ALBANY, N.Y. — While New York Gov. Kathy Hochul’s bail bombshell dominated budget talks in recent weeks, there are plenty of other big-ticket items and spending plans for review ahead of the April 1 fiscal deadline.
Bolstered by federal COVID funds, the governor offered a $216 billion spending plan in January including better-than-expected tax revenue, proposals to fast-track downstate casino licenses, increase education and child education care spending, fund pandemic recovery initiatives and provide bonuses for health care and front-line workers.
Legislative leaders countered with their own wish lists to further increase spending on social programs and boost funds for SUNY and CUNY schools, suspend the state’s gas tax and enact the Clean Slate Act, which would automatically clear conviction records.
Hochul, negotiating her first budget since replacing former governor Andrew Cuomo, proposed a spending plan with a projected balanced budget for each of the next five years and $15 billion in rainy-day reserves.
“We don’t need to go to extreme numbers to accomplish making lives better for New Yorkers. We just need to find the right balance,” she said on Friday, indicating that talks were progressing.
Hochul, New York Assembly Speaker Carl Heastie, D-Bronx, and New York Senate Majority Leader Andrea Stewart-Cousins, D-Yonkers, are spending the weekend hashing out differences and seeking compromises on a broad spectrum of spending plans and policy items.
Much of the negotiating between the Legislature and the Executive Chamber is being conducted virtually, according to staffers.
The three sides are close on some issues, such as increasing state funding for child care. Hochul has called for increasing spending by $1.4 billion and expanding day care centers’ subsidies. Lawmakers want to see that figure double and have called for significantly increasing the number of families who would qualify for subsidized child care.
The fate of Hochul’s plan to speed up licensing for casinos in or near the city was less clear after Heastie expressed reservations last week and wasn’t shy about showing his cards.
“Personally, I’m not a big fan of gambling,” he said. “It’s fair game to discuss it.”
Senate Democrats, meanwhile, are more supportive of opening up the gambling market, proposing a minimum of $1 billion for each license, which could help pad the state’s coffers.
Unions see the expansion as a way to combat COVID job losses for hotel and other workers.
“There’s nothing we need more than tourists and jobs returning to New York, and expanding gaming options downstate is the quickest way to make that happen,” said Rich Maroko, president of the New York Hotel & Gaming Trades Council. “Downstate gaming is an immediate and glaring opportunity for our state leaders to do just that in this budget.”
Hochul, who had previously pooh-poohed temporarily reducing the state’s gasoline tax, offered motorists a ray of hope that relief at the pump could be on its way.
“It’s on the table,” she said Friday. “We are very sensitive to this.”
A long-sought program to provide housing vouchers to help prevent families from becoming homeless is also under consideration, as is additional funds for the state’s depleted COVID rent relief program.
Hochul has also called for a revamp of housing developers’ soon-to-expire 421-a tax abatement. The Affordable Neighborhoods for New Yorkers Tax Incentive, or 485-w, would change larger buildings’ affordability and wage requirements.
Vexing tenant and housing advocates, New York City Mayor Eric Adams voiced support for the proposal last week.
“NYC needs more housing, not less!” he tweeted. “If the 421a program expires without a new program in its place, housing production — and the well-paying jobs that come with it — would fall off a cliff.”
An extension of mayoral control of city schools, another of Adams’ requests, appears unlikely to make it into the final budget despite Hochul supporting a four-year push.
“That was something that we’ve talked about being done outside of the budget,” Stewart-Cousins told reporters Wednesday at the Capitol.
Advocates, meanwhile, are also pushing for at least $3 billion in funding for excluded workers who missed out on pandemic relief and the inclusion of “coverage for all,” a plan expanding health insurance coverage to undocumented New Yorkers.
Immigrant groups are calling for $345 million to fund health coverage for over 150,000 low-income New Yorkers currently barred from health insurance due to their immigration status.
“Excluded workers have helped keep New York running during two years of a global pandemic,” said Murad Awawdeh, Executive Director, New York Immigration Coalition. “Our communities cannot be ‘essential’ and excluded at the same time, and we need more from our leaders than encouraging rhetoric.”
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