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ALBANY – Mayor Kathy Sheehan said the city is halting hiring while they await word on whether the city will receive $12.5 million from the state that she says the city needs to close a budget gap.
“We’re putting a hard freeze in place,” Sheehan told reporters Friday morning.
The mayor also said she was placing a “blanket moratorium” on any purchases.
.@AlbanyCityHall Mayor @Sheehan4Albany said less AIM funding that any other large upstate city under similar financial stress. pic.twitter.com/K6LMc9CjFO
Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s 30-day budget amendment proposals unveiled Thursday do not include the $12.5 million Sheehan says needs to balance the city’s budget.
Cuomo did not include the payment in his initial budget proposal unveiled in January but city officials had hoped the money would be included in Thursday’s amendments. A number of other statewide expenditures were proposed, including $8 million expenditure for a gondola and lodge improvements at Belleayre ski resort, located in the Catskills.
Sheehan noted that a number of upstate cities receive more money that Albany and urged state leaders to act. A Democrat preparing for her first re-election bid, Sheehan spoke at a news conference Friday morning at City Hall.
If the money does not come through, Sheehan said the city would be forced to make deep spending cuts.
The mayor’s office had hoped Cuomo’s 2017-2018 budget proposal unveiled in January would include $12.5 million in state funds for Albany. But as in past year, the money was not included in the governor’s initial proposal.
Albany’s $177 million budget relies on state support to balance the 2017 budget. The budget cuts spending by 2 percent, keeps tax rates level and includes no new fees.
Sheehan said her administration has been “continuously lobbying” and has discussed the need for guaranteed funding that is not a spin-up of future payments to the city for the tax-exempt Empire State Plaza.
Sheehan has said that while the city is in dire straits, it should not be asked to accept the budget-closing funds as a “spin-up” of future state PILOTs, or payments in lieu of taxes, on the roughly 60 percent of land within the city’s borders that is off the tax rolls. The majority of that acreage is state-owned, including the sprawling Empire State Plaza, W. Averell Harriman State Office Building Campus and state University at Albany.
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