ALBANY — Despite Gov. Kathleen C. Hochul’s announcement of a “handshake agreement” on the New York state budget on Monday, the final details of the quarter-billion dollar spending plan remain unclear and key issues remain unresolved now four days later.
Late Monday, Hochul called a press conference to announce that she and the leaders of the two chambers of the state legislature had come to a broad agreement on the 2025-26 state budget. She took a victory lap, touting a handful of policy items she’s been pushing for in negotiations that are apparently in the final agreement. Typically, the governor’s announcement heralds incoming action on the final spending plan — the printing of the actual legislation and voting in the legislature.
But four days after her announcement, progress in Albany appears nearly stalled, and reports indicate that new issues are still being introduced, like paying the state’s unemployment insurance debts. Reports from the Albany bureau of the Long Island newspaper Newsday indicate that Hochul is also looking for broad power to cut up to $2 billion in spending from the state spending plan without legislative approval if the federal government makes broad cuts to payments to the state.
Hochul and her executive team said on Monday that a few issues remained up for discussion, including reforms to the state prison system, school aid spending and state aid to local governments. Those issues appeared still open as of Thursday, as lawmakers voted on another short-term budget extender to fund the state government through May 7.
According to Hochul, lawmakers have agreed to a handful of keystone policy changes — to the state discovery process for criminal cases, expanding the use of involuntary commitment for people on the streets, providing limited “inflation refund checks” to taxpayers and banning cellphone use in all state public schools.
Those were issues the governor focused heavily on this year. But fiscal issues have taken a backseat in negotiations, with issues like the state’s debt to the federal unemployment insurance fund, school funding and state aid to local governments still unresolved as of this week.
Legislative leaders have not spoken to reporters since Tuesday, when Senate Majority Leader Andrea A. Stewart-Cousins, D-Yonkers, held a press conference with reporters.
Stewart-Cousins dropped some hints to reporters there that the governor’s announcement on Monday, while not necessarily unexpected, was perhaps premature. She said that while nothing that Hochul highlighted in that Monday presentation was likely to change in further discussions, she noted that issues did remain on the table.
But that doesn’t seem to have perturbed the Senate leader. She noted that Hochul’s sudden announcement of a budget deal did surprise the legislature last year, but this year they expected it.
“I spend less time on reacting to what people want to do, as long as it’s not interfering with the job that we are supposed to be doing,” Stewart-Cousins said. “What she did, did not interfere with us getting the budget done, and that’s what we were focused on.”
Lawmakers left the Capitol on Thursday and headed back to their districts, expecting to return to Albany Monday for more work. Whether that work will include voting on the state budget remains to be seen.