Latest NYS budget package includes pension boost, climate extension

ALBANY — Newly released provisions of New York’s 2026-27 budget aim to lower car insurance costs and utility rates, give the state more time to meet its climate goals and sweeten retirement benefits for many public workers.

Lawmakers Tuesday approved a spending bill that covers transportation, economic development and environmental conservation, as they look to finish voting this week on the roughly $268 billion budget.

One of the key items was a pension package for public workers hired on or after April 1, 2012, into what is known as Tier 6, that allows teachers to retire at age 58, other workers to contribute less toward the pension system, and police and firefighters to count more of their overtime earnings toward their retirement.

The package comes with a $557 million price tag, largely paid for by municipalities and school districts and their taxpayers.

Other budget provisions include:

• Slowing the implementation of the state’s climate goals, reducing emission targets by 60% by 2040, instead of 40% by 2030, "to the maximum extent feasible and cost effective."
• Requiring auto insurers to return excess profit to policyholders.
• Limiting the costs utilities can pass on to their ratepayers and increasing rate transparency.
• Making it a crime to interfere with access to any house of worship, creating a 50-foot buffer zone.
• Easing some environmental reviews for projects involving certain types of housing, parks, trails, water/sewers and green infrastructure upgrades in an effort to reduce red tape and delays.
• Increasing social media protections for users under age 18 from online predators, scammers and artificial intelligence chatbots.
• Requiring municipalities that don’t already have a court to create one so drivers can challenge tickets received through the use of stop-arm cameras on school buses.
• Creating a pilot program in New York City requiring those who have received 16 speed camera tickets within a year to have an anti-speed device installed in their vehicles.

Last week the State Legislature kicked off the final leg of the budget process by voting on education spending and increased protections for communities from federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents. The voting comes weeks after Gov. Kathy Hochul's May 7 announcement of a "general agreement" on the state budget, which was due April 1. 

Lawmakers are expected to vote on the remaining six budget bills as they’re released this week. 

“It’s 55 days late and we will only have one full week to pass all of the remaining legislation we need to protect and deliver for New Yorkers," Assemb. Emily Gallagher (D-Brooklyn) said during the floor vote. "That alone is proof that this process is badly broken."

Climate, utilities, auto insurance

The newly released budget legislation tweaks New York’s 2019 climate law, pushing back the 2030 emissions deadline. Hochul has said the state can’t meet the goal due in part to rising costs as well as actions of the Trump administration to kill or delay wind and solar energy projects. Environmentalists have accused Hochul of trying to gut the 2019 law.

Among the changes, the legislation will shift the way fossil fuel emissions are calculated and allow emission regulations to be written by the end of 2028 instead of this year as originally required by law.

The legislation also aims to boost solar projects with $200 million for installation incentives and credits, as well as some changes to require cost transparency and make it easier to connect projects.

Assemb. Phil Palmesano (R-Corning), the ranking Republican member of the Ways and Means Committee, attacked the climate goals and mandates as “unaffordable, unreliable and unrealistic.”

“Let me be perfectly clear," Palmesano said in a statement. "While these changes are a small step in the right direction, more has to be done,” he said, calling for a full repeal of the climate law.

The budget also includes a utility reform package that will require utilities requesting a rate increase to include a "budget-constrained" option keeping operating and capital costs below the rate of inflation.

Utilities will no longer be allowed to pass on expenses such as lobbying and political contributions to ratepayers. And the legislation limits how much excess revenue a utility is allowed to keep.

The legislation includes several changes to the state’s auto insurance laws that increase reporting requirements and require insurance companies to return excess profits to policyholders as credits.