This year’s $254 billion state budget was exceptionally late, but Governor Kathy Hochul and state lawmakers finally voted on lingering items last week. Here are some of the areas that Black and Brown advocates were disappointed didn’t get more funding.
The deadline for the fiscal year (FY) 2026 state budget was April 1. Hochul and lawmakers spent about a month past that date in contentious negotiations over policy changes, such as involuntary commitment laws, reforms to the state’s discovery law, and a statewide mask ban. There was an additional 10 days’ delay after Hochul announced an “agreement” deal where lawmakers dragged voting through the budget bills.
Some strides were made when it came to the state’s Black Agenda, which was proposed earlier this year. This includes $30 million to New York Urban League and United Way of Greater New York, $1 million to socially and economically disadvantaged farmers, $8 million to support community behavioral health crisis response programs, $2.5 million to the Office of Gun Violence Prevention (OGVP), $3.1 million to the Correctional Association of New York (CANY) and $275,000 to the Fortune Society, $2.5 million for the statewide Afterschool Learning and Enrichment After-School Program Supports (LEAPS) program, and $28 million to the My Brothers Keeper program.
“As we transition from budget to legislation,” said Assemblymember Chantel Jackson, who chairs the Black legislative task force, “we remain committed to building our 2025 legislative agenda and upholding our mission: securing financial resources and advancing policies that uplift Black communities across New York State.”
There were also allocations to arts and cultural institutions: $60 million for the New York State Council on the Arts; $1 million to City University of New York (CUNY) Medgar Evers College, including support for the Dubois Bunche Center for Public Policy and Dr. John Flateau Chair in Election Data Analysis and Research; $250,000 to Weeksville Heritage Center and $100,000 to the Brooklyn Public Library Center for the Brooklyn History Society; $175,000 to the Boys and Girls Club of Harlem and $500,000 to the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture; and $222,500 to the Langston Hughes Community Library in Queens.
However, quite a few people are unhappy with what was finalized.
SUNY Downstate Hospital
The battle to save the State University of New York (SUNY) Downstate Health Science Center hospital and university in Brooklyn has been waging for quite some time, but things came to a head in February 2024 when the community rallied against a plan to move inpatient services at Downstate across the street to Kings County Hospital. Community leaders and electeds feared this would effectively close the hospital.
Bishop Orlando Findlayter, of the New Hope Christian Fellowship church, has been leading the clergy effort to save the hospital. He said that the asking price was close to $1 billion for renovations and operation of the crumbling facility, and their proposed plan kept in-patient services at Downstate.
After months of demonstrations, the hospital’s new community advisory board met in January 2025. Hochul committed to $450 million in capital funding and $100 million in operating support, in addition to the $400 million included in the FY 2025 enacted budget, for a grand total of $950 million for SUNY Downstate. Representatives for Hochul promised the community at the public hearings that this additional funding would be in the state’s executive budget. People were hopeful it would happen.
Findlayter said that somewhere in the budget negotiations, $250 million of Downstate funding was removed, leaving the community “angry, frustrated, and disappointed that we went and fought for the money and then through some back door dealing,” it was gone. Many are under the impression that the public hearings were “stringing the community along” the whole time, he said.
State Assemblymember Monique Chandler-Waterman said that $750 million was kept in the budget for Downstate but agreed that the shortfall was disappointing. “Although we fought for transparency and community inclusion, the Governor has not included the additional $250 million in this budget as promised,” she said in a statement.
State Senator Zellnor Myrie, an outspoken advocate for the hospital and a mayoral candidate this year, added: “This budget falls far short of what SUNY and the Governor promised us for Downstate, and far short of what this community needs and deserves. With the future of Downstate hanging in the balance, this is the time to make investments in health equity for Black and Brown people. Once the Advisory Board completes its work, this community will once again make its voice heard and demand a real plan to improve health care in Central Brooklyn.”
Education
The education portion of the state budget totals $37.4 billion, and aims to update the Foundation Aid funding formula to include resources for English Language Learners (ELLs) and those facing poverty.
However, the Coalition for Equitable Education Funding said the final education budget bill made changes to the formula they could not agree with. They approved of increasing the per pupil weight for ELLs from .5 to .65 as written in the proposed state legislature budget. What made it into the final budget was a weight of .53, meaning about $30 million to city schools, which they said wasn’t enough.
“Far from helping New York City schools better meet student needs, the changes to the Foundation Aid formula will result in NYC schools getting hundreds of millions of dollars less than they would have received had the State made no changes to the formula at all,” they said in a joint statement.
Housing access
After years of advocacy, the much-debated Housing Access Voucher Program (HAVP) was finally included in the state budget with an allocation of $50 million. Funding was also put toward affordable housing development and preservation, supporting Mitchell-Lamas, New York City Housing Authority (NYCHA), and Housing Development Fund Corporations (HDFC) cooperative repairs.
While many nonprofit organizations said this represents a significant and “long overdue” victory for housing justice, others felt that the funding was not nearly enough to help prevent evictions, reduce homelessness, and address housing stability for the city’s families in the future.
The Black Agenda initially called for $250 million toward the HAVP, but was haggled down to $50 million.
“To be honest, we landed at $50 million, but the governor didn’t want to do it,” said Assemblymember Khaleel Anderson. “And we all know that in the face of federal cuts, we need to protect small homeowners and renters. [But] the HAVP at $50 million is a huge deal, and that’s something I’ve been fighting for since before I was even elected — before it was called the Home Stability Support. This would essentially create a new Section 8 voucher program for up to 10,000+ renters across the state. It’s a big deal because the federal budget has cut Section 8 funding, so we want to be able to have enough protection for our tenants.”