Gov. Kathy Hochul (D-NY) proposed the state spend roughly $2 billion on the immigrant crisis plaguing its biggest city on Tuesday as part of her annual budget.
The proposed amount would help shelter immigrants, provide funding for employment-related services, funding for medical and legal bills, and staffing for the National Guard, which is helping assist with the crisis.
The state would also take over the funding of nearly 5,000 beds, including 3,000 that already exist in shelters and 2,000 more that will be housed at the Floyd Bennett Field in Brooklyn.
“We will invest record resources in our schools and provide aid to New York City as it continues to shelter tens of thousands of migrants who have arrived in our country over the last two years,” Hochul said in the budget proposal. “We’ll do all of this without raising income taxes because it isn’t fair to ask New Yorkers to pay any more than they already do.”
The $233 billion budget proposal also includes a raise in school funding, an increase in funding for Medicaid, and funding for public safety. It does not include an increase in taxes that progressive state lawmakers have asked for.
The $2 billion allotment for the migrant crisis is less than the $10 billion price tag that New York Mayor Eric Adams projected, but it is double the budget approved for fiscal 2024. Adams initially expected the migrant crisis to cost his city $12 billion, but he refined the total last week.
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Hochul and Adams also are expected to push the federal government on funding, which the White House claims must be approved by Congress. Recent meetings among Adams, the White House, and Congress have not yielded any results.
Adams is expected to roll out his budget proposal for fiscal 2025 on Tuesday afternoon, which is expected to cost the city an estimated $109 billion. Final versions of the budgets are required by April 1 for the state and July 1 for the city, but budget negotiations often extend past the deadlines.
