Mayor de Blasio and City Council Speaker Melissa Mark-Viverito are headed to Albany on Monday to try to get state lawmakers to approve a tax hike on wealthy New Yorkers to pay for universal pre-K for city children.
De Blasio is scheduled to testify before a joint legislative hearing in the morning.
Mark-Viverito (D-East Harlem) is set to testify before a budget committee in the afternoon and will meet privately with Gov. Cuomo — her first meeting with him since becoming speaker.
Cuomo and de Blasio have competing plans to fund universal pre-K.
Cuomo’s plan calls for using $1.5 billion from the state’s budget over five years to implement new pre-K programs across the state. The mayor wants to raise income taxes on the well-off to pay for it.
Mark-Viverito, who won her bid for the speakership with strong support from de Blasio, said she backs the mayor’s plan because she thinks Cuomo’s plan doesn’t move fast enough.
“It’s important to ramp up the universal pre-K program the way the mayor laid it out as soon as possible, and the amount of funding provided in the governor’s plan does not allow for that,” Mark-Viverito told The Post on Sunday. “NYC should be able to make this decision for itself.”
More than a dozen council members will be joining the pair in Albany, including Republican leader Vincent Ignizio of Staten Island, who doesn’t support de Blasio’s plan.