ALBANY, N.Y. – Using federal stimulus money to avoid layoffs at schools is going to create a shortfall even more difficult for states and schools to contend with when that money runs out, according to a first-of-its-kind study released Monday.
New York alone will see a $2 billion shortfall after stimulus money ends in 2011-12, and that could drive up some of the nation's highest local property taxes another 8 percent, according to the analysis by state Comptroller Thomas DiNapoli.
"This isn't just a New York problem," DiNapoli said in an early and detailed analysis of school aid after federal stimulus funds run out in 2011-12. "Other states across the country will face a similar dilemma if they used stimulus money to plug budget holes instead of paying for one-time expenses.
"Stimulus funding is not a recurring revenue; it shouldn't be used for recurring expenses."
A Government Accountability Office report released a week ago found 63 percent of states in a representative sample planned to use 50 percent of their school stimulus money to retain jobs. Other uses were nonrecurring items including equipment.
In July, the GAO cautioned that many states facing deep deficits were using stimulus dollars to fill budget holes and avoid layoffs, rather than reforms that could mean longer-term savings or programs such as building new schools.
The U.S. Education Department encouraged schools to diversify the use of stimulus money to ward off huge budget gaps when it runs out, said spokeswoman Sandra Abrevaya.
"When one saves a job, it doesn't mean one saves it indefinitely," she said.
In California, the stimulus was credited with saving or creating 62,000 jobs in public schools and state universities. Utah reported saving about 2,600 teaching jobs. In both states, education jobs represented about two-thirds of the total number of jobs said to be created or saved by the stimulus. Missouri reported more than 8,500 school jobs, Minnesota more than 5,900. In Michigan, where officials said 19,500 jobs have been saved or created, three out of four were in education.
What was it people did not get when Bush was removing permanently jobs from this nation?
