{"id":828944,"date":"2026-05-29T00:51:19","date_gmt":"2026-05-29T00:51:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/828944\/"},"modified":"2026-05-29T00:51:19","modified_gmt":"2026-05-29T00:51:19","slug":"quick-take-new-york-state-budget-winners-and-losers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/828944\/","title":{"rendered":"Quick take: New York state budget winners and losers"},"content":{"rendered":"

For the fifth\u00a0year in a row, Gov. Kathy Hochul is the big winner in the contest of wills known as the state budget negotiation.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

Because of a constitutional advantage, the governor in New York starts the year with two powerful aces: She sets the agenda with her State of the State address; and, as we have seen over the past five years, the governor\u2019s superpower is that she doesn\u2019t care if the budget is late.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Under current law, state legislators don\u2019t get paid after April 1 if the budget is late. After six or seven weeks of no paychecks, they fold.<\/p>\n

During her State of the State address in January, the governor outlined her priorities including slowing down the implementation of the climate law; helping New York City financially; enabling more housing to be built, addressing the high cost of car insurance, and protecting immigrants.<\/p>\n

The governor won every single one of those priorities including a change in how the state will calculate methane emissions \u2013 a proposal multiple lawmakers told reporters on-the-record early in the session that they couldn\u2019t stomach.<\/p>\n

Hochul also agreed with lawmakers to send $1 billion out in rebate checks to New Yorkers.<\/p>\n

While the checks count as a win for lawmakers and the governor politically, some budget watchdogs view the checks as a gimmick.<\/p>\n

\u201cTaking a billion dollars and sprinkling it so thinly among 8 million families in small checks will not provide any real relief, but imagine what you could do with a billion dollars,\u201d Andrew Rein of the Citizens Budget Commission told Capital Tonight.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Rein also questioned the wisdom of not adding to the state\u2019s Rainy-Day fund which currently sits at about $14 billion. According to the state Division of the Budget, over the next three years the state might lose between $35 and $50 billion in tax revenue should there be a recession.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cThe state squandered the opportunity to shore up its shaky foundation,\u201d Rein said.<\/p>\n

For more on the state budget click here.<\/a><\/p>\n

Other winners this budget season include new New York City Mayor Mamdani<\/b> who won a pied a terre tax plus $28 billion in funding from the state.\u00a0 He also received permission to delay some pension payments, which Rein criticized.<\/p>\n

\u201cNew York City has a $7 billion budget hole which sets the stage for it to return to Albany next year for more aid,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

State Worker unions like NYSUT and CSEA<\/b> are also winners because they accomplished their biggest priority of the year, a more generous pension tier.\u00a0 The Business Council<\/b> is on the winner\u2019s list because the group supported the package of tort changes the governor proposed as well as the slowdown of the climate law. Another big winner? School districts<\/b> because they gained a 2% increase in Foundation Aid. Districts also successfully slowed down the implementation of the electric school bus mandate until 2032.\u00a0<\/p>\n

As for losers, the New York State Trial Lawyers Association<\/b> suffered a rare defeat thanks to the auto insurance reforms.\u00a0Progressive lawmakers<\/b> may be unhappy that there were no new taxes on the very wealthy, nor were they completely satisfied with the Governor\u2019s immigration reforms.\u00a0 The 450,000 New Yorkers who will find themselves off the Essential Plan<\/b> starting July 1\u00a0will see no relief in this budget.<\/p>\n

Finally, while there is $135 million n the budget for six distressed cities<\/b> across the state, the Tier VI pension reforms which will assist over 800,000 state workers may temper excitement around that new aid. Like New York City, Rein predicts those same cities will likely have to return to Albany next year because there was no structural relief in the state budget for them.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cAlbany spends more time giving away money than working with localities to deliver quality services and that\u2019s what New Yorkers really need,\u201d Rein said.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"For the fifth\u00a0year in a row, Gov. Kathy Hochul is the big winner in the contest of wills…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":828945,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[5122],"tags":[40737,5229,29875,13565,17547,29874,29873,405,403,17050,50,5226,5225,5228,17545,5227,80,4573,29872,52,67,586,132,5230,68,2969,5284],"class_list":["post-828944","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-york","tag-albany-capital-region","tag-america","tag-app-capital-tonight","tag-app-local-state-politics","tag-app-ny-state-of-politics","tag-capital-tonight","tag-capital-tonight-interviews","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-city","tag-new-york-state","tag-news","tag-newyork","tag-newyorkcity","tag-ny","tag-ny-state-of-politics","tag-nyc","tag-politics","tag-state-budget","tag-susan-arbetter","tag-top-stories","tag-united-states","tag-united-states-of-america","tag-unitedstates","tag-unitedstatesofamerica","tag-us","tag-usa","tag-vod"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/116655127581575229","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/828944","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=828944"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/828944\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/828945"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=828944"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=828944"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=828944"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}