New York’s roughly $260 billion state budget was already a month late by the time Gov. Kathy Hochul and legislative leaders started talking about money last week.
That’s the upside-down normal for New York’s budget-making process, where major decisions about how to spend billions of dollars affecting millions of people wait until the governor strikes a deal on policy priorities that often have little to do with dollars and cents.
New York’s budget is a stack of bills that go far beyond government spending, negotiated in private by the governor and two legislative leaders while rank-and-file lawmakers, lobbyists and the press scramble to learn any details they can.
Hochul and lawmakers are nearing a handshake deal on a spending plan for the state’s 2026-27 fiscal year, which began April 1. Once it’s passed, it’ll be the latest state budget since 2010, when the stalemate lasted into the summer.
This year’s tardy budget has some lawmakers wondering aloud whether it’s time for things to change.
“ I don't want this to be written in a way that I'm trying to like antagonize the governor,” Assembly Speaker Carl Heastie, a Bronx Democrat, told reporters last month. “I'm just saying this process frustrates me.”
There are still major aspects of the spending plan up for negotiation, including billions of dollars for the state’s education and healthcare systems as well as a boost in retirement benefits for public workers — all of which will be divvied up out of public view.
When reporters try to ask Hochul about the specifics of the talks, she often declines to discuss them in public — arguing it would hurt her negotiating position.
“Nice try trying to get me to negotiate the budget in front of all of you, but I'm not going to do that,” Hochul said Tuesday when asked about state funding for cities. “I'm not taking the bait.”
At Hochul’s insistence, talks on the budget’s fiscal aspects — including education aid and small grants for lawmakers’ pet projects — waited until last week, according to Heastie, who sits at the negotiating table with Hochul and state Senate Majority Leader Andrea Stewart-Cousins.
That’s when Hochul and legislative leaders began to reach consensus on her biggest policy proposals, including reforms to the state’s car-insurance laws, limits on local governments cooperating with federal immigration agents and a partial rollback of the state’s 2019 climate law.
“There is an inordinate amount of time that's been spent on policies generally that the governor puts forward,” Stewart-Cousins, a Yonkers Democrat, said Tuesday. “We just can't rush through those things.”
A governor-led process
Late budgets and lengthy debates over policy aren’t just the Hochul way, they’re the New York way.
State lawmakers have long complained about the New York state budget process, which has largely been in place for a century. The state constitution and court precedent grants the governor significant power to craft a spending plan and various levers to exert leverage over the Legislature as they negotiate the particulars.
But the Democrat-dominated Legislature has been wary of picking a public fight with Hochul, a Democrat who has drawn the conclusion that her leverage intensifies in what she calls “overtime” — the days and weeks after the budget was due, when lawmakers have their paychecks withheld by law.
For several years, Heastie has removed each of the governor’s non-fiscal proposals when Assembly Democrats put out their proposed spending plan each March. But it’s largely a symbolic protest; each year, the governor’s proposals have found their way into a final spending plan.
Changing the budget process to swing power back to the Legislature in a meaningful way would likely require an amendment to the state constitution, a lengthy process that would require voter approval. That didn’t go well for lawmakers in 2005, when they last advanced an amendment to change the process; voters defeated it by a 2-to-1 margin.
“ Passing a constitutional amendment that has to go before the voters — now you have governor versus the Legislature, and I don't know who wins that campaign,” Heastie said.
Then there’s the issue of transparency.
Each of the dozens of policy issues negotiated by Hochul and legislative leaders will be put into one of 10 bills that collectively make up the state budget.
But often, many of the most controversial issues are placed into a single bill — a piece of legislation known as the “Big Ugly” in Albany parlance. That forces lawmakers to cast a single up-or-down vote on a number of disparate issues — including some they may oppose and others they definitely support, making the bill difficult to vote against.
“They'll throw everything and the kitchen sink into it so that people who maybe aren't comfortable voting for it are stuck,” said Assembly Minority Leader Ed Ra, a Long Island Republican. “And they'll do it in the least transparent way they possibly can. The ink won't be dry, but it'll be on the floor.”
Diane Savino, a former longtime Democratic state senator from Staten Island, was in office for four different governors, including Hochul. Each brought their own touch to budget negotiations.
David Paterson, for example, forced lawmakers to vote on spending cuts in short-term budget extenders when the budget was late. Andrew Cuomo, on the other hand, prioritized on-time spending plans as a symbol of government functionality.
Hochul, meanwhile, is more than comfortable waiting out her legislative counterparts, even if it means the budget’s late, Savino said.
“She's not giving in until she gets what she wants,” Savino said. “I said this when she became governor: She's a tough chick from Buffalo. Don't mess around with her, OK? She just has a different style.”
Robert Megna, who served as state budget director for three different governors including Hochul, is a fan of the state’s executive-driven budget process. He contrasted it with the federal budget, where Congress dominates the process and “ throws the president's budget out five minutes after they get it.”
“I'm a supporter of the executive budget process,” said Megna, who’s now the president of the Rockefeller Institute, a think tank that’s part of the state university system. “But I don't have some fantasy in my head that it means there's no conflict. Of course there's going to be conflict because you're spending people's scarce tax money, and people are going to fight over how that should be spent.”
E.J. McMahon, an adjunct fellow for the Manhattan Institute, a conservative think tank, said there are simple changes the Legislature could make to improve the budget process. That includes creating a nonpartisan Legislative Budget Office to analyze the budget and create cost estimates, and moving the start of the state’s fiscal year to June 1.
But he contends the Legislature isn’t doing enough to use the power it does have in the budget process. That includes standing up to the governor if she insists on negotiating policy in the spending plan.
”This is all baloney, to use the technical phrase,” McMahon said. “‘Oh, she's loading us up. She's introducing other issues.’ OK, well, ignore them.”
Budget overtime
Hochul has presided over late state budgets each year since taking office in 2021, often painting them as evidence that she’s willing to fight for her priorities — which, she believes, are in line with New Yorkers’ priorities.
She’s quick to tick off a list of legislative accomplishments secured in budget overtime in years past, including a school cellphone ban, bolstered penalties for retail theft and rollbacks to the state’s cash bail reforms.
This year, Hochul says her priorities are about making New York more affordable. That includes changes to the state’s car-insurance laws that she contends will drive down rates.
It comes as she’s up for re-election against Republican Bruce Blakeman, the Nassau County executive who is also running on an affordability theme.
“I’d like to be done,” she said last week. “My hands are ready to shake. But we just have to work through some more details because my priorities are very important to not just me, but also to the people of this state.”
Blakeman said he would prioritize on-time budgets if he wins in November. But the Republican would face a vastly different challenge than Hochul when it comes to negotiating with the Legislature, which is dominated by Democrats.
“Kathy Hochul's … the leader of the state,” he said Monday. “Her party has a majority in the Senate and the Assembly, and she can't get a budget passed. That shows a terrible lack of leadership on her part.”
Hochul, meanwhile, has said Blakeman will be beholden to President Donald Trump if he wins. The Republican candidate met with Trump at the White House on Tuesday.
“I know he's going to get his marching orders,” Hochul said before that meeting. “He's got to find out what Donald Trump wants him to do in the state of New York, because this would be what he would do if he was to be ever elected.”
Lawmakers passed a short-term budget extender for the ninth time on Monday. Legislative leaders said they hope to put a final spending plan to a vote next week.
