Update: Budget Director Robert Mujica gave more details this afternoon about how the proposed aid for restaurants would work. See below. Syracuse, N.Y. — Restaurants that spent months in restrictive orange and red zones would be able to tap into $50 million in state aid, according to a proposal from Gov. Andrew Cuomo. The money would be part of Cuomo’s proposed 2021-2022 state budget, which he outlined today from Albany in unusually broad strokes with very few details. The extra help for restaurants hinges, in part, on New York getting $15 billion from Washington as part of President-elect Joe Biden’s massive Covid-19 rescue plan.  In his message from Albany today, Cuomo acknowledged that restaurants were among the businesses hit the hardest during the coronavirus pandemic. Even as other businesses opened and viral cases surged, the state shuttered restaurants for weeks during late 2020 and early 2021 because of fears about increased transmission.

“I did that with a very heavy heart,” Cuomo said today.

The proposal would allow qualifying restaurants who lost $40% in revenues to apply for $5,000 in tax credits for each worker hired back. That would be capped at $50,000, Budget Director Robert Mujica said. Other small businesses could apply for similar tax credits, he said.

But restaurants don’t have to wait until tax time. Restaurants that were shuttered in late 2020 can apply for those tax credits now to get payments out faster, Mujica said. Those advance payments would be reconciled at tax time, he said. The proposal is part of the governor’s annual spending plan, a multi-faceted set of legislation that includes everything from education aid to infrastructure money to ideas about legalizing marijuana. As of noon today, those proposed bills were not yet public. Instead of providing detailed budget information, Cuomo today argued that New York deserves a large slice of Biden’s $1.9 trillion plan.

The governor laid out two scenarios.

In one, New York would get $6 billion in Covid-19 relief from Washington. That wouldn’t plug the state’s $15 billion budget gap. To make up the $9 billion, the governor says the state would have to cut education funding, health care programs and money to local governments like Syracuse. In the second scenario, the state would fill the budget hole with $15 billion in federal aid. If that happens, he said, the state could afford a laundry list of program expansions, including more health care for poor people, aid to small businesses, lower-cost broadband to eligible families and an approved tax cut to the middle class. The proposal for the restaurants, which would include those in New York City, would happen under the $15 billion scenario. The state Legislature must approve the budget. The state’s fiscal year begins on April 1. Source: NYUP.com.