Gov. Kathy Hochul announced a deal on a record-breaking, $220 billion state budget Thursday — six days late and with the Legislature’s leaders conspicuously absent.
“We had some very complicated issues to resolve,” Hochul said from the state Capitol.
“It’s taken a little extra time. I appreciate everybody’s patience.”
The fiscal 2023 spending plan — which adds $8 billion in spending to last year’s pact — includes a partial rollback of the state’s controversial 2019 bail-reform law, which forced judges to release defendants charged with almost all misdemeanors and many felonies.
It also provides a mammoth, $600 million taxpayer subsidy for construction of a new stadium for the Buffalo Bills — a pet project pushed by Hochul for her hometown football team.
Sweeteners for the public include a limited gas-tax holiday that goes into effect on June 1 and will run through Dec. 31, as well as a three-year extension of the popular “booze-to-go” sales that lawmakers allowed to boost business for bars and restaurants hurt by the COVID-19 pandemic.
The budget deal — which increased Hochul’s initial proposal by $4 billion — authorizes up to three licenses for gambling casinos in New York City.
But other items of crucial importance to the Big Apple weren’t included, such as an extension of the so-called 421a real-estate tax abatement for new apartment buildings.
And Hochul — who when Mayor Eric Adams earlier this year asked for three years of mayoral control of the city’s public schools, insisted she was going to give him four — failed to get Albany leaders to go along.
She said she hoped those “urgent” issues could be addressed by the Legislature before its session ends in June.
“We will have time to do that — to address affordable housing, to address mayoral control,” she said.
“We’ll have time to address [criminal-record] Clean Slate language, which I had proposed in my budget initially, which you want to make sure it gets done.”
Hochul was joined for her announcement by embattled Lt. Gov. Brian Benjamin, who’s facing a federal probe over the financing for his failed campaign for city comptroller last year.
But Assembly Speaker Carl Heastie (D-Bronx) and state Senate Majority Leader Andrea Stewart-Cousins (D-Westchester) were both no-shows who chose to brief lawmakers on the deal instead.
Heastie butted heads with Hochul over the issue of bail reform during negotiations, sources said, and Stewart-Cousins publicly declared last month that “the general sense is that nobody in our conference is wanting to go backward.”
“To the New Yorkers that are concerned about a rise in crime, we have put forth a comprehensive package,” Hochul said in their absence.
The deal will allow judges to set bail for defendants charged with repeat offenses, hate crimes and gun-related charges, and also consider whether someone’s criminal record makes them likely to do “harm” if released.
But it doesn’t contain the comprehensive “dangerousness standard” that Mayor Eric Adams has said is needed so judges can lock up newly arrested defendants who pose a risk to the public if they’re put back on the streets.
Kendra’s Law, which allows the state to institutionalize people whose mental illness makes them a danger to themselves or others, will be made “more effective,” Hochul said.
The plan will also replace what Hochul called the “structurally broken” Joint Commission on Public Ethics, the state’s official ethics watchdog.
Appointees to the new panel will have to be approved or vetoed by the deans of the state’s law school, she said.
“It is not a rubber stamp. It is a different way of doing it,” Hochul said.
The gas-tax holiday will save motorists a combined 16 cents per gallon at the pump on the 8-cents-per gallon sales tax and the 8-cents-per-gallon motor-fuel tax.
A larger, 17.3-cents-per-gallon petroleum tax will remain in effect.
The move will cost the state $585 in revenue, including $100 million that would have gone to the cash-strapped MTA.
The state’s spending splurge is being financed by higher-than-expected tax revenues, federal COVID-19 relief funding and surplus revenues from fiscal 2022, officials said.
The budget deal came a day after Adams dined for a second time with disgraced ex-Gov. Andrew Cuomo amid eleventh-hour negotiations in Albany.
Political observers called the meal a “disrespectful” slap at Hochul, who’s been advocating for many of Adams’ state-level priorities.
Hochul’s “alcohol-to-go” proposal will take effect immediately and be extended until April 2025, she said, allowing individuals to order cocktails or beer as long as the purchase of booze accompanies “substantial food items.”
Patrons will be barred, however, from ordering to-go bottles of liquor or wine.
The budget deal also includes an additional $350 million in capital funds for the struggling New York City Housing Authority.
Thursday’s agreement was struck after lawmakers blew Friday’s statutory deadline.
On Monday, they passed a budget “extender” that set a new, Thursday deadline while still providing paychecks to tens of thousands of state employees.
Lawmakers have attributed the delay to Hochul tacking on controversial policy items, including her 10-point public safety plan, last month — long after she unveiled her initial budget proposal in January.
Rep. Tom Suozzi, who is challenging Hochul in June’s Democratic primary for governor, had harsh words for her management of the budget process.
“Instead of using this opportunity to lower taxes, reduce crime and make New York more affordable, Kathy Hochul showed her inexperience by botching the budget process and saddling New Yorkers with billions more in spending, including the biggest tax giveaway in NFL history to build a new Bills stadium,” Suozzi told The Post.
Patrick Orecki of the Citizens Budget Commission said his organization was concerned about the dramatic increase in spending the budget anticipates for 2024 and beyond.
“Of concern is the rate of spending growth in the out years,” Orecki said.
“It looks like a lot of recurring spending which is important because if it’s more than receipts that can support opening up budget gaps in the out years.”
Additional reporting by Carl Campanile
