Assemblyman William Colton (D – Gravesend, Bensonhurst, Bath Beach, and Dyker Heights) has been appointed to the Higher Education Conference Budget Committee.

“At the Higher Education Budget Conference Committee, we are fighting to reject CUNY and SUNY tuition increases and restore the lost tuition monies to their budgets, increase opportunity programs by 20%, and to increase the TAP grant by $1000 per student. We also are fighting to restore monies to the BUNDY aid to private colleges to permit them to make scholarship grants to needy students, provide capital grants to CUNY and SUNY campuses for critical maintenance of the building and new capital projects, etc,” Colton stated.

“The Higher Education Budget Conference Committee is also fighting to keep these and other improvements in the state budget, thanks to federal stimulus monies. With the stimulus monies, we can remove the obstacles that our college students have faced under Covid-19. I strongly believe investing in college education, especially in CUNY and SUNY, is the best economic investment and jobs producer NY can make. It is NY’s best economic growth engine,” Colton continued.

“I strongly believe that we cannot place burdens on middle- and lower-income taxpayers but that it is time for the wealthiest Americans and large corporations to pay their fair share of taxes. Instead of cutting education funding for our children, we must ask millionaires to pay higher tax rates. The higher tax rates for the rich will provide funds to stimulate the economy that got damaged greatly during virus lockdown. The wealthiest Americans should give up a few loopholes in the tax code so the rest of us won’t have to pick up the tab,” Colton added.