Now well over a month late, it appears that Governor Hochul and state lawmakers are on a path to finish off the budget, which was due on April 1st.  Since the final budget agreement will be the latest since 2010, the tardiness will squeeze the time available to tackle non-budget topics.  

State lawmakers typically finish the official legislative session in the first half of June.  This year, they are scheduled to head for the exits on June 4th.  Normally, they do a lot of work after the budget is completed.  After last year’s late state budget, 537 bills were approved, or nearly two-thirds of the total number of bills that passed both houses in 2025 (856 bills).  

So far this year, 152 bills have passed the State Senate and Assembly.  To keep on pace with last year’s bill passage productivity, the Legislature has its work cut out.  And this year, lawmakers will have less time to act than last year.

With so little time to do so much work, it will be hard for the Legislature to tackle the big controversial issues – the issues that most impact New Yorkers.  However, there is one big issue that they are most surely going to take on – redistricting.

You heard that right, the once-in-a-decade, right after the census, redrawing of political boundaries.  The Democrat majorities in both houses will accelerate the timetable for the redrawing of Congressional lines.  It is widely expected that both houses will advance first passage of a state Constitutional amendment allowing a mid-decade change.  They will then move second passagehave during the 2027 legislative session and could  it ready for voter consideration in a November 2027 referendum.

Why the urgency?  New York is a “blue state,” meaning controlled by Democrats.  Democrats across the country are scrambling to redraw Congressional boundaries in reaction to President Trump and Republicans in “red states” rush to redraw Congressional lines in those states.  This mid-decade effort was triggered by President Trump’s maneuvers to enhance the political prospects for Republicans to hold the majority in the House of Representatives.  

Those efforts will help boost the electoral prospects of a Republican razor-thin majority, a majority surely in trouble given the widespread public unpopularity of the President and the historical trend that the party in power loses House seats in the mid-term election.

Thus, in New York, the Democrats’ legislative majorities are trying to do what they can to bolster Democrat ballot box success, but given the state’s Constitution, their moves can only impact the 2028 election.  A state Constitutional amendment has been advanced to allow for a mid-decade redistricting process to be triggered if another state makes such a move.  Which has happened.

There is a case to be made to change New York’s redistricting process.  The current system is a mess and some reformers opposed the creation of the current system when then-Governor Cuomo advocated for it in 2014.  The key problem is that the current system relies on the two major political parties to agree on the new boundaries, which is – and has been – a recipe for gridlock.  

If changes are to be made, they should fix redistricting in this state by removing the political parties from mapmaking and set boundaries that focus on the best interests of the public, not partisan schemes.  If that move also allows New York’s process to begin mid-decade, so be it.  At least New York would have a fair system.

New York will hear a lot of cries of foul by the state’s Republican lawmakers, both Congressional and legislative.  Remember, however, that none did anything meaningful to stop the actions of President Trump in the first place.  The New York Republican Congressional delegation had a lot of leverage given their razor-thin majority but did not use it to stop the President.

A nationwide solution is needed.  The Congress should immediately take up legislation to stop gerrymandering.  Let’s have elections in districts that are about communities and who they want to represent them, not rigged elections in which the dominant political party picks the winner by having decided who will be voting in each district.   

The fight over New York’s quarter-plus-trillion dollar budget – closing in on a month late – continues with little evidence of it ending anytime soon. In what has now become an annual ritual, Governor Hochul has frozen budget negotiations in order to pressure lawmakers to agree to what are essentially non-budget policy initiatives. This year, those issues include proposals to change auto insurance laws, changes to the state’s environmental review of real estate development, and to drastically change New York’s Climate Law.

What is and isn’t a budget issue? While an argument can be made that anything can be related to the budget, none of the above issues are crucial to the state’s budget. So how can the governor hold the budget “hostage,” and how does that put pressure on lawmakers?

It starts with the state’s Constitution. About 100 years ago, New York changed its Constitution to move from a budget plan that was developed by the Legislature to one developed by the Executive. The change grew out of frustration with legislative budgets that were incoherent, with little central authority to hold spending accountable. The reform was enshrined in the Constitution after changes made in the early 20^th Century.

Over time, the courts have issued decisions that determined that the executive branch is in control of the budget’s development. The courts described the governor’s role as “constructor” of the budget with the Legislature as that plan’s “critic.” Those decisions leave the governor in the driver’s seat in developing budgets.

Legislators are not powerless: they can reject the governor’s budget; they can add spending to it, but if they do, they can face a gubernatorial veto. The “hostage taking” power stems from the governor’s control of the drafting of the budgets. If the budget is late, she writes the extender, leaving the Legislature with a take-it-or-leave-it option – running the risk of shutting down government. In order to avoid that, lawmakers prefer to negotiate. If the governor throws new items into the mix, they have to deal with it.

Governor Hochul has used this power in her annual budget battles. Each year, the discussion of the budget is pushed to the back burner as the governor advances her policies – policies that can only be described most charitably as having a tenuous relationship with the budget.

This year she is pushing the envelope by advancing a plan that may well lead to a dramatic weakening of New York’s landmark Climate Law.

The state Constitution sets up a detailed role for the governor. The Constitution sets deadlines for when the governor must release her plan and it then says that she has 30 days to amend it. The budget process in the Constitution lays out the governor’s requirements, then state law requires that public hearings are held, followed by a public meeting of the Senate and Assembly leadership to discuss their budget plans and their differences.

The rationale was to ensure that the public – who provides the tax dollars that are spent in the budget – would know what’s under consideration and, if they wished, let lawmakers know what they think.

The governor’s plan to change the Climate Law was never publicly released. She did not include it in the budget, nor in her 30-day budget amendments. Her plan was not included in either of the legislative budgets. The most the public has seen has been through published opinion pieces in news outlets. Hardly the basis for robust public debate. The upshot is we do know that she wants to weaken it, but the details? Not so much.

Nevertheless, if recent history is any guide there can be no state budget until she gets her way or at least some version of it. Is this approach consistent with the state Constitution? We’ll leave that to the lawyers, but obviously the governor thinks so. Is it sufficiently transparent to the public that elected officials promise to serve? The clear answer is no.

We all deserve to know what our government is up to and to have access to the decision-making processes to the greatest extent possible. Elected officials at all levels should be doing all they can to involve the public in the critical decisions of the day, not maximizing secrecy. Here’s hoping that lawmakers make sure the governor’s plans see the light of day and the public gets the opportunity to review before the deals are done.

New York’s state budget is now two weeks late. There are no public indications that the secret negotiations are heading toward a quick resolution. Reading the tea leaves, the late budget is largely the result of Governor Hochul’s insistence that lawmakers approve non-budget measures, such as weakening the climate law, as part of an overall budget agreement.

While a late budget is nothing new to New York, the ongoing negotiations often “crowd out” discussions on other important proposals, as well as reduce the amount of time lawmakers have to consider legislation after the budget negotiations are concluded.

According to the 2026 legislative calendar, the session is scheduled to end on June 4^th. The state budget was supposed to be in place March 31^st, with last week and this week a scheduled break to observe religious holidays. The calendar had lawmakers returning Monday April 20^th with 26 legislative days until the scheduled end of session.

Unless budget negotiations are concluded very soon, the budget “logjam” will squeeze out the available time for lawmakers to consider non-budget legislative issues in the remaining two dozen plus days of the session.

Late budgets don’t just shrink the post-budget calendar. As a practical matter important budget issues are often moved to the back burner during the time the executive and the legislative leaders negotiate the governor’s non-budget issues. One important issue that may not be getting the attention it deserves is the need for “capital” improvements for the state university and city university systems. “Capital” projects are long-term investments that require significant funding to improve or maintain major assets, such as buildings and infrastructure.

According to both SUNY and CUNY, the infrastructure of their systems are aging and badly in need of repair.

The SUNY Chancellor has said that the system has a $10 billion backlog in critical repairs, which at the current rate of funding, would take decades to complete. $10 billion is a big number and while all of it doesn’t have to go out the door this budget, a lot of money is needed right away.

For example, this past winter at SUNY Purchase students were forced to be reassigned to classrooms due to a heating outage in nearly all the academic buildings on campus. Even at one of SUNY’s big universities, the price tag is staggering. SUNY Stony Brook’s sprawling campus alone faces costs that total nearly $2 billion in expenses for deferred maintenance. The situation is no different for the CUNY system. According to CUNY’s five-year capital plan, CUNY identified 27,000 systems in need of repair, with a cost of around $7 billion.

Upgrading the infrastructures of the university systems will undoubtedly make them more attractive to prospective students and improve the educational experience of current students. But there can be additional benefits as well. Both SUNY and CUNY contain hundreds of buildings. Buildings are the leading emitter of greenhouse gases in New York. Modernizing college buildings while reducing their carbon footprints are important steps in helping the state meet its carbon reduction goals.

Of course, there are many other budget issues worthy of attention. Eventually a budget agreement will materialize. In some fashion the governor’s non-budget items likely will get addressed. Here’s hoping that important budget issues – like strengthening the state’s public university systems – gets the attention they deserve.

Another year, another late budget. Under New York law, April 1^st is the first day of the state’s fiscal year, meaning that a new budget should be in place. Like the previous ones during Governor Hochul’s tenure, this one almost certainly will be late.

The reason? Governor Hochul’s insistence that state lawmakers accept her non-budgetary priorities as part of the final budget agreement.

As of the time of this opinion, all evidence is that there will be no on-time budget agreement. Assuming that the budget is late, the governor and lawmakers will have to do an emergency extension of the current fiscal year’s budget. For how long? With the religious holidays of Easter and Passover starting early, the extension could easily stretch into mid-April.

Earlier this year, it wasn’t expected that this year’s budget would get held up. Wrestling to develop a state budget that is the second largest in the nation is always difficult. Adding to the challenge is the impact of cuts approved by the Congress. Yet earlier this year observers thought there was a chance that this year’s budget would be less contentious: after all, 2026 is an election year and the budget proposed by the governor in January seemed, at that time, to be one that lawmakers could agree to.

However, after the public review of the governor’s budget was completed, the governor insisted that there would be no final agreement unless and until lawmakers agreed to changes to the state’s Climate Law and auto insurance regulations. Far from trivial matters.

Both of these issues are regulated by the state but play no central role in the development of this year’s budget. The governor’s plan to change major pieces of the state’s auto insurance law in the budget was rejected by both the Senate and Assembly. Why? Because they didn’t have much at all to do with the budget.

The governor has campaigned across the state arguing that New York’s rising auto insurance premiums are the result of fraud and “staged auto accidents.” No one would defend either, but they are both already illegal. What lawmakers found objectionable was the governor’s “fix”: changing the way people are compensated after they are hurt in a car crash.

Why put compensation limits for those injured in car crashes? Hard to say, but we do know that ride sharing giant Uber is spending millions of dollars on an advocacy campaign to limit compensation for injured car passengers and drivers. Why? Because they are on the hook when their drivers are involved in an accident.

So, there is a disconnect between what the governor says is the problem (fraud which is already illegal) and the solution being compensation limits for those injured in car crashes. Thus, lawmakers kicked her plan out of the budget. That’s not to say that lawmakers should ignore the governor’s complaints. If the governor’s allegations that fraud has gotten worse are true, they should examine what insurers, and her Administration, have been doing to fight fraud in recent years as well as the reasons for increasing insurance costs generally.

However, at least the governor actually offered an auto insurance plan in her budget. When it comes to changes to the Climate Law, she did not – and has still not offered one. The closest she has come is an opinion piece published on a news website. Hardly the stuff of legislation.

In this case, the governor’s “plan” is to weaken the state’s regulation of methane emissions (the worst of the greenhouse gases) and push further into the future the requirements for the state’s reduction in greenhouse gas emissions – which are the drivers of climate change. What does that have to do with the budget? Nothing, but given the governor’s power in the budget process, she’s using the leverage she has to advance climate law and auto insurance changes.

Getting the budget done by April 1^st is what Governor Hochul and state lawmakers are supposed to do. The state budget is the centerpiece of the legislative session, the most important task that voters “hire” elected officials to do when they cast their votes. When the governor links her non-budget agenda to the budget which causes it to be late, it feeds an increasingly cynical electorate’s assessment that Albany can’t get its work done like it’s supposed to.

It shouldn’t be this way. New Yorkers deserve better. After all, it’s your money.

This week the nation celebrates the need for government openness during the annual “Sunshine Week.” The logic for requiring that American government operate openly was best articulated by James Madison, former President and a key figure in the Constitutional Convention, who commented “A popular Government, without popular information, or the means of acquiring it, is but a Prologue to a Farce or a Tragedy; or, perhaps both.”

Unfortunately, as regular observers of the Albany scene know, far too much of New York’s important decision-making occurs in secret behind closed doors. But even the most jaded have been surprised at what’s going on with this year’s budget negotiations.

Late last month, Governor Hochul amped up public pressure with a vague proposal to change New York’s seven-year-old Climate Law. The governor has urged modification of the law in the past, but she placed no proposal in her budget, nor in her budget amendments, and her current plan was informally announced as the budget hearings were wrapping up. Moreover, as of late last week, the governor had still not submitted to the Legislature (at least as far as we know) a written proposal at all. Thus, there was no meaningful way for her proposal to face public scrutiny.

The governor’s argument alleges that rising energy costs are the result of the Climate Law, which just happens to echo the messaging by a multi-million-dollar propaganda campaign launched by the Law’s opponents. Those opponents include the oil and gas industry and large investor-owned utilities.

But is the claim that the Climate Law is the biggest factor in rising energy costs true? Short answer: no.

Here in the Northeast, an obvious reason for electricity price hikes is increases in the cost of fuel, not the Climate Law. The region relies heavily on natural gas as both a home heating fuel and a source of utility-scale electricity. And gas prices have soared over the past year. The war in Iran is making those costs go up even more.

Yet, getting the power to your home is an even bigger factor. About two-thirds of utility bills are the result of those costs and they are going up faster than inflation. Of course, the unusually cold winter has also contributed to higher than usual energy costs.

Looking ahead, energy experts are warning that electricity costs will continue to go up, largely due to the need to modernize the power grid and to deal with the mushrooming number of data centers, which demand astronomical amounts of energy.

Addressing the worsening climate crisis – last year was one of the hottest in recorded history – will undoubtedly impact rising energy costs. Yet the state itself examined this cost and found that when it comes to the climate crisis, “The cost of inaction exceeds the cost of action by more than $115 billion.”

Looking at the cheapest way to produce the power that we need is the obvious way for policymakers to go. When it comes to that, it is well established that solar power is the cheapest and that setting up solar power generators is also the quickest way to generate power – even re-powering old fossil fuels facilities can take a few years to get up and running.

Yes, energy costs are going up, but here in New York our ranking – in terms of a residential electricity rates compared among the states – is essentially unchanged over the past decade.

Governor Hochul says that the Climate Law is hurting people’s pocketbooks. Yet the facts show that reliance on gas power, an aging power grid, and the specter of unregulated growth in data centers, are far bigger hits to ratepayers. Of course, an open, public debate over the issue – not a negotiation shrouded in secrecy – would shed some much-needed light on that conclusion.

When it comes to “Sunshine Week” New Yorkers should remember, openness in government is a prerequisite to good governance and that sunshine also delivers the cheapest electricity. Let’s hope the Legislature demands both.