New York Mayor Bill de Blasio implored state lawmakers in Albany to approve his expansion of universal pre-kindergarten programs through a tax on the city's wealthiest citizens.
Speaking Monday to members of the legislature's local government committee, de Blasio pushed for five years of funding.
The five-year cost would be $2.6 billion, he said.
"We need a dedicated revenue stream to start it," said city budget director Dean Fuleihan, who appeared with the mayor. De Blasio's tax would be on New Yorkers who make more than $500,000 annually.
Gov. Andrew Cuomo in his budget message last week called for statewide universal pre-K while reducing taxes by $2.2 billion. State lawmakers from New York City, however, said Cuomo's plan would leave the city short.
"We need a steady funding stream independent of the whims of Albany," said Sen. Diane Savino, a Democrat who represents the city's Staten Island borough and parts of Brooklyn. "We don't want to have to come back hat in hand every year and be subject to this push-me, pull-me between the city and the state."
Anthony Figliola, a vice president at Empire Government Strategies in Uniondale, N.Y., said that while de Blasio is already elected, state lawmakers must face voters later this year and getting them to approve a tax hike of any kind will be difficult.
"Cuomo made a very good attempt to offer a solution to give de Blasio a win before his first 100 days even ended," said Figliola, a former deputy supervisor of Brookhaven, N.Y. "Not one politician from here to Shanghai will want to even talk about a tax increase until the day after the election."
De Blasio also acknowledged other budgetary challenges, including the most daunting - expired labor contracts. "The challenges around the labor contracts are incredibly problematic," he said. "But we are aware that we need to make this [pre-K] change now. We need funding entirely separate in a lockbox. This is not connected through structural architecture in any way to the labor contracts.
"We're adding a strategic component to the equation. The other matters have to be addressed separately."
Nicole Gelinas, a senior fellow at the free-market think tank Manhattan Institute for Policy Research, said there's a definite link between pre-K funding and teacher contracts. "If Mayor de Blasio gives retroactive pay to teachers, that's going to raise the cost of pre-K," she said. "He said it's completely separate, but no way is that a reasonable take on the situation."
City Comptroller Scott Stringer, who spoke after de Blasio, said the city in recent years has been able to "mask a structural imbalance" through one-off measures such as taxi-medallion revenues and year-end surpluses.
De Blasio, who took office Jan. 1 after serving a four-year term as public advocate, is expected to present his fiscal 2015 budget to the 51-member City Council early next month.
According to de Blasio, as the number of children enrolled increases, expansion costs recede, with $6 million in expansion costs in year two, and the full $340 million in funding dedicated to ongoing operations thereafter.
The analysis prepared by the Office of Management and Budget, Department of Education, Administration for Children's Services, and the Department of Health and Mental Hygiene has determined that the city is prepared to provide free, high-quality, full-day pre-K to the 73,250 children eligible for it by the 2015-2016 school year, beginning with 53,604 in September 2014.
De Blasio reiterated his desire to earmark $1 billion from the city's five pension funds, whose combined value is about $140 billion, to so-called affordable housing, subject to the approval of the pension boards. The move could generate some controversy in the capital markets.
"That's fine if they're doing it for a rate of return. It's not good if they're doing it for a social goal," said Gelinas.
Moody's Investors Service rates the city's general obligation bonds Aa2, while Fitch Ratings and Standard & Poor's rate them AA.
