Begging fo dollars

By Jack Arpey 

Spectrum News 

Mayors from all across New York state gathered in Albany for what is known as Tin Cup Day, which is exactly what it sounds like — their opportunity to hold out a figurative tin cup and ask the state for more funding to address community needs.

Tin Cup Day is a longtime Albany tradition, and while there were parts of Wednesday’s conversations that felt very familiar, there were certainly fresh dynamics at play.

Most notably, the presence New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani and his calls for tax hikes on the wealthy, and what he described as a push for the city to be more fairly compensated by the state, while upstate mayors continued a years-long drive for more AIM funding for their own cities.

AIM stands for aid to municipalities, and the funds help local governments with operating expenses and in part, help make up for the large swaths of land in New York’s cities that aren’t taxable, including state offices, colleges, churches and more.

While upstate cities have their own AIM issues and have long complained that the money is stagnant and inadequate, New York City hasn’t received any AIM at all in years, after the city was cut out of the program in 2010.

Mamdani wants that to change, and he emphasized that he’s not simply asking for more money from the same pot, but calling for an increase in income taxes on the wealthy and an increase in the corporate tax rate to help the city deal with its budget shortfall and fiscal needs.

He also wants to see less of New York City’s tax dollars flowing to poorer upstate cities, tax dollars that are generated by the city’s economic engine and wealthy residents.

At the hearing, upstate representatives like Assemblymember Pat Burke, who chairs the cities committee, pressed Mamdani on how his plan would impact the rest of the state.

Burke posed that smaller struggling municipalities like Dunkirk don’t care if the city has technically been shortchanged when it comes to state funding; they are concerned that any restructuring led by the largest city in the country will leave them in an even worse spot.

“These people have genuine concern, and when they hear the things you are saying, they're like I'm getting even less because I can't compete with that type of power,” Burke said while questioning Mamdani.

Mamdani pointed out that the ideal execution of his plan would come with additional revenue.

"I think that for too long we have treated the pie as if it can only stay the same. What I'm talking about is increasing revenue by taxing the wealthiest that little bit more, millionaires who aren't sending $20,000 to Dunkirk,” Mamdani replied.

The traditional panel of mayors serving the state's larger cities outside of New York City implored state lawmakers to bolster their AIM funding.

The panel was made up of Mayor Sean Ryan of Buffalo, Mike Spano of Yonkers, Malik Evans of Rochester, Sharon Owens of Syracuse, Dorcey Applyrs of Albany, and, for the first time, Robert Restaino of Niagara Falls.

AIM money was frozen at 2012 levels for years until modest increases in the past two budgets. Ryan said upstate cities don’t simply need a modest bump, they need an increase that will adequately make up for a decade and a half in which costs skyrocketed and funding was frozen, and address deficits in these cities, which he blames in part on that freeze.

“The upstate cities are all facing very similar problems, aging housing stock, aging infrastructure, a lot of flight over the generations and if we want to rebuild and become the city of choice for our regions, this is the kind of money we need,” said Ryan, who also posed a legislative package to assist the city of Buffalo in closing its structural deficit.

If approved, the program would last three years and would combine state assistance with a local tax hike.

“All of the extra money used to pay off the structural deficit, it’s all gone. We have zero money in our reserve account, so we’re carrying about $60 million of deficit,” he said.

It was the first Tin Cup Day for three of the traditional upstate mayors, Ryan, Applyrs and Owens of Syracuse.