It's the end of the legislative session in Albany. That often means schools and local governments should brace for costly new unfunded state mandates.
Unfunded mandates occur when state lawmakers pass laws with cost implications but do not provide the funding needed to implement them. Local property taxpayers bear the costs.
The problem comes when lawmakers enact mandates for schools and municipalities after the state budget has been adopted, which pushes the cost to the local level. Yet, local budgets have already been set, too. Any new unfunded state mandates then come at the expense of local programs and services.
Unfunded mandates come in many forms. Recent examples include making school non-instructional staff, including food service personnel, custodians and bus drivers, eligible for tenure; also, expanding the prevailing wage requirements on construction projects to include services provided by municipal vendors for things such as lawn maintenance, computer service and copier repair.
Unfunded mandates also rarely go away. Automatic salary increases, even after negotiated contracts have expired, have been mandated for years. Another archaic law requires that multiple prime contractors be hired for most construction projects.
This year, the Let NY Work Coalition — a group of education, local government and business groups — has launched an email and phone campaign designed to prevent state legislators from adopting any new unfunded mandates during the remainder of this session.
Join us in asking state lawmakers for a moratorium on new unfunded (and underfunded) mandates, so we can give our schools and local governments time to recover from years of fiscal stress.
Timothy G. Kremer
Latham
Executive director, New York State School Boards Association