What's happening
This bill requires larger cities, counties, towns, and villages in New York to annually submit multi-year financial plans to the state comptroller.
Why it matters
Requires more detailed financial transparency. By mandating multi-year financial plans, the bill ensures that local governments provide a clearer picture of their future fiscal health, not just their current budgets. This helps spot long-term challenges and prevents short-term fixes that can cause bigger problems down the line.
Forces municipalities to consider long-term impacts of decisions. Cities, counties, towns, and villages must now forecast expenditures (including salaries, benefits, and debt), projected revenues (like property and sales taxes), and planned use of one-time funds—encouraging more responsible budgeting and discouraging reliance on temporary revenue sources.
Promotes accountability and proactive management. The requirement to identify actions for long-term fiscal stability—such as cost-saving initiatives, improved management, and potential shared services—pushes local governments to actively plan for efficiency and sustainability, not just report numbers.
Gives state oversight a broader, forward-looking view. The state comptroller will receive comprehensive, standardized information to better monitor local fiscal practices, potentially allowing the state to intervene earlier if a municipality faces looming financial trouble.
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Who cares
Headline styles
Require Multi-Year City Budgets
Plain English, a few words. Used as the page title.
Sponsors
1 Multi-sponsor
History
- Referred to local governments
- Referred to local governments
Full text
1 pageUnderlined is new[Struck] is removedOfficial text on nysenate.gov ↗
STATE OF NEW YORK
1478
2017-2018 Regular Sessions
IN ASSEMBLY
January 12, 2017
Introduced by M. of A. ZEBROWSKI, SOLAGES, JAFFEE, RAIA, BLAKE, STECK, BRABENEC -- Multi-Sponsored by -- M. of A. COOK, McKEVITT -- read once and referred to the Committee on Local Governments
AN ACT to amend the general municipal law, in relation to requiring municipalities to submit a multi-year financial plan to the comptroller
The People of the State of New York, represented in Senate and Assembly, do enact as follows:
Section 1. The general municipal law is amended by adding a new section 40 to read as follows:
§ 40. Multi-year financial plan. Except if already required by law, every city, county and every town and village with annual budgets in excess of ten million dollars shall annually prepare and submit a multi-year financial plan to the comptroller. Such multi-year financial plans shall be filed with the comptroller by the chief financial officer of the municipality no later than one hundred twenty days after the adoption of the municipality's budget. The multi-year financial plan shall cover the proposed budget, the next succeeding fiscal year and the two fiscal years thereafter. The multi-year financial plan shall at minimum include projected employment levels, projected annual expenditures for personal service, fringe benefits, non-personal services and debt service; appropriate reserve fund amounts; estimated annual revenues including projected property tax rates, the value of the taxable real property and resulting tax levy, annual growth in sales tax and non-property tax revenues, and the proposed use of one-time revenue sources. The financial plan shall also identify actions necessary to achieve and maintain long-term fiscal stability, including, but not limited to, improved management practices, initiatives to minimize or reduce operating expenses, and potential shared services agreements with other municipalities. The comptroller may, upon written request from a municipality, grant an extension of up to thirty days.
§ 2. This act shall take effect immediately.
EXPLANATION--Matter in italics (underscored) is new; matter in brackets
[ ] is old law to be omitted.
LBD04339-01-7
Reflowed for reading: line numbers and page breaks removed. Cite the official text.
Summaries, headlines and scores are AI-generated from the official bill text. How we score bills. Source: NYS Open Legislation.