• Creating an expanded property tax relief program, the Middle Class STAR Rebate Program, which targets its benefits to middle-income homeowners.

• Creating the Property Taxpayer Protection Act to further reduce your tax burden.

• Establish a $30 million Dairy Assistance Program providing direct payment to dairy farmers.

• Establish a cap of 10% on the amount a base agricultural assessment can change from the value of the assessment in the preceding year.

• Provide financial assistance to counties updating their farmland protection plan.

• Require the Department of Agriculture and Markets to study the impact of “hauling costs” of milk after it has left the farm.

• Provide funding for the establishment and construction of greenmarkets to farmers as a result of excessive weather.

• Establish the Agriculture Assistance Program that provides financial assistance to farmers with crop loss as result of excessive wet weather conditions.

• Enact the “Sex Offender Management and Treatment Act,” establishing civil commitment of sexually violent predators in a secure treatment facility. Creates a new crime of “sexually motivated felony” and establishes a new Office of Sex Offender Management to develop comprehensive standards and policies for the evaluation, treatment, and management of sex offenders and act as an advocate to sex offender victims.

• Enact “Katie’s Law” by creating the crimes of Aggravated Vehicular Homicide, a class B felony, punishable by up to 25 years imprisonment and Aggravated Vehicular Assault, a class C felony, punishable by up to 15 years imprisonment.

• Create the crimes of Sex Trafficking and Labor Trafficking to specifically criminalize the methods used by traffickers to induce or compel their victims into sexual or labor servitude.

• Prohibit computer communications with minors, either in writing or images, which contain explicit descriptions or narrative accounts of nudity or sexual conduct, which is harmful to minors, whereby means of such communication, a person entices such minor to engage in a sex act.

• Appropriate $2.3 million for the administration of the Empire Zone Program.

• Include businesses located in federal empowerment zones, enterprise communities and renewal communities as being eligible to receive loans under the Excelsior Linked Deposit Program.

• Establish a Small Business Energy Loan Program to offer zero or low interest loans to small businesses in economically distressed areas for energy efficient activities, upgrades and technology installations.

• Extend the “Power for Jobs” program and the “Energy Cost Savings Benefit” program from June 30, 2007 to June 30, 2008.

• Workers’ Compensation reforms were enacted to increase the maximum weekly benefit for injured workers, cap permanent partial disability benefit payments and achieve substantial cost savings for employers.

• Create the “New York First” commitment to help promote New York State businesses.

• Establish the “Healthy Schools Act,” creating nutrition standards for food sold in schools, establishing media outreach and childhood obesity prevention and physical activity programs, requiring local school wellness policies, and mandating all school districts to provide breakfast programs.

• Extend the authority of financial aid officers to adjust a student’s TAP (Tuition Assistance Program) award based on a change in circumstances, including catastrophic illness incurred by the applicant or active military duty of the applicant or spouse.

2007-08 139 AD School District Aid Increases
(Compared to 2006-07 Aid)