Albany, New York AIM Funding

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Article published January, 2025.

What State Funding does Albany Receive & is it Equitable?

Background

New York provides two streams of funding to cities - Aid and Incentives for Municipalities (AIM) and Temporary Municipal Assistance (TMA).  In Albany when we speak about receiving money from NY State these are two of the primary vehicles.  

Anyone can download the original data - the summary spreadsheet at the bottom shows the AIM and TMA funding for each city.  

Our goals were to understand this funding, compare Albany's funding versus other cities and determine if the funding is equitable or out of balance.

You can use the spreadsheet below to follow along with the analysis if you want.

Download Analysis Spreadsheet

Download a Microsoft Excel file that contains the original source data plus analysis that we have added to the sheet.

The Basics of AIM Funding

A few basic facts about AIM funding:

  • AIM funding has remained unchanged for each city for years.  The 2017-18 budget has the same funding by city as the 24-25 budget.  Note that leaders have attempted to give visibility to the situation; Albany, Schenectady and Troy Mayors Sheehan, McCarthy and Mantello wrote this op-ed (paywall) nearly a year ago.
  • 61 cities receive AIM payments, those cities have an aggregate population of 2.267 million people
  • New York City is not a part of the AIM program
  • Statewide AIM payments are $647 million and statewide TMA payments total $45 million.

AIM Funding Analysis

This brings up a few questions - is the distribution equitable?  And if the distribution is not equitable, how inequitable is it?  Let’s dig into the AIM program.  

The first thing that we will do is add in a population value (using US Census 2023 population figures) and examine the distribution of aid of the top 15 cities by population.

AIM Payments by City

AIM Payments by City
Municipality Population Enacted Budget AIM Payment ($)
City of Buffalo 274,678     161,285,233
City of Yonkers 207,657     108,215,479
City of Rochester 207,274        88,234,464
City of Syracuse 145,560        71,758,584
City of Albany 101,228        12,607,823
City of New Rochelle 83,742          6,162,927
City of Mount Vernon 71,168          7,155,691
City of Schenectady 68,544        11,205,994
City of Utica 63,607        16,110,473
City of White Plains 61,288          5,463,256
City of Troy 50,607        12,279,463
City of Niagara Falls 47,599        17,794,424
City of Binghamton 46,727          9,249,457
City of Long Beach 34,595          3,152,704
City of Ithaca 32,724          2,610,398
City of Poughkeepsie 31,772          4,248,021
City of Rome 31,652          9,083,340
City of Middletown 30,152          2,705,826
City of North Tonawanda 30,031          4,335,111
City of Saratoga Springs 28,544          1,649,701

Even the most casual examination suggests an imbalance in the funding.  For example, Albany has 70% of the population of Syracuse but receives 17% of the AIM funding.  Given this, let’s extend the analysis and look at AIM distribution on a per capita basis.

AIM Payments Per Capita by City

AIM Payments Per Capita by City
Municipality Population Enacted Budget AIM Payment ($) AIM Payments Per Capita ($)
City of Buffalo 274,678     161,285,233 $                        587
City of Yonkers 207,657     108,215,479 $                        521
City of Rochester 207,274        88,234,464 $                        426
City of Syracuse 145,560        71,758,584 $                        493
City of Albany 101,228        12,607,823 $                        125
City of New Rochelle 83,742          6,162,927 $                           74
City of Mount Vernon 71,168          7,155,691 $                        101
City of Schenectady 68,544        11,205,994 $                        163
City of Utica 63,607        16,110,473 $                        253
City of White Plains 61,288          5,463,256 $                           89
City of Troy 50,607        12,279,463 $                        243
City of Niagara Falls 47,599        17,794,424 $                        374
City of Binghamton 46,727          9,249,457 $                        198
City of Long Beach 34,595          3,152,704 $                           91
City of Ithaca 32,724          2,610,398 $                           80
City of Poughkeepsie 31,772          4,248,021 $                        134
City of Rome 31,652          9,083,340 $                        287
City of Middletown 30,152          2,705,826 $                           90
City of North Tonawanda 30,031          4,335,111 $                        144
City of Saratoga Springs 28,544          1,649,701 $                           58

The variability (and inequity) of the AIM funding stands out when looking at per capita distribution.  Statewide the AIM funding per capita is $285 per person ($647mm of funding for 2.267mm people).  

AIM Payments Per Capita, Cities Over 50,000

Given this there are winners and losers that are significantly above the average.  These are all cities with population greater than 50,000 listed with their Per Capita AIM payments.

Municipality AIM Payments Per Capita ($)
City of Buffalo $                        587
City of Yonkers $                        521
City of Rochester $                        426
City of Syracuse $                        493
City of Albany $                        125
City of New Rochelle $                           74
City of Mount Vernon $                        101
City of Schenectady $                        163
City of Utica $                        253
City of White Plains $                           89
City of Troy $                        243

Perhaps there are reasons or a rationalization behind the variability, perhaps it is just a historical thing that is perpetuated to current day.   It is a struggle to look at the data and see that there is a rational, explainable basis for the AIM distribution variability.  In addition, this is a funding stream that has remained constant so the unfairness to cities such as Albany has compounded over time.  Let’s try to quantify this unfairness and see if it is material.

AIM Payments vs a Hypothetical Equitable Distribution

Above we demonstrated that the average AIM funding is around $285/capita.  What if all cities received AIM funding at this consistent rate?  What if all cities received this rate for the past 7 budget cycles?  How would the actual distribution of AIM funds differ from this hypothetical scenario?

Let’s extend the table with a couple of fields -

  • Total AIM payments from 2017-18 to 2023-24 - this is the Enacted Budget AIM Payment x 7 years, recall that AIM payments have not changed for at least 7 years
  • Hypothetical Total AIM Payments 2017-18 to 2023-24 at $285/capita rate - population x 7 (years) x $285 (the statewide per capita AIM distribution rate)
  • Actual vs Hypothetical Difference - (negative numbers) are bad - positive numbers suggest a city that has received more than their fair share
Municipality Population Enacted Budget AIM Payment ($) AIM Payments Per Capita ($) Total AIM Payments 2017-18 to 2023-24 Hypothetical Total AIM Payments 2017-18 to 2023-24 at $285/capita rate Actual vs Hypothetical Difference
City of New Rochelle 83,742          6,162,927                             74                           43,140,489                             167,283,223 -124,142,734
City of White Plains 61,288          5,463,256                             89                           38,242,792                             122,429,058 -84,186,266
City of Mount Vernon 71,168          7,155,691                           101                           50,089,837                             142,165,370 -92,075,533
City of Albany 101,228        12,607,823                           125                           88,254,761                             202,213,299 -113,958,538
City of Schenectady 68,544        11,205,994                           163                           78,441,958                             136,923,661 -58,481,703
City of Troy 50,607        12,279,463                           243                           85,956,241                             101,092,666 -15,136,425
City of Utica 63,607        16,110,473                           253                         112,773,311                             127,061,498 -14,288,187
City of Rochester 207,274        88,234,464                           426                         617,641,248                             414,051,046 203,590,202
City of Syracuse 145,560        71,758,584                           493                         502,310,088                             290,771,010 211,539,078
City of Yonkers 207,657     108,215,479                           521                         757,508,353                             414,816,128 342,692,225
City of Buffalo 274,678     161,285,233                           587                       1,128,996,631                             548,697,441 580,299,190

In this analysis Albany has received $113 million less AIM funding in reality versus a hypothetical scenario where funding was distributed on a consistent per capita rate.  Buffalo has received $580 million more and Syracuse $211 million more than a consistent distribution scheme.

Adding in Capital City Funding

Let’s look at one more funding stream - Capital City Funding.  From the 2024 City of Albany Budget Book:

CAPITAL CITY FUNDING:  fiscal aid provided by New York State (NYS) to make up for the lack of Aid and Incentives for Municipalities (AIM) Albany receives per capita compared to all other NYS cities with populations of 50,000 or more

In 2024 the City of Albany received $15 million of funding.  How does this change the per capita distribution of funding?

Population 2024 AIM Funding 2024 AIM Funding per capita 2024 Capital City Funding 2024 AIM + Capital City Funding AIM + Capital City Funding per capita
101,228 12,607,823 124.55 15,000,000 27,607,823 272.73

Adding in the Capital City Funding significantly changes Albany’s per capita state funding from $125/person to $273/person.  Sorting New York cities by state funding per capita, Albany moves from 8th to 6th when you add in the Capital City Funding, behind Utica ($283/person) and slightly ahead of Troy ($271/person).  

Population 2025 AIM Funding 2025 AIM Funding per capita 2025 Capital City Funding 2025 AIM + Capital City Funding AIM + Capital City Funding per capita
101,228 12,607,823 124.55 20,000,000 32,607,823 322.12

With this increase in funding, the City of Albany would be the 5th highest funded city on a per capita basis, behind Rochester ($426/person).

Summary

  1. New York State distributes $647 million of AIM funding per year using distribution levels to cities that have remained unchanged over a decade
  2. Distributions to cities show an incredible imbalance with no reasonable explanation for the imbalance that shows up based on size of city
  3. Albany’s imbalance, when measured against a consistent, statewide per-capita distribution measure demonstrates an underfunding that is greater than $100 million over the last seven years.
  4. Capital City Funding – historically and proposed 2025 – does close the funding distribution gap to a significant degree.

Data

This data story uses the original AIM data, downloadable from New York State in Excel format.

Process

We added several additional data points in this spreadsheet including population for cities (from the US Census Bureau) and several per capita metrics.

Credits

This data story and its content is available under the Creative Commons Attribution license.

Persons or organizations that Share or Adapt this content should provide Attribution that provides appropriate credit, which includes:

  • © Copyright 2025
  • Tyche Insights, P.B.C.
  • KarlTyche (Karl Urich)

For example, a data product or service that utilizes this article could include attribution such as:

"Portions derived from 'Albany NY AIM FUnding', © Copyright 2025 by Tyche Insights, P.B.C., KarlTyche (Karl Urich) & licensed under the CC BY 4.0 license"

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