The New York State Assembly recently passed the State Fiscal Year (SFY) 2023-2024 budget. The spending plan comes in at $232.9 billion with goals of addressing the current housing crisis, minimum wage, and public health, alongside record-breaking investments in school aid.
“No one working full time should be living in poverty, which is why my colleagues and I in the Assembly Majority have consistently fought to raise the minimum wage,” stated New York State Assembly Speaker Carl E. Heastie of the minimum wage. “In this year’s state budget, we are once again committed to raising the minimum wage in our state to return the purchasing power that New Yorkers lost to the dramatic increase in inflation over the last year. But we must go further, indexing the state’s minimum wage to inflation will keep workers from being left behind in the future. We also need to ensure that our state has one uniform minimum wage and should not be subject to exceptions, and that the wage rate for home care workers must remain at least $3 above the minimum wage and rise with the rest of the state. I look forward to working with our partners in government to deliver this pay raise to New York’s workers.”
Of the minimum wage increase, the primary concern remains indexing the minimum wage and addressing the sharp rise in cost of living many New Yorkers are currently dealing with.
“This budget is an investment in our people and in our state,” New York State Assemblymember and Ways and Means Committee Chair Helene E. Weinstein remarked of the budget. “Too many New Yorkers have struggled financially over the last several years and this budget will help them- from addressing the housing crisis and putting homeownership within reach for more New Yorkers, to preventing increases in SUNY and CUNY tuition as well as increases in MTA fares, to making record investments in funding for schools.”
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