Monday night, New York Governor Kathy Hochul announced she has reached a “general agreement” with lawmakers on a $254 billion state budget.
The budget due April 1st was delayed over disagreements over several policy items, but the Democrat says she achieved all of her major policy proposals.
To learn more about some of the governor’s priorities that made it into the budget deal – and if Hochul’s strategy to delay the budget by four weeks paid off – WAMC’s Lucas Willard spoke with WNYC capitol reporter Jimmy Vielkind…
Well, the governor set forward, in January, when she presented this budget, that she was looking for several different policies to hopefully be yoked into this $254 billion spending plan. Those included changes to the standard by which people can be involuntarily committed to mental health treatment. It included changes to the process of sharing evidence before a criminal trial, which is known as discovery, and a little bit later, she wanted restrictions on how people can wear masks in public. Versions of all three of those proposals, after some rancor and quite a lot of back and forth, will be in this spending plan. So, from the perspective of the governor, who said her top priorities were public safety and affordability, she could point to real, tangible policies that she has pushed for, and that will be, hopefully in her mind, coming into law as part of this budget process. So, we know that voters’ minds and memories are short. So, will people remember the policies that will be reiterated to them by the governor as she runs for expected reelection in 2026? Or will they remember that the budget was almost a month late? Hochul is certainly betting that she, by taking some tardiness, will have a record that she can run on next year.
Let's talk about discovery reform. This is something that the governor has been traveling the stat, promoting over the last few weeks as the budget went into overtime. And this is yet another change to some of the criminal justice reforms that were passed in 2019. Where did the governor initially meet resistance in this argument, and what do you think she was able to do to help change the minds in the legislature to get discovery reform in the budget package?
Well, on this topic, Governor Hochul worked very closely with district attorneys, particularly the district attorneys in New York City. They say that because of the law, which mandates a broad disclosure of lots of information to criminal defendants, they were seeing cases successfully moved to dismiss because they would forget to turn over one piece of evidence, one scrap of paper, one particular photograph. Now, the governor really seized on that story, and she said in the final days of budget negotiations that she was standing up for crime victims, that by pushing to have fewer of these cases dismissed on what she called technicalities, she was improving public safety and making New York a better place where people should feel more safe and secure with regard to the criminal justice process. The resistance in the legislature mostly came from lawmakers who really pushed for these laws just a few years ago. They said that changing the standard in the way that Hochul initially wanted, would have given too much authority and power to prosecutors. That, if you give prosecutors discretion over what to turn over, essentially, you're eroding the standard and watering down to the point of not being recognizable the law that they just voted for. In the end, a compromise was reached. When state lawmakers started negotiating directly with those district attorneys. They settled upon a change in the standard that was not as far as Hochul wanted to go, but which was satisfactory to prosecutors, and they also agreed in changes that would mean that if a piece of evidence was not turned over, it would not necessarily result in dismissal of a case if it was, in fact, a very small Picayune point.
Now, I also want to talk about affordability. This was one of the key words that was thrown around the capitol since the State of the State message in January, and part of that is the governor's plan to send out inflation rebate checks. This is something that was kind of thrown out or dismissed as a gimmick by lawmakers on both sides just a few months ago, but it looks like Governor Hochul is going to get inflation rebate checks in this budget as well. So, what caused lawmakers to come around on this idea?
Well, the governor said that these rebate checks would provide a tangible measure of relief to middle class families around the state of New York. But the criticism was that the income threshold to receive a check was relatively high, and the idea that you would give a family a $500 check when their household is reporting about $300,000 of income, there were many people who questioned whether that money could be better spent and better targeted to people who had a greater and more tangible need. Now, over the course of negotiations the figure and the exact tailoring of the checks did go down. I believe it will be now $400 for a family and $200 for individuals, but the governor was able to argue successfully to lawmakers that while they should redirect some of that money to programs that more directly impact lower-income people, the idea of sharing a one-time surplus with families in order…who are all feeling some kind of economic pinch, was a good one. We also saw that polling data showed broad support among New Yorkers for this proposal, something that we know Governor Hochul was attuned to, and certainly pointing out in her negotiations with the legislature.
And Jimmy, when are lawmakers set to come together to actually vote on a final budget plan?
We expect that bills will be finalized over the course of this week, and voting will start to happen. Lawmakers would like to have things wrapped up as early as possible on Friday, but we know that there are still some areas of the budget which were under negotiation. This included the exact parameters of an increase in the payroll tax that's used to fund infrastructure for the Metropolitan Transportation Authority, the MTA, as well as the exact parameters of school and hospital funding. Also unsettled are changes to the state's prison system. Governor Hochul had sought permission to lower the age at which a person can be hired to work as a corrections officer, and there was lots of back-and-forth over a proposal to allow the early release of incarcerated people for so-called earned time. As of last night, when that framework of a deal was announced, it seemed like that had not yet been settled, and we're not sure exactly when it will be fully locked down.
