NYS Spent Less Than Half Of Funds From Taxpayer Donation Checkoffs On Income Tax Returns Over Last 5 Years

From The Journal News, lohud.com, "Comptroller: State must reform tax checkoff funds" by David riley:

The state must better manage the money that New York residents donate through their income tax returns to causes ranging from breast and prostate cancer research to finding missing children, the state Comptroller’s Office said in a report released Wednesday morning that calls for several reforms.

Spurred by a Democrat and Chronicle story in October that detailed balances which have piled up in some of the accounts that taxpayers can support, the comptroller’s report said state agencies that oversee these funds have been increasingly slow to put the money to use.

In the first five years of the past decade, the state spent 70 percent of the $11.5 million collected from donations through tax form checkoffs, as well as state matching funds, special license plate sales and other sources of funding to the same accounts. Over the past five years, that figure plunged to 43 percent — agencies released only $5.1 million of $12 million collected to the causes for which the money is intended.