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Lawmakers start passing NY’s $229B budget. Nobody’s happy about it.
By
Jon Campbell
Published May 1, 2023
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By
Jon Campbell
Published May 1, 2023
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Finally.
New York state lawmakers began passing a $229 billion state budget Monday afternoon, four days after striking a tentative deal with Gov. Kathy Hochul and a full month after a final spending plan was due.
Hardly anyone, however, seemed entirely happy with the final result of the broad spending plan that mixes in far-reaching policies that have little to do with the state’s finances.
“Given what was before us, I think we did the best we could to minimize the harm from policies we did not agree with and to get things moving forward for the people of New York,” said Senate Deputy Majority Leader Michael Gianaris, D-Queens.
The budget, the subject of months of closed-door negotiations, will further rein in the state’s 2019 cash-bail reforms and provide an infusion of funding for the cash-strapped Metropolitan Transportation Authority, which will allow the city’s transit system to maintain services and lower a planned fare hike. But just as notable is what wasn’t included.
Hochul, a Democrat, pulled back her plan to spur 800,000 new housing units over the next decade after meeting a blockade of opposition from officials in the New York City suburbs. She also had to significantly curtail her proposal to add more than 100 new charter schools in New York City, settling on a compromise with a resistant Legislature that will result in just 14.
“I proposed a bold housing plan, and I believe major action is required to meet the scale of this crisis,” Hochul said Thursday night. “The Legislature saw it differently. They're not ready to commit to the kind of transformative change I proposed.”
Progressives, meanwhile, were stung by the exclusion of protections for renters and higher taxes on the rich, as well as the bail-law retreat and a minimum-wage hike they say doesn’t go far enough. And some lawmakers were frustrated by the negotiating process itself, a months-long slog that led to questions about whether New York’s government is returning to a state of dysfunction..
“Everyone has mixed feelings,” said Sen. Jabari Brisport, D-Brooklyn. “Everyone has their wins and losses in this budget. I'm personally pissed that we failed to raise new taxes on the wealthy yet again this year, which I think is an indictment of this entire institution.”
On Monday, Senate Majority Leader Andrea Stewart-Cousins, D-Yonkers acknowledged frustrations with the amount of non-fiscal policy Hochul inserted into state budget talks. Under the state constitution, the budget process is driven by the governor, who has wide latitude to include proposals that have nothing to do with money.
Hochul tried to use her leverage to push through her housing plan, which would have required local governments to add up to 3% to their housing stock over the next three years. She also insisted on a change to the state’s bail laws that will, in effect, give judges more discretion to set bail in violent felony and misdemeanor cases, the third time the law has been changed since lawmakers first passed the reforms in 2019 .
Those two issues alone consumed weeks of closed-door budget talks. In the end, Hochul got the bail change, but not her housing plan.
“This was an extremely policy-laden budget,” Stewart-Cousins told reporters at the Capitol. “And many of the policies were policies that had been debated for a long time over the years, or should have been debated for a long time over the years. So it made it very difficult to just go quickly through those things. That was frustrating.”
Once fully approved, this year’s state budget will be the latest since 2010. Voting on the sprawling legislation is expected to continue into Tuesday and possibly Wednesday.
Most of the budget was put into bill form and made public late Sunday and Monday morning, including measures that will provide the MTA with a funding infusion — including by increasing a payroll tax on many New York City businesses. Once the state awards its final three casino licenses, the budget would also reserve half of New York City casino revenue for the transit system, as well.
As of Monday afternoon, the Legislature had yet to print two of the 10 bills that make up the budget — meaning the exact language of the bail-law change and charter school plan had not yet been made public. Stewart-Cousins said she anticipates those bills to be printed shortly.
With Democrats holding two-thirds majorities in both the Senate and Assembly, the budget is expected to pass by a wide margin — despite many lawmakers being unhappy with the bail measure.
“I continue to reject efforts to hold the budget hostage in an attempt to jail more Black, brown and poor people pretrial,” said Brooklyn Assemblymember Latrice Walker, a Brooklyn Democrat who helped lead the successful effort to eliminate cash bail for non-violent felonies and misdemeanors in 2019.
Tagged
new york state
public safety
housing
Kathy Hochul
Politics
transportation
eric adams
Jon Campbell
Jon Campbell covers the New York State Capitol for WNYC and Gothamist. Prior to that, he covered the Capitol for more than a decade for the USA TODAY Network. He has twice earned the Walter T. Brown Memorial Award, an honor given annually by the Legislative Correspondents Association alumni for outstanding state government coverage. Jon grew up in the Buffalo area and graduated from the University at Albany. Got a tip? Email Jon at [email protected] or Signal at JonCampbellNY.90.
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