Governor Cuomo’s eighth State of the State address comes as New York faces a growing state deficit, complicated by a possible revenue hit from the new federal tax law. But we’ll have to wait until later this month to find out what the governor plans to do about it.
That’s when the state budget is released, which will have to close a revenue gap between the amount of money New York is taking in and what it’s ongoing programs will cost. The governor’s budget office estimates the gap at about $4 billion. A more recent estimate from Comptroller Thomas DiNapoli says it could possibly be as high as $7 billion. That’s just to get to zero, to fund existing operations without adding anything new.
The deficit amounts to about six percent of state spending.