Assembly opposes proposed tuition hike, wants more school aid

ALBANY — Setting up a budget fight on education, the Democrat-led state Assembly said Thursday it opposed Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo’s call for a tuition hike at state universities and favored boosting aid to K-12 schools by $2.1 billion — more than double the increase the governor suggested.

Assembly Democrats also said they want to fully restore money that was taken from school districts after the 2008 stock market meltdown. The lost money, known as the Gap Elimination Adjustment or GEA, has been restored in bits and pieces, but $434 million is still outstanding — $117 million of it for Long Island schools. Both the Assembly and Republican-controlled Senate back full restoration this year while Cuomo wants it done over two years.

The legislators’ proposals effectively establish the parameters of this year’s battle over education within the state budget, which lawmakers are supposed to adopt by April 1.

Assembly Democrats want a two-year tuition freeze for the State University of New York and City University of New York systems. This stands in contrast to Cuomo and the SUNY Board of Trustees, who back another five years of tuition increases of up to $300 annually.

Assembly Speaker Carl Heastie (D-Bronx) said the Assembly plan would “ensure that an affordable college education is within reach of every student and family in our state.”

Besides freezing tuition, Heastie’s plan would boost grants available to low- and moderate-income students and funds available for campus infrastructure.

In an email, Cuomo spokesman Rich Azzopardi said: “Education spending is at an all-time high due to investments made during the course of this administration. We will review the Assembly’s legislative proposal when it’s released.”

In 2011, Cuomo and lawmakers enacted a proposal they called a “rational tuition” policy that hiked SUNY tuition $300 annually for five straight years, resulting in about a 30 percent tuition hike. The governor said the planned increases gave families and students the ability to plan their finances as opposed to the sporadic — and occasionally large — tuition hikes enacted over the years. Now, he wants to renew the policy another five years.

“To keep tuition low and predictable and infuse additional funds into our SUNY and CUNY systems, the governor proposes extending the 2011 legislation for an additional five years,” the Cuomo administration said in its budget briefing in January.

Assembly Democrats also proposed boosting spending on elementary and secondary education by $2.1 billion (9 percent) for the 2016-17 fiscal year. Cuomo has proposed $991 million. Current spending is about 23.9 billion annually.

Senate Republicans are expected to unveil their budget proposals Friday. GOP spokesman Scott Reif said they will “strongly support both education and higher education” and support full payback of GEA funds.