STATE CAPITOL — After leaders signaled a state budget deal wouldn’t be reached ahead of the holiday weekend, Gov. Kathy Hochul confirmed on Wednesday night she will extend the state’s budget deadline until April 4.
The state budget is due April 1. Following statements by state Assembly Speaker Carl Heastie and state Senate Majority Leader Andrea Stewart-Cousins that signaled state budget negotiations would last until after the weekend, Hochul put out a statement Wednesday night that said she expects budget negotiations to be on pause until at least April 4.
“For weeks, I have been negotiating with the Legislature to craft a budget that makes record investments for New Yorkers while putting the State on a fiscally stable path into the future. While I believe a final agreement is within reach, I recognize many New Yorkers would like to spend the holiday weekend with family and loved ones. For that reason, I will be delivering a bill to the Legislature to temporarily extend the budget deadline until April 4,” Hochul said in a statement. “Working together, I am confident we can deliver a budget that increases the housing supply, invests in schools and health care, and makes New York safer for all."
Legislative leaders had already told reporters that they didn’t expect a budget agreement before the holiday weekend. Stewart-Cousins on Wednesday morning said she was anticipating passing a state budget extender ahead until April 2, after the holiday weekend, as negotiations are expected to continue into next week.
Both legislative leaders previously described conductive conversations at that point with Hochul and both expressed optimism a deal would be reached soon.
“I think we’re at the middle of the middle,” Stewart-Cousins said.
Last year, budget negotiations dragged on until the state budget was nearly a month late and many big policy items, like Hochul’s housing plan, were ultimately left after leaders were unable to reach an agreement. The state Legislature ultimately passed multiple short-term extender bills throughout April.
Stewart-Cousins said the state Senate will pass the debt service bill on Thursday, which is typically the first of the 10 budget bills passed each year. Thursday is also the last scheduled day of the legislative session this week, and Stewart-Cousins added that she expects to send her members home for the holiday weekend. It is currently unclear if members will be asked to stick around an extra day in Albany on Friday in case a budget deal is reached.
Stewart-Cousins’ statements seem to echo the ones made by Heastie on Tuesday afternoon. The speaker also hinted negotiations are continuing, but are not yet nearing the finish line.
“I think where the budget negotiations are now, it feels like we're on the same planet,” Heastie said. “I don’t think we’re in the same country or in the same state yet, but we're at least on the same planet on what has to happen on all of the big items.”
Budget negotiations continue to be focused on housing and school aid. While Hochul has previously warned school aid cannot continue at the same level following the state fully funding the state’s Foundation Aid formula last year, legislative leaders seem focused on revising the formula — an idea Hochul has signaled she is open to.
“As it relates to education funding, anything that begins with half the school districts in the state losing the money that they plan to get based on their past practices, is a non-starter. Those things were clear early on,” Stewart-Cousins said. “And so we continue, again, to talk about how to move forward as it relates to school funding and the importance of doing a study that will allow us with updated data to look at how we fund our schools across the state. Nobody's drawn a line in the sand saying, ‘We won't do this.’”
As Hochul also continues her big push for a plan to build 800,000 new units of housing across the state after it was ultimately left out of last year’s budget, Heastie and Stewart-Cousins are remaining firm that any deal must include tenant protections.
Heastie and Stewart-Cousins also seem aligned against Hochul’s proposal to increase penalties for violence against retail workers. There are also proposals to combat the growing problem of retail theft. Many shoppers have seen an increase in items being locked up in stores to combat the problem.
Neither chamber included the penalty proposal in its One House budgets released earlier this month, but Stewart-Cousins declined to say whether the penalties proposal was off the table.
“I mean, we're talking about things, but I think there's a lot of conversation about how best to handle it, and I think both houses find that merely raising penalties does not necessarily get at diminishing the amount of crime,” Stewart-Cousins said. “So, what we're trying to do is figure out ways that we can really cut this organized retail theft, certainly, and also help retail establishments to be able to bolster their security, and help local police forces to help them — retailers — to be able to abate the problem. So I think we're all very serious about this. And again, we don't want any worker hurt anywhere.”