Albany Puts Environmental Protection Fund on Life Support
Feb 9th, 2009 by Jervey
Tough news from the capitol, courtesy of Environmental Advocates of NY:
Last Tuesday night, New York State lawmakers passed a measure to plug the current year’s budget hole at the expense of the Environmental Protection Fund (and a lot of other worthy programs, too). The “deficit reduction bill” cut the Fund by $50 million.
The agreed-to bill took some of the sting out of Governor Paterson’s original proposal by reducing the size of the Fund “sweep” —raiding environmental monies to help out the general treasury. By taking $25 million less cash than first proposed, some green projects will be completed during the remainder of this fiscal year, which ends on March 31st. So instead of turning off the spending spigot completely, spending will be reduced to a trickle.
The rest of the story here.