(The Center Square) — New York’s public schools are struggling to afford the rising costs of the state’s electric school bus mandate, according to a new report by a fiscal watchdog group.
The analysis by the Empire Center for Public Policy estimated that the mandate to convert buses for the state’s 370 school districts to e-vehicles would cost taxpayers more than $9 billion over the next 10 years.
Two years ago, New York passed a law mandating that all new school bus purchases must be electric starting in 2027, with all buses on the road meeting this standard by 2035. However, the report said the state didn’t thoroughly analyze the mandate and hasn’t provided enough funding to school districts to pay for the new vehicles.
“Despite being the largest unfunded mandate in a generation, officials in classic Albany form never issued any sort of cost estimate on the electric bus policy before approving it as part of the fiscal 2023 state budget,” Ken Girardin, the center’s research director, wrote in the report. “Besides the added upfront cost of electric buses (and their chargers), a significant and largely unanticipated expense is coming into view as districts figure out how to charge dozens or hundreds of electric buses.”
Giradin said the state also “didn’t budget for grid-related costs,” as a result, school districts will be on the hook for “tens of millions of dollars” for infrastructure upgrades to accommodate the new e-bus fleets.
“New York’s arrangement left school bus prices rising automatically,” he wrote.
“A handful of bus models were added to the price schedule in the first year after getting state Department of Transportation approvals, but nothing has changed since — except for the price hikes, which totaled 3.7 percent over the last 12 months.”
The average new electric school bus costs about $400,000, compared to traditional gas-powered buses, which cost around $130,000, according to the U.S. Department of Energy.
In her preliminary budget, Gov. Kathy Hochul has called for earmarking $4.2 billion from the state’s Environmental Bond Act to help school districts cover the cost of purchasing electric school buses.
State Assemblyman Robert Smellen, R-Mohawk Valley, has filed a bill allowing school districts to opt out of New York’s zero-emission school bus mandate, citing concerns over costs and feasibility.
Backers of the proposal said the e-bus mandate would severely strain public school district budgets, which are already struggling with the ongoing pinch of inflation and with federal pandemic aid dying up.
“Many school districts have shared concerns and challenges they are facing regarding their ability to comply with the zero-emission school bus mandate,” a bill summary reads. “Some of the challenges that stakeholders have identified include utility providers being unable to provide adequate power to districts; fiscal challenges related to school bus and charging infrastructure acquisition; and zero-emission school buses not being conducive to long bus routes or cold weather, among others.”
Republicans are also seeking to push the deadline to comply with the e-bus mandate out to 2045 and examine the results of studies of the e-vehicles’ reliability.
