ALBANY – The state budget isn’t budging.
State Senate and Assembly lawmakers were set to return to Albany Tuesday to pass another stopgap spending measure, indicating New York’s budget will likely be more than a week late — at least.
Gov. Kathy Hochul indicated Monday that little progress had been made in talks with legislative leaders over the weekend despite the blown April 1 deadline for the state spending plan.
“It’s an ongoing process,” the governor told reporters after an unrelated press conference.
“There is a lot of communication, a lot of give and take, a lot of conversations going on,” she said, without detailing how negotiations may have moved.
The major sticking points in talks over Hochul’s enormous $263 billion budget proposal remain her push to roll back compliance deadlines in the state’s climate law and her pitch to lower out-of-control car insurance rates by changing liability standards.
“BUDGET UPDATE: We still don’t have a framework of a conceptual timeframe for the second budget extender,” Assembly Minority Leader Ed Ra (R-Nassau) wrote on X, ripping Hochul for the delay.
Hochul has made a tradition of holding up the spending package past the deadline as she seeks to turn the screws on the state Legislature, as lawmakers don’t get paid during the delay.
Last year, she used the tactic to strike a deal on changes to criminal justice laws regarding how prosecutors share evidence with the defense ahead of trial, an issue that had been resisted by lefty lawmakers.
Assembly Speaker Carl Heastie (D-Bronx) grew so frustrated during the talks that he made the rare move of introducing a bill that would have allowed legislators to get paid despite a late budget, though it didn’t go anywhere.
Heastie told reporters he thought the governor’s control over the process was not “even,” and reiterated that his chamber would hold out for lefty priorities like demanding Hochul hike taxes to support New York City under Mayor Zohran Mamdani.
“In my 26 years here, I’ve never heard one member say, ‘give up so that we can get paid.’ That’s just never, never an option,” Heastie said last week.
But even as the Assembly members cry out for more taxes to fill Mamdani’s alleged $5.4 billion city budget gap, they’ve managed to find $1 million to renovate their lounge space in the capitol building over the summer.
Last year’s budget talks extended into mid-May.