As the clock ticks toward an end-of-month state budget deadline, Gov. Cuomo still holds City University of New York students as a chit in unfathomable bargaining with Mayor de Blasio.
Their futures depend on Cuomo continuing to provide full state funding for CUNY in the same way that he fully funds the State University of New York.
In January, Cuomo proposed a devastating $485 million cut to state funding for CUNY’s 11 four-year colleges, amounting to 30% of their funding. He called for the city to pick up that bill.
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The blow landed like a sucker punch, because the state has for four decades accepted its obligation to support CUNY as a public higher education system that parallels SUNY in the five boroughs.
More recently, Albany has hit students with $300 annual tuition hikes on the commitment that the state would fund the remainder of CUNY and SUNY senior college budgets.
Cuomo’s move would shift almost a half-billion dollars of that cost onto the city — helping the governor say that he had met a vow to hold spending increases to 2% a year.
“HEY, BLAZ, HOPE YOU PLAYED POWERBALL!” roared back the Daily News on behalf of 274,000 matriculated students who are counting on CUNY and its affordable tuition for a future.
Taking away with one hand and giving less with the other, the governor said he would pony up $240 million to cover the additional expense of retroactive pay increases for faculty and staff who’ve worked without a contract for going on six years.
He also scrambled to find higher ground with a sudden promise that, magically, his $485 million demand “won’t cost New York City a penny.” He and de Blasio would find that huge sum in administrative efficiencies, Cuomo announced.
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Since then, there has been silence from the governor, no sign of a genuine search for cost-saving measures and no hope that reducing duplicative CUNY and SUNY bureaucracies would free an amount of money anywhere near Cuomo’s target.
CUNY Chancellor James Milliken told the Legislature last month that he would have to close some campuses entirely were Cuomo’s cuts to endure. On Wednesday, his top finance official told the City Council: “A 30% cut to our senior colleges — it’s hard to fathom how that would be implemented.”
Unless blunted by still-to-be found efficiencies or money from de Blasio, CUNY students face a 50% tuition hike, to $9,500 a year.
These numbers are nothing more than preposterous horror stories that are never going to come true. On that front alone, Cuomo should give up the fight.
He’s right that the monster bureaucracies of CUNY and SUNY resist reform. But Albany has a duty to force change in a more orderly process that protects students and treats staff fairly.
