Gov. Andrew Cuomo is due to release his state budget plan this week, as the state confronts the largest budget deficit the governor has faced in his decade in office, much of it due to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic.
The state was already facing a $6 billion structural deficit when the fiscal year began last April. Cuomo had been managing some of the shortfall by practicing some bookkeeping tricks, including delaying Medicaid payments due to health care providers for a few days at the end of the past two fiscal years, so that they fell into the next fiscal year.