ALBANY – Lawmakers are returning to Albany next week and may hold a special session to vote on pay increases — but the Governor and Assembly Speaker Carl Heastie are squaring off over whether to trade legislation for the raises.
Assembly Democrats plan to be in the Capital for a retreat from Monday through Wednesday. They may use that time to convene and pass laws.
Assembly Republicans and Senators have not yet been told to return.
Several sources questioned whether legislators would set themselves up for criticism by voters and opponents and “bow to the Governor” by voting to give themselves more cash.
“Most of them want it but no citizen in the state agrees with it, so who’s going to want to do it,” asked one source who didn’t want to be named because the issue is thorny. “If they’re going to meet, it will be next week or the one after.”
For the last 17 years, members have earned $79,500. To bring the pay up for cost of living increases, they would have to earn $116,900. A commission created to consider that refused to vote on whether to give lawmakers a raise and its authority expired in November.
Cuomo tried to offer lawmakers a way to get the money and save face – if they advance his agenda.
“The commission has said that they would give a modest increase to the Legislature now because the Legislature hasn’t gotten a raise in 17 years,” he told reporters after a jobs announcement Upstate. “The Legislature has to come back to reauthorize the commission… What’s even better is if you do the people’s business when you reauthorize because we have a number of things that are critical to get done now for the people.”
He wants ethics reforms, an agreement on the city’s 421a program, which requires new buildings to set aside a certain number of affordable units in exchange for tax breaks.
“We have $2 billion in affordable housing money that hasn’t been released, housing money that would go to help get homeless people off the streets,” Cuomo said. “We are coming into the winter, it’s getting cold, we are coming into the holiday season, I would like to see them release the money to build housing for the homeless.”
Cuomo also strongly urged lawmakers to pass reforms to the state’s procurement process, changes at SUNY and CUNY and hate crimes legislation.
“If they want to come back and reauthorize the pay commission so they get a pay raise, God bless them, but they also have to do the people’s business if they are coming back,” he said.
Heastie fired back at Cuomo’s suggestion of trading term limits to any legislation for the increases, a move some lawmakers described as quid pro quo.
“As I have said many, many times, we are simply not going to trade a pay raise