ALBANY, New York — Gov. Kathy Hochul announced a $237 billion budget agreement with state lawmakers on Monday with a message: The doubters were wrong.
The governor waded this year into politically nettlesome issues like housing, public safety and support for the thousands of migrants who have arrived in the state over the last two years.
In the end, Hochul largely got what she wanted from the state Legislature despite calls for greater support for low-income renters and skepticism from her fellow Democrats over increasing penalties for people who steal from retail stores and assault workers.
All are issues that have been hot-button concerns for voters in New York and could loom large in the coming elections this year. The policy victories could also provide a boost for Hochul, who has recorded lukewarm job approval and favorability ratings with voters during much of her tenure.
“I heard way too often for my tastes: That’s always how it’s been done. That’s never worked for me, it never will,” Hochul said at a Capitol news conference announcing the tentative agreement. “We had some very tough conversations for how we can change the entrenched status quo.”
The spending plan adds about $4 billion in additional spending from Hochul’s initial proposal in January and does not include hikes to the state’s personal income tax.
Democrats and labor unions were also able to win changes to a less-generous pension tier first created 14 years ago that is expected to cost taxpayers an additional $400 million annually, according to an analysis by the independent watchdog Citizens Budget Commission.
And despite Hochul’s declaration that she had the “parameters of a conceptual agreement” with lawmakers on the budget, there was still work to be done.
Democratic lawmakers were still discussing the final details of the budget, including a contentious last-minute push to extend Mayor Eric Adams’ control of public schools.
The last-minute inclusion of the issue could prolong final passage of the budget, which is now more than two weeks past its April 1 due date.
“It’s an important and complicated issue,” state Sen. Mike Gianaris said. “The members correctly want to know what’s being proposed.”
New York will boost funding by $500 million to provide housing, health care, legal and job placement services for migrants, bringing total spending to $2.4 billion.
The money is less than the $6 billion being sought by Adams, whose city has seen 184,000 migrants arrive over the last two years.
Still, Adams embraced the tentative budget plan as “a win for New Yorkers” — pointing to the additional migrant aid, the housing package and the potential of mayoral control being extended for up to two years as part of the spending plan.
“We’ve been clear that we need additional support from our partners in Albany to fully realize those goals and today we celebrate as most of our key asks were granted by our state partners,” Adams said in a statement.
The final details for the state’s costly Medicaid program, too, were yet to be fully ironed out.
And Hochul did not get everything laid out earlier this year. A proposal to regulate social media firms by blocking children from being exposed to algorithmic-based feeds was rejected.
Nevertheless, the broad strokes deals announced by Hochul on Monday was not an easy one to achieve.
It took Hochul two years to get a housing package in place — a concern she said was part of a broader “affordability crisis” that has led to a spike in out-migration from the state.
A prior housing package fell apart following acrimonious negotiations between the governor and Legislature last year.
At the time, Hochul had sought measures that would have allowed the state to override local zoning in order to expand housing. Suburban lawmakers in pivotal counties around New York City, including those on Long Island, objected to the proposal.
This year, Hochul resolved to include “more carrots” — namely hundreds of millions of dollars for local governments that affirmatively opt in for more housing construction.
Hochul secured a housing package that includes $650 million for local governments to construct more homes and new tax incentives for developers to build in New York City. The agreement came over the objections of left-leaning tenant advocates as well as some Democratic lawmakers who wanted stronger protections for renters.
“We could have settled for a watered-down plan and a hollow victory,” she said. “But I refused to accept anything that didn’t meaningfully address the housing supply.”
Still, Republicans and some Democrats were not enamored with the details of the pending housing agreement.
New York GOP Chair Ed Cox said the tenant regulations “will only make the situation worse” for housing choices. Democratic state Sen. Julia Salazar added the housing plan is “really a missed opportunity to provide very basic protections against no-fault evictions and unreasonably high rent increases for tenants even in New York City.”
Hochul was also willing to buck her party to win an agreement for stronger public safety measures as public polling has shown persistent voter anxiety over crime, and the issue has loomed large in recent elections.
New York is set to add more than 20 additional criminal charges that can be considered hate crimes.
And the state is poised to crack down on retail theft: Hochul successfully pushed for increasing criminal charges for people who assault retail workers by classifying it as a felony. An additional agreement will allow prosecutors to combine the value of stolen goods across multiple retailers and increase charges — a process known as aggregation.
The budget will include $40 million for law enforcement agencies to crackdown on retail theft as well as enable the hiring of 100 state troopers.
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