Governor Andrew Cuomo is proposing a $137 billion state budget that would increase spending about 2 percent without increasing taxes.

It includes some fee hikes for New Yorkers.

Cuomo's budget proposal to the Legislature provides 4.4 percent more aid to schools.

Municipal aid outside New York City is proposed to stay level, at a time when many counties and smaller local governments worry they could become insolvent.

The budget also provides some creative funding of Cuomo's school reforms including longer school days.

In addition, the Cuomo administration has proposed suspending the driver's license of anyone who owes more than $10,000 in overdue taxes.
   
As part of its proposal for the fiscal year starting April 1, the administration is calling for the new program to help with collection enforcement of "past-due tax liabilities."
   
Those are described as "fixed and final," where the taxpayer has exhausted their rights to administrative and court review.
   
It would be modeled after the state program using license suspension to compel child support payments.
   
The budget proposed Tuesday includes increasing the civil penalty for possessing unstamped or illegally stamped cigarettes from $150 to $600 per carton.

The Cuomo administration also wants to spend almost $36 million in the coming fiscal year to implement new restrictions on guns that were passed last week.
   
The money would be used to add state police staff to oversee recertification of all pistol licenses every five years and register formerly legal rifles now categorized as assault weapons.
   
Troopers would also help improve safety at schools.
   
Officials estimate there are about a million of those rifles owned by New Yorkers and say registration will be free.

The law calls for registration within a year starting April 15.
   
The budget proposed Tuesday includes nearly $33 million in capital spending for a new statewide database with gun registrations and information like felony convictions or mental illness determinations that would disqualify someone from having a gun.

See Cuomo's news release

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