State budget bills include handful of local initiatives

PHOTOGRAPHER: Bob Conner

State budget bills scheduled to be passed today include funding for a host of local initiatives, according to legislative officials.

The bills include $122.8 million in capital funding for the University at Albany and $39.3 million for Schenectady County Community College, according to information from the Senate Finance Committee provided by the office of Sen. Hugh Farley, R-Niskayuna.

The funding includes $54 million for a new UAlbany business school which Farley was supporting, $30 million for Campus Center expansion and improvements, $33.8 million for “critical maintenance campus-wide,” and $5 million for phase two of “campus revitalization.”

Assembly Majority Leader Ron Canestrari, D-Cohoes, said he was pleased with the capital aid UAlbany is getting, even though a proposed football stadium was not funded.

SCCC’s funding, according to Senate figures, includes $11.9 million for a public safety/business center, $11.4 million for a parking garage, $4.9 million for “building renovations,” $3.6 million for “infrastructure improvements,” and $2.35 million for a campus connecting walkway.

The State University of New York at Cobleskill will receive more than $40 million for two campus projects, according to the office of Sen. James Seward, R-Milford. It will get $38.2 million for its agriculture, science and technology building and $3.7 million for an environmental, science and technology building. It will also get “$7 million in critical maintenance funding.” Seward’s office said.

The budget also includes $46.5 million for the Advanced Micro Devices project in Saratoga County’s Luther Forest, including $45 million for infrastructure, according to a spokesman for Canestrari, Kevin Frazier. A Senate majority spokesman, Scott Reif, confirmed this.

Frazier said another $4 million is going to the Watervliet Arsenal. Also included in the budget is $350,000 for the Schenectady Free Health Clinic, said Farley spokesman David Smingler.

The budget includes money for an information technology project at local health centers, Smingler said, including $300,000 for Hometown Health in Schenectady and $400,000 for the Whitney Young Center in Albany.

But on another issue, the AIDS Council of Northeastern New York said in a statement Tuesday that the budget includes a 2 percent cut of more than $2 million in New York’s AIDS Institute budget, which means “the AIDS Council of Northeastern New York and Whitney M. Young, Jr. HIV Health Services will see cuts in critical funding. The AIDS Council and Whitney Young denounce the cuts, the first in New York state AIDS services in 25 years of the epidemic.”