State budget will be late, leaders agree, citing policy differences

ALBANY — Admitting what had become obvious, Gov. Kathy Hochul and lawmakers acknowledged Thursday that the state budget will be late this year and it’s because policy issues — bail laws and affordable housing especially — are keeping them apart rather than dollars and cents.

Debates over these issues have split the Democrats who control all levers of power at the state Capitol, pretty much as they have been since Hochul unveiled her $227 billion budget proposal on Feb. 1.

Lawmakers have offered various compromises on both topics but talks haven’t progressed beyond that.

“Those two issues have taken up most of the oxygen in the room,” Assembly Speaker Carl Heastie (D-Bronx) told reporters shortly after his chamber adjourned for the day. “There are many things on the table but most of the discussion is around bail and the governor’s housing proposal. If and when those two big dominoes fall, can things move a little quicker? Sure.”

There had been little movement in negotiations for weeks, multiple sources have said. When the current workweek started, officials already were pointing to sundown April 5 — the start of the legislature’s Passover/Easter break — as a more realistic deadline than April 1, the start of the state’s fiscal year.

About 36 hours before the deadline, Hochul said publicly what many said privately.

“It’s becoming clear that the state budget will not be meeting the April 1st deadline,” Hochul told New York Public Radio in an interview.

“I think it’s just a reality check,” Hochul said. “We’ve had very productive meetings with the [legislative] leaders, but there’s a lot of issues that are still outstanding. So, it’s just an acknowledgment of the reality of the situation.”

Senate Majority Leader Andrea Stewart-Cousins (D-Yonkers) concurred that “policy issues” are the holdup.

Meanwhile, legislators will approve a bill to ensure New York makes its ongoing debt payments. Also, they are preparing emergency spending bills to keep state government operating — but won’t act on them until Monday if it’s clear negotiations will roll past the beginning of Passover.

Bail has become a chief sticking point — and not for the first time in Albany.

Hochul wants to loosen the bail law to give judges more discretion to apply bail on a wide set of crimes by removing a provision that directs them to use the “least restrictive option” for ensuring a defendant returns to court.

Her fellow Democrats in the Senate and Assembly said any such change to the law should be narrower and, at most, give judges that discretion only over violent felons or repeat violent felons. A wider application would subject suspects accused of misdemeanors and nonviolent felonies to bail when they aren’t supposed to be, legislators say.

It’s yet another follow-up to a landmark 2019 law that eliminated bail for most misdemeanors and nonviolent felonies. Democrats in 2020 returned more than 20 charges to “bail eligible” status, including ones on burglary and domestic violence. Last year, Hochul successfully pushed them to allow a judge to set bail in some cases in which a suspect might have multiple ongoing charges that otherwise aren’t “bail eligible.”

But Hochul is returning to the subject again after a close reelection victory last fall in which Republicans criticized her and other Democrats on the issue

On housing, Hochul wants the state to build 800,000 more affordable housing units statewide over the next decade. Over the next three years, she wants a 3% increase in stock downstate and 1% upstate.

The controversial part: The state would be able to override local zoning if the goals aren’t met. Neighboring states have such a provision.

The Assembly has led a push for a “carrot” approach as opposed to the “stick.” It suggests a $500 million pool of municipal aid that could be doled out if communities meet the housing goal. Some have suggested combining the incentives and the override threat.

School aid and other financial issues that typically dominate budget talks haven’t been much of a factor this year — in part because Hochul opened talks with a generous 10% hike in education aid. Heastie, for one, strongly prefers to keep the budget centered on finances but acknowledged it’s just not how New York governors do things.

“As I’ve always said, I believe the budget should be a fiscal document,” Heastie said. “But that’s not the governor’s position and, in some instances, it’s not the Senate’s position.”

— With Michael Gormley

By Yancey Roy

yancey.roy@newsday.com@yanceyroy