New York State $254B budget deal (almost) finalized

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With additional reporting from Tandy Lau, Report for America and Amsterdam News Staff

After weeks of delay, Governor Kathy Hochul announced that she and the State Legislature reached an agreement on the budget for fiscal year 2026. State officials are voting on the budget bills this week, allowing for small changes still.

“Despite the chaos and uncertainty that’s just constantly emanating out of Washington, we still delivered for the people of New York. We still got it done, and I would not take that for granted. We worked through some really challenging issues [and] we refused to be drawn into the toxic divisive politics of the moment,” said Hochul. “We never lost sight of the people that we are sent here to serve, and we never strayed away from the issues they cared the most about.”

The budget is estimated at $254 billion. With a conceptual agreement in place, the State Legislature is expected to pass the bills necessary to make the budget official soon. Some “final details” still need to be hammered out by then, said Hochul. She added that President Donald Trump and his administration have already doled out over $1.3 billion in federal funding cuts and that tariffs are adversely impacting working families.

“There’s a possibility that we’ll have to come back later this year and update our budget in response to federal actions,” said Hochul. Among a laundry list of items, she was pushing for middle-class tax cuts, expanding Child Tax Credits, providing inflation refund checks of up to $500, free school breakfast and lunch for students, full repeal of the State and Local Tax deduction, monies for public safety and law enforcement initiatives statewide and in New York City.

Hochul’s bigger policy changes, that were holding up the budget, like involuntary commitment laws, which would impact street homeless individuals with mental illness; amendments to Kendra’s Law, which deals with individuals with serious mental illness mandated to outpatient treatment; and reforms to the state’s discovery law, which puts pressure on prosecutors to hand over evidence to defendants and their lawyer indiscriminately in court cases, were pushed through. There was also pushback against a statewide mask ban and a ban on cellphones in schools.

Most of the more controversial parts of Hochul’s agenda made it into the budget, including a $13.5 million “bell-to-bell” ban on smartphones and devices during the school day; a Class B misdemeanor for people wearing a mask while committing a crime; changing the discovery laws and investing $120 million into discovery law compliance for prosecutors and defense attorneys; and beefing up involuntary commitment laws.

The Legal Aid Society (LAS) said it will wait for the final language before providing a full-throated analysis on the budget. But the public defense organization issued an initial statement on the discovery amendments.

“Regardless of these amendments, we will continue to vigorously litigate our clients’ cases to hold prosecutors accountable when they fail to meet their discovery obligations,” said an LAS spokesperson. “The people we serve are entitled to see the full weight of the evidence pending against them, in a timely manner — a basic principle of fairness and due process, and the bare minimum necessary to ensure a zealous defense.

“Lastly, we are grateful that, despite a closed-door, backroom approach to policy-making in the budget process, the Legislature was able to fight back against the worst of the Governor’s proposals.”

Known as Kalief’s Law, for Kalief Browder, the current discovery laws went into effect in 2020. replacing the previous “blindfold” era when prosecutors could spring evidence and witness on a defendant shortly before trial. Overnight, New York went from one of the most regressive discovery sharing laws to one of the most progressive.

District attorneys’ offices now need to automatically share discovery in a timely fashion. Many local prosecutors have argued in favor of the amendments due to the stringent “speedy trial clock” to turn in evidence.

Criminal justice groups, like Center for Community Alternatives (CCA), also indicated support for strengthening earned time policies for incarcerated individuals.

“Our prison crisis didn’t start with the horrific, videotaped murder of Robert Brooks by a swarm of prison staff or the illegal walk-off by officers enraged at being held accountable,” said Thomas Gant, Community Organizer at CCA in a statement. “But those events laid bare the need for reforms to change the dangerous culture inside prisons. The data is clear that strengthening earned time programs will do just that, reducing violence in correctional facilities and orienting towards rehabilitation rather than perpetual punishment.”

Other areas of public safety in the state budget weren’t nearly as contentious. The Fair Access to Victim Compensation Campaign Steering Committee, for instance, commended Hochul “for including critical victim compensation reforms in the final budget.” The changes to the victim compensation law included raising the burial expense cap from $6,000 to $12,000, eliminating contributory conduct denials in homicide cases, and expanding compensation for crime scene cleanup and scam victims.

“The increase in the burial cap is especially meaningful for families navigating unimaginable loss. This is the first change to this benefit in decades and will provide crucial relief for those struggling to lay their loved ones to rest with dignity,” said the coalition in a statement.

Other key items that made it into the budget:

• A $1 billion tax cut for middle-class and low-income New Yorkers
• Investing $47 million to make community college free for adult students pursuing associate degrees
• An increase to the Child Tax Credit
• Sending New York’s first-ever Inflation Refund checks, which will dedicate $2 billion to provide direct cash assistance to eligible New Yorkers with checks of up to $400 per family.
• Reducing the Payroll Mobility Tax for small businesses, and eliminating it for self-employed individuals earning $150,000 or less.
• Providing $340 million for free breakfast and lunch for every K-12 student.
• Expanding access to child care by investing $2.2 billion statewide, including a $350 million investment for child care subsidies for New York City families.
• Investing $77 million for police officers in New York City subways.
• Allocating $25 million for welcome centers in city subways to connect homeless individuals with services and care.
• Investing $357 million in gun violence prevention programs.
• Banning private equity purchases within the first 90 days a home is on the market.
• Investing in Mayor Eric Adams’ “City of Yes” rezoning and pro-housing plan.
• Investing $1 billion in climate and renewable energy projects.
• Investing $160 million in inpatient psychiatric beds in New York City.
• Funding the Metropolitan Transportation Authority’s (MTA’s) proposed $68.4 billion 2025-2029 capital plan to build the Interborough Express, among other things.

As negotiations come to a close and final budget bills are voted on, a few more policy details may be changing that haven’t been thoroughly reviewed with the public, as reported by Politico.

At the top of that list is Hochul’s push to change the way lieutenant governors (LG) are elected since her not-so-secret falling out with LG Antonio Delgado and former LG Brian Benjamin, who resigned over campaign fraud charges but was later exonerated.