Senate Bill S4988

                                 BILL NUMBER:  S4988

 TITLE OF BILL :  An act to amend the tax law, in relation to
providing a tax credit for certain newly hired SUNY college faculty
members and administrators

 PURPOSE OR GENERAL IDEA OF BILL :

Provides a tax credit for certain newly hired SUNY college faculty
members and administrators as a mechanism to help the State University
of New York diversify its faculty and professional staff.

 SUMMARY OF SPECIFIC PROVISIONS :

Section 1. Section 606 of the tax law is amended by adding a new
subsection (ccc) to read as follows:

(ccc) Employee relocation; SUNY campus credit.

(1) For taxable years beginning January 1st, 2019, a resident taxpayer
who is a newly hired faculty member or administrator, who relocated to
New York to work at a SUNY campus, and who is a minority, shall be
allowed a credit against the tax imposed by this article equal to 30%
of his or her gross income. Such qualified persons shall have been
hired to work at any state university campus excluding those campuses
in Nassau, Westchester, and Putnam counties. For purposes of this
              

section, the term "newly hired" shall mean faculty members and
administrators who are not currently employed by SUNY.

(2) If the amount of the credit allowed under this subsection for any
taxable year shall exceed the taxpayer's tax for such year, the excess
shall be treated as an overpayment of tax to be credited or refunded
in accordance with the provisions of section 686 of this article,
provided, however, that no interest shall be paid thereon.

Section 2. This act shall take effect on immediately after it shall
become a law.

 JUSTIFICATION :

This legislation provides a tax credit of 30% of gross income for
certain newly hired SUNY college faculty members and administrators as
a mechanism to help the State University of New York diversify its
faculty and professional staff.

This legislation will help our State capitalize on our home-grown
talent before it is recruited elsewhere. Currently there are no Latino
college presidents in the SUNY system and out of its 80,000 plus
faculty members, only 3.2% are Latino.

The data for African American faculty and staff is slightly better.

At a time in our nation's and State history where there is a more
highly educated and trained Latino and African-American workforce,
there continues to be a blatant lack of diversity in our state
university system. Around the nation, states are recovering from the
Great Recession where funding to higher education was reduced, thereby
freeing up a wealth of talent that can be recruited into our SUNY
system. CUNY has been able to draw on world class and diverse faculty
and staff. However SUNY has a long road ahead to show improvements in
any effort to diversify its faculty and professional staff. Over
100,000 minorities attend SUNY's 64 campuses and those numbers are
increasing annually. It is important that the diverse student body is
witness to diverse faculty and staff due to well documented evidence
that this increases college retention and graduation rates.

For this reason alone, this is a mechanism that can be deployed to
assist SUNY in becoming a more diverse institution.

All across our planet the trend is for the labor force to go where the
jobs are. Excuses that minorities are uninterested in working in rural
or suburban communities are total fallacies. The real problem facing
diversity at SUNY is the absence of strong mechanism that will
capitalize on this global labor trend by searching, recruiting and
hiring diverse staff. This bill will provide an additional incentive
in the recruitment and hiring of qualified minority candidates.

 LEGISLATIVE HISTORY :

2016: S.7144-REFERRED TO INVESTIGATIONS AND GOVERNMENT
OPERATIONS/A.8036-referred to ways and means
2015: A.8036-referred to ways and means

 FISCAL IMPLICATIONS :

TBD.

 EFFECTIVE DATE :
This act shall take effect immediately.