wackstein . “Without child care, New York parents struggle to keep their jobs and provide for their families -and numerous studies have found that children that start behind stay behind. We’re grateful that our City leaders recognized the importance of child care even in this difficult budget year. The members of the Coalition will continue to advocate for more funding in the future so that every New York City child can have access to critical early learning opportunities.”
Despite these restorations, advocates continued to express concerns over the combined impact to families of the remaining cuts to child care subsidies as well as Out of School Time (OST) and other youth development programs.
“We are particularly concerned about the destabilization of the city’s subsidized child care system, an exceptional city service which has been in place since 1941 to support low-income working families,” said Esther W. Y. Lok, Assistant Director of Policy, Advocacy and Research at FPWA. “Cuts to child care subsidies will undermine the ability of current and future workers to remain in the work force, forcing many families who find themselves without care to choose between their jobs or substandard care for their children, and pushing many on to public assistance. Low-income neighborhoods, where residents overwhelmingly rely on subsidized child care services to maintain employment, will be particularly hard hit, as cuts will mean loss of the child care infrastructure for future generations, as well as lost jobs for center workers.”
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