INTERVIEW: Budging the Budget

Rabbi Yeruchim Silber, director of New York government relations for Agudath Israel, spoke with Hamodia last week Wednesday, the day after Gov. Kathy Hochul released her executive budget, regarding items in the budget affecting yeshivos.

Tell us about the New York budget process. The executive budget is only the first step.

Right. The budget is mostly done by the proverbial “three men in a room,” though now it’s actually two women and one man: the Governor, the Assembly speaker, and Senate majority leader.

Around mid-January, the Governor releases his or her executive budget. The budget is comprised of expenditures and revenues, how they want to see the money spent over the year.

Unlike the federal government’s deficit spending, New York State has to have a balanced budget. Revenues have to equal expenditures. If they don’t, you need to either cut spending or raise taxes. For capital projects, they could borrow money by issuing bonds. But essentially, expenditures can’t be more than revenues.

So the Governor releases the executive budget in January. Then the legislature holds a series of budget hearings.

The Assembly and Senate release what they call their one house budgets in March. Then the executive, the Assembly and Senate get together and reconcile and reach what’s known as the enacted budget, which must be voted on by both houses before April 1 ( though they sometimes do it a few days into April).

They often attach other pieces of legislation to the budget bill, known as policy riders.

Yes, they do that, because sometimes there is legislation that is controversial and would have a hard time passing on its own, so they stick it in the budget, and most legislators won’t vote down a whole budget bill just because of opposition to a policy rider.

A classic example is the Felder Amendment a few years back, in regard to substantial equivalency, that was put into the budget — it held up the entire budget for a few days, but it was ultimately passed as part of the budget.

Cuomo used to do that a lot, put policy riders into the budget.

Now we keep hearing, “no policy, only budgetary items.” We’ll have to wait and see if that actually happens, because the policy riders usually get put in later, during negotiations on the final budget between the executive and the two houses of the Legislature.

Now let’s get into what in the budget specifically affects the Orthodox community.

I’ll talk about the education part; that’s the one that has the most specific effect on our community.

The budget puts aside $31 billion total for education, a 1.4% increase.

Nonpublic schools get $295 million of that, an increase of 18%.

For nonpublic schools, the biggest item is mandated services — things like taking standardized tests, keeping records of students’ vaccinations, and taking attendance. Rabbi Moshe Sherer, z”l, the legendary president of Agudath Israel, was one of those who had come up with the idea for government to fund mandated services.

Mandated services is one of the only state programs that the state is liable for the entire amount. They have tried at times to drop or limit the funding for it, but there has always been pushback. As of now, the state is still responsible for funding mandated services.

They allocated $193 million, which is anticipated to cover all the needs. However, if the actual costs submitted by the schools is more than that, the state is on the hook for everything. They’ll do some budgetary gimmicks, maybe they’ll pass it on to the next budgetary year, but they are on the hook for the full cost.

That $193 million is the same as last year — it is anticipated to cover the full cost of mandated services.

So where is the 18% increase in private-school funding?

The increase is in some other programs.

One huge one is called NPSE — NonPublic School Safety Equipment which comes in at $45 million in the executive budget, triple the amount over previous years. The program started about six or seven years ago, at $4.5 million. It was done simply for security items, like intercoms and guards. And then it was increased to $15 million, where it has stayed for the last four or five years. At the same time the state also expanded what it can be used for, which includes reimbursement for safety items unrelated to security, like carbon monoxide detectors, smoke detectors, fire extinguishers, etc.

If you divided the $15 million we have been getting by the approximately 400,000 students in private schools in New York, it comes out to around $37 per student. By comparison, New Jersey spends $175 per pupil on security.

A few years ago, we made a big push for it to be doubled from $15 million to $30 million. This was after the attacks in Monsey and Jersey City. We had good momentum, and we may have gotten it in 2020. But then COVID hit, and everything ground to a halt. So it stayed at $15 million.

Last year, when the original budgets came in, they projected a $15 billion deficit for the state, which had gone through COVID. So our focus was just on saving what we had; nobody would dream of trying to get an increase. At the end, federal money came in to boost the state, but it was kind of too late to really get an increase.

Then, for the upcoming budget, we started working last summer on this.

Firstly, we said we want to increase the money for this program. But at the same time, there are a lot of schools, Jewish and Catholic, that have old buildings and need critical repair. Especially in light of Trinity Lutheran, a U.S. Supreme Court case from 2017 that ruled that Missouri couldn’t deny a religious school a grant from a program that resurfaced playgrounds, we felt we were on safe ground asking for money that could be used for capital repairs.

So we asked for a tripling of the program, from $15 million to $45 million, and for allowing the funds to also be used for critical repair and maintenance of school facilities. For example, if a school finds asbestos or lead, now it can use these funds to remove asbestos or lead. We are thankful that our request was reflected in the Governor’s budget proposal.

Where are the other increases in this year’s budget?

There’s increased funding for STEM programs — science, technology, engineering, and math. TEACH NYS, of the Orthodox Union, has done a lot of work for the STEM program. This year the allocation is up to $55 million, from around $40 million last year.

I remember speaking to people from TEACH NYS when that program was first implemented. It was around five years ago and was just $5 million. But they said the goal was to get their foot in the door by starting the program, and they believed it could be expanded from there. And it seems to have expanded like tenfold since then.

That’s right.

Practically speaking, how does that STEM money flow to yeshivos?

There are a few conditions: the teachers have to have certain certifications. They have to also get paid commensurate to what local public school teachers are getting paid, and those teachers cannot teach any religious studies.

And another nonpublic-school item on the budget this year is $25 million for the “securing communities against hate crimes” program. It goes for capital-related security needs, not just for schools, but for camps and other places at risk of hate crimes. This is a competitive grant, where each institution can get up to $50,000 per facility.

The $25 million is the same amount as last year. So for that program and the mandated services, the allocation in the executive budget is the same as last year. For the NPSE and STEM, there are nice increases.

And we had great coalition partners in our advocacy, like the Catholic Conference and TEACH NYS. We had personal meetings with Governor Hochul and with budget director Robert Mujica.

The budget still has to go through the Assembly and the Senate. What do you think these four items will look like when the final budget passes: will they look as they do now, be reduced or increased?

Of course nothing’s final until it passes. But we have a lot of support in the Legislature, and I don’t see any reason why the Legislature would remove any of these. They may increase a bit, but I don’t see them being cut.

How would you rate your satisfaction level in the executive budget’s funding of your priorities?

Certainly, compared to previous years, we’re satisfied.

What we’d like to see more than anything else is something that goes directly to parents, like a tax credit. We talk about a tuition crisis, and we want to put money in the hands of parents.

The political environment is not really great for that right now in New York. But that’s something we’ve long been hoping for.

Is there any chance, considering the political realities and the opposition of teachers unions, that you see this happening in New York state in the next, say, five years?

Five years is too far to predict. You know, it happened in Illinois, where nobody thought it would happen, but there was a perfect storm, and the moment came. So if the right moment comes…

Avi Schnall, who has your job in New Jersey, lobbied successfully for Lakewood to give COVID stimulus funds to yeshivah parents who had suffered financial hardship due to the pandemic. Have you been lobbying for this in New York, and do you see any chance of this happening in New York?

We are looking into it, but New York and New Jersey are in very different situations, particularly Lakewood. I can’t say I’m confident it’s going to happen, but you never know.

This would have to be done by the city, not by the state. The state has already spent its stimulus funds, and given them to the cities and counties. So this would have to be done by localities.

The Lakewood town and school boards are wholly different than localities in New York.

Don’t get me wrong. I’m not playing down Avi’s achievement; a lot of effort went into it, and he did great work making it happen. But the realities of Lakewood and New York are different.

And there are also some things we have that they don’t.

For example, New Jersey gives much less for special ed than New York does. And New York gives for mandated services.

Avi and I have a friendly competition. Of course we pull for each other and talk all the time. But each situation is different.

Being from Buffalo, I don’t think Hochul had much connection with the Orthodox community before she became Governor. But you’ve dealt with her and her staff in the five months since she took office. How would you say her relationship has been with the frum community since she took office?

It’s been excellent. We’ve had two big asks, and she’s come through on both of them: We had the veto of a bill on Blooming Grove that would have made it harder for frum people to move in, and now the executive budget. So it’s been a really excellent relationship.

Any final comments?

The battle is not over until the budget is passed. People should please advocate, by writing to their senators and assembly members, to support their nonpublic schools.

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rborchardt@hamodia.com