Gov. Hochul (photo: Mike Groll/Office of Governor Kathy Hochul)

April 25, 2023 - Max Politics Podcast: Housing Policy Falls Out of the State Budget, with Cea Weaver

Cea Weaver, campaign coordinator for Housing Justice for All, joined the show to discuss state budget negotiations, the apparent demise of negotiations over housing policy, and the left-wing perspective on the issue and key components of the debate, including Good Cause Eviction, the governor's Housing Compact, and more.

Listen to the conversation and let us know what you think, on Twitter @TweetBenMax. You can listen to the show through the embedded audio below or download the episode wherever you get your podcasts at Max Politics.

Gov. Hochul makes a budget presentation (photo: Mike Groll/Governor's Office)

When Governor Kathy Hochul delivered her State of the State address in January, she promised to keep income taxes flat this year while identifying other revenue sources to pay for major funding needs.

"A majority of economists are predicting a recession," she said. "And it's also one of the reasons why we will not be raising income taxes this year."

The Legislature is now putting that promise to the test, seeking to increase taxes on the state’s highest individual and corporate earners as the legislative and executive branches negotiate a roughly $230 billion state budget.

Hochul, a Democrat, and the two Democratic supermajorities in the Legislature are divided over how to fund critical state functions and new priorities as pandemic-era federal aid dries up. A two-year boom in tax revenues due to a prior tax increase on top incomes combined with higher-than-anticipated earnings during the covid recovery is expected to yield to slower growth driven by high inflation and fears over a possible recession.

But the state currently remains flush with cash – entering the fiscal year with a $8.7 billion surplus – as leaders decide on a spending plan while putting billions more into reserves. Budget gaps in the outyears – fiscal years 2025, 2026, and 2027 – are expected to total $22 billion, primarily due to a drop in projected tax receipts and high ongoing levels of spending. The state budget has increased from $175.5 billion in fiscal year 2020 (the last pre-pandemic deal, struck in April 2019) to the expected roughly $230 billion budget for this fiscal year.

Hochul, Senate Majority Leader Andrea Stewart-Cousins, and Assembly Speaker Carl Heastie have been nearly deadlocked over the budget, now three weeks late, with discussions dominated by bail and housing policy. Looming behind them is a long list of other policy and fiscal decisions, with how much the state will raise and spend underpinning much of it. Part of that is a debate over raising taxes on the state's highest earners to pay for mass transit, healthcare, and a menu of other priorities held by various stakeholders.

Roughly a third of state revenue comes from personal income and corporate franchise taxes. Those funding streams account for about two-thirds of the revenue the state can raise directly without federal sources. Income taxes, the single largest non-federal funding source for the state government, fell steeply to $58 billion in Fiscal Year 2023, after reaching a peak of more than $70 billion the year before — though the projected income tax receipts this year are still higher than fiscal years 2019, 2020, and 2022. The expected drop this year is largely due to a so-called Pass-through Entity Tax, which gives certain corporations the option to pay an additional tax in exchange for personal income tax credits for their shareholders and other affiliates.

Proponents of higher taxes on the rich argue the boost could raise hundreds of millions to tens of billions of dollars to support programs for struggling New Yorkers like child care, affordable housing, health care, and education. Opponents, including Hochul, argue that already-high tax rates are responsible for an exodus of some high-income earners and going further could jeopardize the state's economic competitiveness.

Lawmakers are seeking new revenue in the face of concerns over the MTA's solvency, now with a $4.6 billion four-year shortfall, stress on the health care system, the costs associated with an influx of asylum-seekers to New York City, and other challenges and opportunities.

To fund those and other priorities, Hochul is looking to extend a 2021 tax increase on the most profitable companies. But she has resisted calls from Democratic lawmakers to raise personal income taxes on top individual earners while keeping in place increases passed in 2020 and also moving ahead with the next step in a modest, multi-year middle-class income tax cut.

The funding from the corporate tax increase extension, along with an additional payroll tax on downstate businesses to support the MTA, is expected to raise close to $2 billion in additional annual revenue, according to the governor's projections.

Both houses of the Legislature proposed higher corporate tax rates while rejecting Hochul's "payroll mobility tax" increase in their one-house budget resolutions, passed in mid-March. The chambers also both backed income tax increases on individuals in the top two brackets, those making more than $5 million and $25 million annually.

The different revenue and spending plans were followed by the launch of more intensive budget negotiations among the three Democrats, who have been meeting regularly behind closed doors over the past month with little to show for it.

On Wednesday of this past week, Stewart-Cousins told reporters she hoped negotiations were "at the beginning of the end" but that no agreement on taxation had been made.

"We haven't had a discussion about that," she said of proposals to raise taxes on the very wealthy. "We, in our one-house [budget resolution], talked about that possibility but it's not at the table right now."

On Monday, State Comptroller Thomas DiNapoli released a report showing tax collections in the last fiscal year exceeded the governor's amended executive budget forecast by $2.9 billion but were still $9.5 billion lower than the year before. In total, the state collected $111.7 billion in fiscal year 2023, which ended March 31.

"We are obviously taking a look at what is going on and the Comptroller's report certainly is informative," Stewart-Cousins said on Wednesday.

The fight over tax rates is playing out in the hallways of the State Capitol where advocates for and against increases are making their positions known. On Tuesday, a coalition of Democratic legislators and advocates supportive of the "Invest in Our New York" package of major tax increases and additional spending called on Hochul to accept tax hikes on New York's millionaires and billionaires.

"We must create a fairer, more inclusive society by investing in essential services, raising the minimum wage, and ensuring that the wealthiest contribute their fair share," said Assembly Member Michaelle Solages, a Nassau County Democrat, in a statement.

Nathan Gusdorf, executive director of the Fiscal Policy Institute, a nonprofit focused on state economic and fiscal trends, supports the tax increases proposed by the Legislature and has been calling for them to be made permanent. "The budgets only increase taxes on the top 0.2 percent of taxpayers, and only on a temporary basis," he said in a recent statement. "The state's fiscal stability would be better served by broadly increasing the progressivity of our tax system for all high earners on a permanent basis."

The Empire Center, a nonprofit think tank, has argued New York's relatively high personal income tax for top earners led to an outmigration of millionaires, citing data showing the state's share of millionaire earners nationwide decreased between 2010 and 2020. But while the number of millionaire filers leaving the state rose most years between 2016 and 2021, according to state tax data, the exodus shrank by roughly a quarter in 2021, the same year income taxes were raised on the highest earners. Overall, the total number of millionaires in New York continued to rise.

A recent Fiscal Policy Institute report shows that half of New Yorkers who left the state went to neighboring high-tax states. The report suggests a greater concern is an outmigration of middle class residents driven by New York's high cost of living, especially housing.

Patrick Orecki, the director of state studies at Citizens Budget Commission (CBC), a nonprofit fiscal watchdog, said the state should be seeking other revenue sources without relying so heavily on the wealthiest residents.

"The tax environment, especially being so top heavy, can and does have a negative impact on the state's competitiveness," he told Gotham Gazette. "There are plenty of opportunities for the state to, instead of increasing taxes, find savings elsewhere in the budget."

Also at stake in budget negotiations are billions of dollars in tax breaks for a range of industries, which the governor and Legislature have each included in their spending proposals. This year, Hochul proposed increasing the state's Film Tax Credit from $420 million to $700 million a year for media productions in New York. Both chambers included the increase, along with a $100 million boost in what’s now a $200 million a year credit for Broadway theaters that Hochul also backed. Some budget watchdogs, including CBC, have argued these types of subsidies have little proven impact on job creation or economic development.

Orecki suggested the state eliminate the Film Tax Credit and similar subsidies, and seek efficiencies in other areas like the state's School Aid and Medicaid formulas — the two biggest areas of spending in the budget each year. CBC is also opposed to proposed corporate tax hikes to fund the MTA, which Orecki noted also has room for savings. "Providing just new recurring revenue we don't think is a sustainable or reasonable option," he said.

Personal Income Tax
In April 2021, the final state budget deal raised personal income taxes on three groups: individuals making over $1 million a year or married couples making over $2 million a year; anybody making over $5 million annually, regardless of filing status; and anybody making over $25 million annually.

Both legislative one-house budgets this year propose .5% rate increases on the top two income brackets for tax years 2023 through 2027. That means for people making over $5 million a year, their state income tax rate would rise from 10.3% to 10.8%. For people earning over $25 million, their state income tax rate would increase from 10.9% to 11.4%.

The Assembly projects those rate increases to raise $717 million in the current fiscal year that just began (FY 2024) and $3.5 billion total through FY 2027. According to an analysis from Citizens Budget Commission, the rate hike would impact about 22,000 individuals, based on 2020 tax data. That year, people earning over $5 million annually made up .2% of filers and shouldered roughly a quarter of the state's personal income tax liability.

Corporate Tax Rates
In 2021, New York State raised both the personal income tax and the corporate tax rates on a temporary basis. The corporate tax rate hike – from 6.5% to 7.25% on corporations with over $5 million in annual profits – was authorized for three years, from 2021 to 2023.

This is the last year for which the 7.25% rate remains in effect. Without action in Albany, the rate will revert to 6.5%. A three-year extension would raise an estimated $2.9 billion through 2026, according to the executive budget.

Hochul and both houses agree on extending the hike through 2026. But factoring into the debate over the corporate tax rate is how to pay for the MTA, with its significant operating deficit of $4.6 billion. The transportation authority is funded in part by a surcharge on large downstate businesses. Hochul and each house of the Legislature each put forward a different plan to shore up the authority’s finances.

Hochul's Payroll Mobility Tax
Hochul's executive budget proposes an increase in the "Payroll Mobility Tax" – a separate tax on businesses based on a percentage of their employees' salaries that applies to downstate beneficiaries of the MTA, including New York City subways and buses, MetroNorth, and Long Island Rail Road. The state Division of the Budget projects the tax would raise an additional $800 million annually for the MTA.

The funding would help cover the authority's operating shortfall, which has been exacerbated by low ridership during the pandemic.

The payroll tax is considered a deductible expense, outside of a corporation's taxable profits, that is borne by the employer. It is debated whether the cost of payroll taxes like these are eventually passed on to employees in the form of lower wage increases as companies seek to maximize their profits over time. Democratic lawmakers are opposing this approach in favor of bigger hikes on corporations’ taxable profits.

Hochul's plan has New York City chip in an additional $500 million per year for the MTA, which Mayor Eric Adams and legislators have opposed. In their alternative plans, the Legislature removed that potential cost shift to city as well as the slight fare increase, from $2.75 to $3, Hochul wants the MTA to move ahead with after a pandemic-era pause.

The MTA Surcharge
To pay for the MTA, both the Senate and Assembly one-house budgets rejected the payroll mobility tax, each choosing to further increase the corporate tax rate, albeit in different ways that would need to be reconciled before a budget deal is reached.

For businesses making over $5 million in profits in the downstate counties serviced by the MTA railroads, an additional surcharge on the corporate tax rate exists, specifically earmarked for mass transit. For these businesses in the so-called Metropolitan Commuter Transportation District (MCTD), that surcharge currently adds 30% of the corporate tax rate on top of the base rate. That is a roughly 2.2 point addition to the base rate of 7.25% for a total corporate tax rate of 9.425%.

The Senate proposal raises the MTA surcharge from 30% to 45%, meaning an additional 3.26 points for a total tax rate of 10.5% for businesses in the MCTD.

The Senate has not released an exact estimate for how much money the change would raise, but experts believe the increase would total close to $1 billion of additional MTA funding each year.

The Assembly proposes to fund the MTA with an across-the-board 2 point corporate tax increase to 9.25%, with the caveat that proceeds of that increase from within the MCTD catchment area would go toward the MTA. Revenue generated by the increase from businesses in the rest of the state would support transit systems in their regions.

The Assembly estimates the additional increase would generate for the MTA and other transit systems $1 billion a year on average over the next four years. Under the Assembly plan, the MTA surcharge would remain at 30% of the corporate tax rate.

Senator Leroy Comrie (photo: Kevin P. Coughlin/Governor's Office)

April 21, 2023 - Max Politics Podcast: Senator Leroy Comrie on the MTA in State Budget Negotiations

State Senator Leroy Comrie, a Queens Democrat who chairs the Senate's committee with MTA oversight, joined the show to discuss how the MTA is factoring into state budget negotiations, plans for funding the transit authority, whether the state budget will advantage subway and bus riders, the future of Penn Station area redevelopment plans, housing and bail policy negotiations, and more.

Listen to the conversation and let us know what you think, on Twitter @TweetBenMax. You can listen to the show through the embedded audio below or download the episode wherever you get your podcasts at Max Politics.

Electric buses are one place transit meets climate (photo: Darren McGee/Office of Governor Kathy Hochul)

April 21, 2023 - Max Politics Podcast: Major Transit & Climate Issues in State Budget Negotiations, with Betsy Plum & Julie Tighe

As New York state budget negotiations continue, there are major transit and climate issues being decided. Betsy Plum of Riders Alliance and Julie Tighe of League of Conservation Voters joined the show to break down the most pressing topics on transit and climate and what to watch for as a state budget deal is finalized by Albany leaders. Plum is up first on the episode, followed by Tighe starting at about 27:36.

Listen to the conversation and let us know what you think, on Twitter @TweetBenMax. You can listen to the show through the embedded audio below or download the episode wherever you get your podcasts at Max Politics.

Gov. Hochul talks green energy (photo: Governor's Office)

As Governor Kathy Hochul and the Legislature continue to hammer out the details of the overdue $230 billion state budget, there are major climate and energy policies at stake that environmental advocates say are crucial to meeting New York’s climate goals.

Already about three weeks late, the state budget has been held up over the governor’s insistence on further changes to the bail law and wrangling with the Legislature over her ambitious “Housing Compact” agenda. But there is also unresolved debate about many other important topics, including climate and energy policies. The governor, two houses of the Legislature, and advocates have expressed various priorities, some of which may be accomplished in a grand budget deal with other issues that could wait for the post-budget legislative session.

Hochul’s Marquee Climate Proposals
In her executive budget, Hochul proposed several major climate policy items including, chiefly, a “cap-and-invest” program that sets declining caps on greenhouse gas emissions and requires major greenhouse gas emitters and fuel distributors to purchase allowances for their emissions.

The revenue raised from the program would be reinvested in the green energy economy, job creation, and a minimum of 35% into disadvantaged communities that have historically suffered from environmental injustice. About $1 billion of the revenue raised by the program would go to providing a Climate Action Rebate to New Yorkers to cover higher energy costs.

The cap would be reduced every year, in order to meet the state’s overarching emissions goals set by the Climate Leadership and Community Protection Act (CLCPA) of 2019. The act requires a 40% reduction in statewide emissions by 2030 and an 85% reduction by 2050 compared to 1990 emissions levels. It mandates that 70% of the state’s electricity should come from renewable sources by 2030 and that 100% of the state’s electricity should be emissions free by 2040.

In December, the state’s Climate Action Council, created by the CLCPA, approved a mandated Scoping Plan with recommendations for meeting the targets set by the law. That plan informed Hochul’s policy agenda released in January and her subsequent executive budget in February. But questions remain whether the governor and Legislature will take strong enough action to scale up renewable energy projects and whether the state will have the ability to produce enough clean energy, particularly in the face of political opposition from Republicans, lobbying by the fossil fuel industry, and criticism from everyday New Yorkers who may face higher energy costs.

“We have the nation's most ambitious plan. We're proud of it. But I am never one to rest on our laurels. Not now, not ever,” Hochul said of the state’s climate plan in her executive budget presentation in February. “We'll continue to ensure a cleaner, healthier environment for future generations. We'll make those investments today that promote energy affordability, reduce emissions and invest in clean air and water. And one of those ways is to implement a nation-leading Cap and Invest program. This will limit greenhouse emissions, it prioritizes health and it's established to ease the financial burden on hardworking families, homeowners and renters, especially our seniors who are so worried and struggling to pay their utility bills, especially during this brutally cold winter.”

Earlier this month, as Politico New York first reported, the governor proposed a change to the CLCPA that would have revised the timeline for measuring methane emissions, essentially weakening the law. But she quickly walked back the proposal in the face of widespread outrage from Democrats and environmental advocates.

However, Basil Seggos, commissioner of the state Department of Environmental Conservation, indicated to Politico that the attempt to rewrite the law may not be entirely off the table. “The other other elements that we’ve discussed recently may take time to get done. We may get it done during the budget. That may happen during the session; it may take the course of a year,” he said. “The fundamental takeaway is it’s full steam ahead for cap-and-invest with the climate action rebate and any other elements we’ll take up as soon as we can.”

In a separate interview earlier this month with News 10, he said, “We need to develop a program that will work for New York. We want to remain at the vanguard of climate action nationally, right? But it must be affordable.”

“Governor Hochul's Executive Budget makes transformative investments to make New York more affordable, more livable and safer, and she continues to work with the legislature to deliver a final budget that meets the needs of all New Yorkers,” said a spokesperson for the governor, in a statement.

Hochul also put forth an all-electric buildings proposal to ban fossil fuel hookups in new construction starting in 2025, a phased-in ban on the sale and installation of fossil fuel heating equipment in existing buildings, and a version of the Build Public Renewables Act (BPRA), allowing but not requiring the New York Power Authority to build public renewable energy projects.

She also included other major investments in her proposed budget, such as $500 million in clean water infrastructure funding, $400 million for the Environmental Protection Fund, $400 million to provide relief to New Yorkers with high energy bills, and $200 million to improve state parks. The state is also set to move ahead on implementation of the $4.2 billion Environmental Bond Act that voters approved this past fall.

The state has already completed many renewable energy projects – including eight major ones in the last six months – and has several others underway or in the offing including wind, solar and hydroelectric infrastructure. Last year, Hochul also approved two new pipelines, the largest transmission projects in the state in 50 years, that will deliver renewable energy from upstate New York and Canada to New York City.

Negotiations Between the Governor and Legislature
Between the governor’s proposal and the Senate’s and Assembly’s respective one-house budget resolutions, there are various points of difference which are now being negotiated.

For instance, the Senate embraced the cap-and-invest program, with stronger guidelines, while the Assembly did not. The Senate also endorsed a full-strength BPRA after passing it last year and again this year, while the Assembly has not acted on the proposal at all. The Senate also backed the Waste Reduction & Recycling Act proposed by Hochul, while the Assembly did not.

Both houses have supported the All-Electric Buildings Act that would ban gas hookups in new construction but with faster timelines than what the governor proposed.

The Senate called for $500 million for the Environmental Protection Fund, while the Assembly allocated $435 million. And both houses proposed $600 million clean water infrastructure funding, surpassing the executive budget by $100 million.

Democrats in the Senate seem more focused on ensuring that climate policy is included in the budget, while the Assembly has shown some reluctance to expeditiously pass complicated non-fiscal items, with Speaker Carl Heastie repeatedly saying over the years that he does not like to do policy in the budget.

Among the other major proposals floated in the Senate include the Climate Change Superfund Act, which would collect $75 billion over 25 years from oil and gas producers to fund infrastructure projects, and the NY HEAT (Home Energy Affordable Transition) Act, which would ensure that families don’t spend more than 6% of their income on energy bills.

Perspective from Key Legislators
“We in the Senate believe we need to work with the governor to put guardrails around the cap-and-invest program and how that money is going to be spent, especially. So we are engaging on that,” said Senator Pete Harckham, a Westchester Democrat who chairs the Senate’s Committee on Environmental Conservation. Harckham has sponsored the Climate and Community Protection Fund bill, which was included in the Senate one-house budget, and which would ensure that funds raised by the cap-and-invest program are spent on the goals of the CLCPA including improving building efficiency, energy infrastructure and public transit, job training for impacted workers, energy affordability rebates, and more. “We're talking about billions of dollars annually so it's important that that money does not go to the general fund,” he added.

Harckham did say that certain extended producer responsibility (EPR) proposals aimed at packaging reduction and recycling – which Hochul has also voiced support for – will be addressed after the budget is approved. “That will be the big lift after the budget,” he said of taking on waste.

He also didn’t preclude the possibility that major proposals like the All-Electric Buildings Act or the Build Public Renewables Act would be on the post-budget session agenda (the Legislature is in session through June). “We’d do them as standalones after the budget, but my personal hope is we get a nice package done in the budget,” said Harckham.

Assemblymember Deborah Glick, chair of the Assembly’s Committee on Environmental Conservation, agreed that those policies are likely to be on the post-budget agenda. “Generally speaking, the Assembly's position has always been that we don't put big policy issues in a budget, and that is why the budget is late,” the Manhattan Democrat said in a phone interview.

State Senator Kevin Parker, a Brooklyn Democrat who chairs the Senate’s Committee on Energy and Telecommunications, said in a phone interview that some version of cap-and-invest, All-Electric Buildings, and Build Public Renewables are likely to be approved in the budget.

After the budget, he said one of his top priorities will be to “continue to battle against the cost of energy,” considering that New Yorkers are still struggling with utility arrears because of the pandemic. “We really need to find ways to lower those costs and get them under control…it doesn’t make sense to have sustainable energy that you can’t afford,” he said. 

Additional Voices
Regardless of whether environmental policies are approved in the budget or before the Legislature concludes it works for the year, legislators and advocates say it's vital that major action should happen this year to follow the state’s climate scoping plan established under the CLCPA. The state will also have significant resources at its disposal with the $4.2 billion bond act approved last November and the federal Inflation Reduction Act, which makes major climate investments, among other funding and policy advancements.

The NY Renews coalition of more than 300 groups, including environmental organizations, labor unions, community groups and faith communities, has been pursuing a three-part Climate, Jobs & Justice Package to push the state on the various policies currently under consideration. The coalition supports the cap-and-invest program, and is urging its passage along with the Climate Change Superfund Act and the Climate and Community Protection Fund in the budget.

“The climate crisis is an existential crisis, which is already impacting every single worker,” said Katherine Nadeau, NY Renews steering committee member and program director of Catskill Mountainkeeper. “And we need the governor and the legislature focused on not only responding to climate impacts but also working to reduce our greenhouse gas emissions.”

“There is an ecological clock ticking that is far bigger than Albany,” she said, insisting that the state needs to hold polluters accountable while investing in the communities that have been hardest hit by climate change. “If the governor and the Legislature let the budget clock run out without setting up the framework that will allow us to keep New Yorkers safe from the worst impacts of the climate, this will be a tremendous missed opportunity.”

Pat McClellan, policy director of New York League of Conservation Voters (NYLCV), a nonprofit group, said the cap-and-invest program must be included in the budget. “We’re concerned that if they don't do it as part of the budget, they're not going to get to it post-budget and we’ve lost another year of making enough climate progress,” he said.

NYLCV is also part of the Upgrade New York coalition, including labor unions, the building industry, and climate justice advocates, pushing the state to decarbonize all state facilities by 2040. “The state should be leading the way and putting its money where its mouth is,” he said.

Republicans have broadly pushed back against the governor’s and Legislature’s climate agenda, arguing that the rate of transitioning to clean energy will drive energy costs higher for New Yorkers already struggling with utility bills, make it harder for businesses to operate and drive an outmigration to states with lower costs and friendlier policies.

“No one can tell us how much [the CLCPA] will cost,” said Senator Rob Ortt, the Republican minority leader, pointing to the governor’s own attempt at revising the law as evidence that even Democrats believe it is flawed.

Ortt – who dubbed the governor’s major climate idea the “cap-and-tax” proposal – argued that Democrats have turned to taxing job-creating businesses to fund the state’s climate goals instead of the politically unpopular decision to tax consumers. “It’s going to drive these companies out of New York,” he said.

But his biggest objection was that the rush to move away from fossil fuels will leave the state with an unreliable energy grid. “My argument is the State of New York should be working on a diversified energy portfolio,” he said. Without a mix of energy sources including fossil fuels and renewable energy, he said the state would suffer more power outages at crucial moments that can affect health and safety such as during the major snowstorm in Buffalo in December.

“Even if you think this is the most important thing facing the country and the state, there’s got to be a smart way to do this. It might be a slower way, it might be less coercive, and that's probably the better way,” said Ortt.

He did seem resigned to accepting that some form of the All-Electric Buildings Act would get approved, since there seems to be three-way agreement among the governor and legislative majorities on the proposal.

Democrats have, of course, said they are working to protect businesses, and that climate action will also be good for consumers and the economy.

“We're trying to put some guardrails in place to protect those low- to moderate-income [New Yorkers] and small businesses from any impacts,” Harckham said.

“Consumers are eventually going to be paying less on their utility bills, because energy will be less expensive,” he added. “We’ll lower our health care costs and we'll be creating 130,000 high-paying union jobs. So there are a lot of upsides to this as we go forward.”

Note - this article has been updated to reflect that the new proposed Climate Change Superfund Act would raise $75 billion over 25 years, not $30 billion over ten years. 

Gov. Hochul discusses gun violence prevention funding plans (photo: Governor's Office)

Acrimony in state budget talks over bail and discovery reform belies broad agreement between Governor Kathy Hochul and the Legislature on putting more than $330 million toward combating gun violence.

Shootings have always plagued New York's cities but became a major public focus in recent years amid a pandemic-era spike in gun violence following decades of decline. Four out of five shooting victims in New York City are Black, most of them young men, and officials have been pursuing a suite of solutions to prevent violence and human losses that reverberate throughout communities.

A cornerstone of the governor's criminal justice agenda is a proposed $337 million for violence prevention and intervention – money that will go to new police units and task forces, youth employment, and local organizations focused on stemming the factors that lead to crime and gang-involvement. The "historic investments" include a $110 million increase from last fiscal year's budget at a time when gun violence remains above pre-pandemic levels despite recent drops that followed jumps in 2020 and 2021.

The roughly $230 billion state budget is more than two weeks late as Hochul, Senate Majority Leader Andrea Stewart-Cousins, and Assembly Speaker Carl Heastie, all Democrats, wrangle over the governor's insistence on further watering down bail reforms passed in 2019, among other high-profile issues. Drawn out negotiations have forced the parties to pass two state budget extenders to ensure state bills are paid, with a third on the way this week.

But on the flip side of the policy debate is a question of resources to mitigate gun violence, and on that front there is little daylight among negotiators.

Both the Senate’s and Assembly's budget resolutions included the same $337 million allocation that Hochul had in her February executive budget (with an additional $10 million from the Assembly, and $20 million from the Senate, for a "violence interrupter" program called SNUG Street Outreach).

In total, their gun-violence plans contain a mix of police, social service, and unspecified funding, according to a Gotham Gazette analysis of line items provided by the Governor's Office.

Tucked in the governor's executive budget was roughly $126 million earmarked for gun violence prevention with few spending requirements and not subject to competitive bidding laws or review by the New York State Comptroller. That means, if passed, the governor would have the discretion to spend many millions of tax dollars on favored programs and groups, whether law enforcement or community organizations, or funnel it to other entities under the broad purpose of reducing gun violence.

"We're going to keep investing in our communities, those that are most under siege from gun violence and redeploying our State Police to be that extra help on the ground that the cities are asking us for," Hochul said when she announced her executive budget February 1.

"We cannot rest until every single New Yorker feels safe in their homes, in their streets, on the subway, their places of work," she said the next month, at a March 22 press conference announcing a drop in shootings and homicides after two major election cycles, in 2021 and 2022, dominated by crime. She used the opportunity to again tout the $337 million allocation.

Where the Money May Go
In Hochul’s budget, the total anti-gun violence agenda skews toward law enforcement, with at least $120.2 million earmarked for state and local police and correction agencies, prosecutors, and crime task forces. That funding comes on top of hundreds of millions more from other state funding pots.

Of the $120 million, more than $58 million would go directly to the state police operating budget. According to a spokesperson for Hochul, that money includes personnel, equipment, and supplies to support gun trafficking interdiction units, gun tracing, social media analysis, and participation in federal task forces. The largest portion is to the State Police’s "community stabilization units," which provide those resources to local police departments.

Upwards of $36 million would go to a homicide reduction strategy known as Gun Involved Violence Elimination, or GIVE. In her State of the State agenda, Hochul said the funding will be used to hire 150 local police officers and prosecutors focused solely on guns in the jurisdictions with the highest shooting rates outside of New York City.

Hochul is also looking to establish a new "Crime Analysis Center" in New York City, which, along with the 10 existing centers, would provide further state aid to police and prosecutors.

Earlier this year, the governor also announced the expansion of a pilot program known as "Supervision Against Violent Engagement," or SAVE, run by the state’s Department of Corrections and Community Supervision, to step up its surveillance of people on parole who are suspected of being at a high-risk of reoffending.

A smaller chunk – $92.6 million – is for non-law enforcement services, including $65.1 million for youth employment, $25 million for community-based violence interrupter groups, and Hochul's Office of Gun Violence Prevention, now in its second year. Violence interrupters deploy outreach workers and resources in low-income communities to divert individuals, particularly young people, from gangs and criminal activity.

"People who are truly trying to get to the right answers want to look at the data and they want to figure out what we can do to help community actually stem this tide of violence, whether it's investing more resources…trying to deal with the proliferation of guns," Senate Majority Leader Andrea Stewart Cousins told reporters this week in response to questions about bail in the budget.

"Follow the data, meet the community needs where they are and be honest with ourselves that there are a lot of things we can do," she said.

Another $105.1 million is for nonspecific "crime reduction." That allocation, along with another $21 million for SNUG Outreach ($31 million in the Assembly's resolution, and $41 million in the Senate's), includes language that exempts it from competitive procurement and the independent review of the Office of the State Comptroller, which are in place to ensure tax dollars are spent efficiently and in the public interest. In total, Gotham Gazette found more than a third of Hochul's gun violence proposal is not subject to competitive bidding or full comptroller oversight, particularly the ability to review decisions on selecting vendors before contracts are signed.

Spending in the Shadows
Mark Johnson, a spokesperson for Comptroller Thomas DiNapoli, condemned the maneuver, which is used to circumvent laws in place to prevent politically-motivated decisions and is part of a much larger “lump sum” pattern.

"Exempting these funds from a competitive process that is required by state law is not in the public interest and undermines the state’s ability to ensure the best value is achieved and taxpayer dollars are protected," Johnson said in a statement to Gotham Gazette.

A spokesperson for Hochul defended the noncompetitive spending as necessary to expedite urgently needed funding for what Hochul and others have identified as a crisis. The spokesperson noted that the State Comptroller retains audit authority. Heastie and Stewart-Cousins' offices did not respond to Gotham Gazette inquiries.

That untethered money includes Hochul's signature $70 million allocation for communities to rebuild after gun violence. The governor has touted it as an investment in neighborhoods like Buffalo's East Side, which has some of the highest rates of gun violence in the state's second largest city and was devastated by a mass shooting at a supermarket last year. The pot is subdivided into $20 million for government-nonprofit partnerships to "serve the needs of communities and residents" and $50 million in capital funds for "innovative crime-reduction strategies."

"This was a city that was traumatized, but you realize this happens not just in the aftermath of a mass shooting, but it's the day-to-day-to-day," Hochul said in March of the $70 million included in her executive budget.

"We're also focusing on $31 million for crime reduction, youth justice, and gang prevention programs," she said, calling it "a holistic approach" to driving down shootings. The budget gives the executive branch latitude to spend this money on a wide range of law enforcement or social programs with little specificity.

Gotham Gazette cross-referenced these pots against a database of lump sum funding included in a recent report from Citizens Budget Commission and Reinvent Albany. The government watchdogs identified $14.8 billion such funding across Hochul’s entire executive budget.

Despite spreading hundreds of millions of state dollars on dozens of programs, there is little evidence of how these initiatives impact communities beyond the broadest measurements of shootings and other crime.

Support for the Agenda
Hochul received praise for her agenda from public safety advocates and local elected officials, including Mayor Eric Adams, who has centered gun crimes and quality-of-life in his first year-plus on the job.

In a February statement responding to Hochul's executive budget, Adams called the public safety agenda "robust" and praised the governor for including money “that would protect New Yorkers by investing in upstream solutions, helping to address the problem of recidivism, and making commendable investments to hire more lawyers to reduce case backlogs.”

In addition to the $318 million gun violence spending, Hochul included another $87 million for prosecutors, including to implement 2019 changes to the state discovery laws. The Senate and Assembly each included more funding, along with a significant boost to public defenders, who were left almost completely out of Hochul's spending plan.

"The city is committed to fighting for additional resources to ensure we can address the ongoing bottlenecks in our criminal justice system," Adams added.

When asked to comment on the full scope of the governor's anti-gun violence  proposal, a spokesperson for the mayor referred Gotham Gazette to the February statement.

"The Governor’s budget is well-crafted," said Richard Aborn, president of the Citizens Crime Commission, a nonprofit public safety advocacy group. "By spreading funds over a wide range of activities - from community based interventions to forensics to law enforcement, the budget acknowledges and supports the notion that reducing gun violence is a complex, multi-faceted, challenge requiring a comprehensive approach."

Gov. Hochul and other state leaders (photo: Governor's Office)

April 14, 2023 - Max Politics Podcast: Breaking Down State Budget Negotiations, with Liz Benjamin & Ken Lovett

Liz Benjamin and Ken Lovett, two veteran Albany journalists now in public affairs consulting, joined the show to discuss New York state budget negotiations, the power dynamics at play in the capital, key issues being negotiated among Governor Hochul and the Legislature, and more.

Listen to the conversation and let us know what you think, on Twitter @TweetBenMax. You can listen to the show through the embedded audio below or download the episode wherever you get your podcasts at Max Politics.

Gov. Hochul speaks at LaGuardia Community College CUNY (photo: @CUNY)

Funding for the City University of New York, CUNY, is among a number of major focus issues as elected officials negotiate a new state budget this month and a new city budget by July.

Lawmakers, students, faculty, and others are concerned about proposals in both Governor Kathy Hochul’s and Mayor Eric Adams’ budget proposals, which are now the source of negotiations with their respective legislatures. Though Hochul included a modest increase in overall funding for CUNY in her January executive budget, she also proposed tuition increases that have been widely criticized. Adams, meanwhile, has offered cuts in city funding for CUNY, some of which have already gone into effect, with others proposed for next fiscal year.

On Thursday, CUNY students, faculty and elected officials rallied outside the governor's New York City office to demand substantial increases in funding for CUNY and to push back against any tuition hikes. 

CUNY is funded by all three levels of government and its own tuition revenue, among other funding streams like alumni, corporate, and philanthropic giving. The new state budget, expected this month after the April 1 start of the new state fiscal year has already been missed, will then impact the city budget passed in June — and both will go a long way in determining CUNY’s budget and future.

Many stakeholders, including students, faculty, and members of the State Legislature and the New York City Council, have pushed back against the proposed cuts and tuition increases, while seeking to significantly increase funding for CUNY in the upcoming state and city budgets. In a formal response to Mayor Adams’ preliminary budget, the City Council recently called on the administration to “restore and baseline $36.9 million in programmatic initiatives and cuts” to CUNY funding.

Over 271,000 students are enrolled across CUNY’s 25 colleges. Enrollment has decreased university-wide, though mostly at the community colleges, dropping more than 10% during the pandemic, though there has been some recent rebound. At community colleges, one metric shows a roughly 30% decline in enrollment since 2018. The CUNY Reconnect program, in part spearheaded and funded by the New York City Council, has shown cause for optimism, re-enrolling over 16,000 students in the 2022-23 academic year (6,000 more than projected) as it brings former CUNY students back into the fold — progress some say is at risk amid consideration of tuition increases and budget cuts.

CUNY senior colleges’ operating budgets are funded up to 60% by New York State, with capital budgets covered 100% by the State. Meanwhile, CUNY community colleges are largely funded via the New York City budget, which covers approximately 47% of all those costs – meaning almost all capital expenses and about one-third of all operating costs. The remaining community college expenses are covered by tuition and funding from the state.

In recent months, CUNY leaders have testified at state and city legislative budget hearings, alternately arguing against budget cuts, in support of modest tuition increases, and that CUNY can make do with what it is being given by state and city leaders, generally speaking, even if some programming is harmed. At the same time, CUNY faculty, staff, and students as well as their allies in government and beyond have testified and lobbied to increase investments in the university system, which largely educates lower- and middle-income students from the five boroughs and is a proven source of socioeconomic mobility.

At a March New York City Council higher education committee hearing on the mayor’s preliminary budget plan for next fiscal year, CUNY Chief Operating Officer Héctor Batista underscored the value of a robust CUNY for New York. Not only does CUNY graduate approximately half of all nurses in the city — about 1,800 per year — but it provides degrees for about one-third of all new teachers in New York City public schools. And, Batista told the City Council, “More than 80% of CUNY graduates stay in New York and contribute to the city’s economic, civic, and cultural life.”

The New York State Budget
Hochul’s $227 billion executive budget, released February 1, included $5.7 billion in appropriations for CUNY, including $1.92 billion in state assistance for operating funds, $3.15 billion from various funding sources (federal aid, grants and scholarships, tuition, and fees) and $643 million in new capital funding (in addition to $3.44 billion reappropriated for capital projects).

At the state legislative higher education hearing on the governor’s executive budget proposal later that month, CUNY Chancellor Felix Matos Rodríguez testified that Hochul’s proposal for CUNY includes $642.7 million in new funding for the capital budget and $94 million more in operating funds than the current fiscal year. Hochul’s proposed CUNY funding includes $119.7 million for community colleges, according to that testimony. The chancellor also defended the proposed tuition increase.

In mid-March, the two houses of the Legislature passed their one-house budget resolutions, which helped set the stage for final negotiations on a new spending plan, which are ongoing as the new fiscal year already began on April 1 (state leaders have passed 'extenders' to pay the state's bills).

The State Assembly proposed investing $1.1 billion in new capital funding for CUNY, compared to the governor’s $643 million proposal, and $246 million more in operating funds than the governor’s proposal, for a total of $2.17 billion, while also rejecting any tuition increases. The Assembly also proposed setting aside $470 million for an endowment matching fund and proposed increasing state funding for CUNY community colleges by 4%, an $8 million increase.

“This spending plan ensures that New York State’s higher education system remains affordable, competitive, and a national and international pinnacle of postsecondary education,” said Assemblymember Patricia Fahy, chair of the Assembly higher education committee, in a statement. 

The Senate’s budget not only rejected tuition hikes, but proposed $149 million in additional operating aid to CUNY over Hochul’s proposal and tweaked the $643 million capital increase proposal by instead recommending a restoration of $435 million in flexible capital funding, among other smaller capital investments.

The New York City Budget
Mayor Adams’ preliminary budget for CUNY for the city’s 2024 fiscal year, which begins July 1, is $1.27 billion — a $168.5 million cut compared with the budget adopted in June 2022 for the current fiscal year, according to City Council budget documentation. Virtually the entire decrease is focused at CUNY community colleges, which the city is primarily charged with funding, and where there have been significant enrollment drops.

And that’s on top of the $13.7 million cut in city funds for CUNY that the mayor made in the middle of the current fiscal year and is already being felt at the schools.

The city’s capital commitment plan for CUNY is about $412.4 million across fiscal years  2023-2027, including about $98.9 million for next fiscal year (FY 2024) — a number likely to increase, as unspent capital funds from the current year are rolled forward.

While the mayor has promised that his budget would not allow cuts to affect “pedagogical,” or student-facing, jobs, at the City Council higher education committee preliminary budget hearing, members’ questioning of CUNY executives revealed that this simply would not be the case.

“It’s impossible to absorb a $170 million cut at the community college level without affecting instruction. We will do our absolute level best to meet the needs of our students, but there is no question that there will be an impact,” said CUNY Provost Wendy Hensel, clarifying for the Council that student-facing jobs will be cut. “There’s no doubt that money matters in terms of recruiting [professors],” Hensel added, pointing out that CUNY will struggle to remain competitive if the salaries they provide are stagnant.

Of many CUNY programs on the chopping block, two are particularly harmful to students and even the university’s bottom line. One, CUNY’s Accelerate, Complete, and Engage (ACE) program, is “designed to help students complete their academic journey to the bachelor’s degree on time,” according to CUNY’s website. It is based on another program, the award-winning Accelerated Study in Associate Programs (ASAP), which also aligns services, in this case to help students earn their associate’s degrees, mostly at CUNY community colleges.

When probed for statistics at the Council hearing, Hensel said that ASAP actually saves the university $6,500 per student, compared with students not in the program, based on its record of graduating students in under four years. With large numbers of CUNY students participating in ASAP, the program generates an estimated $80 million per year in savings. It has already been designated to be cut next fall. City Council Member Eric Dinowitz, a Bronx Democrat who chairs the Council’s higher education committee, responded by saying that CUNY had presented “not the wisest investment choices in this budget.”

Another successful program set to lose funding is CUNY Reconnect, which costs $4.4 million annually, but generates roughly $80 million in tuition funds in the same time period. Spearheaded by New York City Council Speaker Adrienne Adams and CUNY Chancellor Matos Rodriguez, the program assists people who have previously left CUNY to re-enroll. It initially had the target of re-enrolling 10,000 students for this academic year but far exceeded that goal, and enrolled over 16,600 students as of this current semester.

Until the state and then city budgets are passed in the coming weeks and months, funding for CUNY and specifically its seven community colleges remain in the balance.

While capital projects at senior CUNY colleges are fully funded by the State, community colleges require 50% of funds to be matched by local entities.

Bátista of CUNY told the City Council that CUNY is requesting $745 million in capital support, to be provided by the city and state in total – roughly equivalent to the $742 million appropriated between the city and state for fiscal year 2024. Dinowitz pointed out that the need for this support has been evident, citing that Bronx Community College was forced to move courses online after weeks without heat late last Fall.

Dinowitz further addressed the need for ADA compliance as part of capital improvements, calling the addition of ramps and elevators not simply discretionary, but vital — and indeed legally required – for providing access to education. Bátista agreed that ADA compliance is necessary, but added that “our need is tremendous” and that at the moment CUNY is doing all it can to simply “triage” current infrastructure issues. “The money that we get does not really cover all the challenges we have at the university,” he said.

Professional Staff Congress (PSC) of CUNY President James Davis, whose union includes roughly 30,000 CUNY faculty and staff members, testified further about the contributions CUNY makes to the city in economic and cultural impact, and the impossibility for the university and PSC members to thrive without more investment.

“We urge the Council to understand CUNY for what it is, a beacon of hope for working-class New Yorkers and an unparalleled driver of social and economic mobility,” Davis said in his testimony to the City Council, in which he outlined the need for an additional $35.5 million to hire 264 full-time academic advisors along with $11 million to train mental health advisors.

PSC-CUNY, which is now beginning to negotiate a new contract with CUNY after its prior one expired in February, has since made a statement commending the proposed budgets from the Senate and Assembly. With sights set on passing the New Deal for CUNY legislation, that would, among other things, make tuition free, Davis said, “The Legislature’s opposition to tuition hikes and the investments they have prioritized can bring us closer to realizing a New Deal for CUNY while protecting students and staff from painful cuts to academic programs and student services threatened by pandemic enrollment declines and the expiration of federal stimulus.”

In a brief interview, Davis told Gotham Gazette that it is time for a serious shift in how government funds CUNY. “Every year, we’re [testifying] in Albany, and at City Hall, because we're in the public sector. And we just can't afford to stay on the sideline. There’s been a decade or more of caps and flat budgets for the university, and it winds up really affecting our members and the students that we serve.”

Samar Khurshid contributed to this story.

Note - this article has been updated. 

A place to call home (photo: Michael Appleton/Mayor's Office)

As Governor Kathy Hochul tries to convince the Legislature to support her ambitious housing agenda focused on increasing the supply of homes, legislators seem unwilling to do so without including in a state budget deal major protections for current tenants including a new rental voucher program.

The Housing Access Voucher Program (HAVP) would provide state-funded rental subsidy vouchers to those experiencing homelessness or facing evictions and at risk of homelessness, regardless of immigration status. The bill is sponsored by State Senator Brian Kavanagh and Assemblymember Linda Rosenthal, two Manhattan Democrats who chair their chambers’ respective housing committees.

“It's just a natural fit with all the other programs and solutions and ideas around housing,” Rosenthal said in a phone interview. “It's just a no-brainer, because you know what? There weren't this many homeless people 20 years ago. It just keeps increasing and we don't have solutions.”

In January, the bill was passed by the Senate housing committee, followed by its approval in the Assembly housing committee in February. Then, just as they did last year, both legislative chambers allocated $250 million for the statewide program in their one-house budget resolutions passed in March. But the push for its inclusion in the budget this year appears to be more concerted.

Last year, Hochul opposed the inclusion of HAVP in the budget because of its price tag, though New York Focus reported that her office’s cost projections were massively inflated at $6 billion annually and the Legislature insisted it was ready to start at the $250 million allocation.

Hochul has continued to express concerns about the costs of the program. “My position is that I want to relook at the numbers and see what the numbers would look like today in terms of the cost,” Hochul said in March, according to Gothamist. “But you’re basically suggesting that we establish a state version of the federal Section 8 program, which we know it’s a very expensive program to run.”

However, the HAVP bill also does not provide for unlimited funding for all who might qualify. Modeled after the Section 8 Housing Choice Voucher program, it caps a tenant’s rent burden at 30% of their income and only funds as many rental vouchers as the state allocates funding for each year. At $250 million, it would create about 20,320 vouchers, according to estimates from the Housing Justice for All advocacy coalition. For comparison, New York City alone had 73,868 individuals in homeless shelters on April 11, according to the Department of Homeless Services daily census. That included 45,750 individuals from 14,079 families.

This year, Hochul is seeking the Legislature’s approval for her proposed “Housing Compact,” aimed at building an estimated 800,000 new homes statewide over the next decade using a combination of regional housing growth mandates (with enforcement mechanisms), increased development around transit hubs, zoning and environmental review reforms, tax incentives, and more. Housing and changes to bail laws are the main issues initially being negotiated as the state budget deadline has been pushed to at least April 17, well past the April 1 start of the new fiscal year, using extenders to ensure state bills are paid.

“Governor Hochul's Executive Budget makes transformative investments to make New York more affordable, more livable and safer, and she continues to work with the legislature to deliver a final budget that meets the needs of all New Yorkers,” said Justin Henry, a spokesperson for Hochul, when asked for comment about the governor’s position on the HAVP.

The Senate and Assembly both rejected the idea of mandated housing growth targets in their one-house budgets, offering financial incentives to localities that voluntarily meet those goals. But they have also insisted that the governor's plan must be accompanied with short-term measures like HAVP and the “good cause eviction” bill which would protect tenants against significant rent raises and expand protections against evictions.

“There's a lot of elements that [Governor Hochul] had included in her goal and I think our one-house [budget resolution] has demonstrated that we had things that we would also want to have a conversation about as it relates to housing,” Senate Majority Leader Andrea Stewart-Cousins told reporters on Tuesday in Albany. “We know that tenant protection is as important as building new units and we also know that affordability is an issue everywhere. So it is a very broad conversation.”

Spokespeople for Stewart-Cousins and Assembly Speaker Carl Heastie did not respond to inquiries about the status of HAVP in budget negotiations.

HAVP has broad support not just from Democratic lawmakers who have supermajorities in both legislative chambers and housing and homeless advocates, but also from the real estate industry and the landlord lobby, two sides that more often than not find themselves at cross purposes over housing policy.

“Direct rental assistance is a proven cost-effective method of ensuring people can stay in their homes and access new ones if so preferred,” the Real Estate Board of New York said in testimony submitted at a March 1 joint legislative hearing on housing. “Enabling additional and more effective use of rental assistance, especially in high-amenity areas, will expand housing choice for New Yorkers across neighborhoods.” REBNY is among many groups supportive of HAVP and Hochul’s housing plan.

In interviews, State Senator Kavanagh and Assemblymember Rosenthal seemed optimistic that HAVP would be included in the state budget, emphasizing that it is imperative to any comprehensive housing policy agenda.

“I think it's fair to say that HAVP is still a very strong priority for the Senate,” Kavanagh said, declining to disclose specific details from the internal budget negotiations.

He said he was “optimistic” that the budget would include some form of HAVP, given the amount of support behind the proposal. “I think everybody understands that developing housing over the long-term is not going to address the immediate crisis that many people are experiencing now,” he added. “Putting rental assistance on the table is a really important part of addressing the homelessness crisis, the eviction crisis, and just the crisis of rent poverty that people are dealing with where they're just paying way too much of the rent and their housing stability is threatened as a result.”

Kavanagh first introduced the bill in February 2020, before the pandemic made it even more necessary to provide stability to tenants in New York. “HAVP was viewed as a sort-of new and ambitious idea then, but over the last three years, it has become almost universally popular at this point,” he said.

After the pandemic era eviction moratorium was lifted, an eviction crisis has again developed, with nearly 160,000 active eviction cases statewide in housing court as of April 2, according to the Eviction Crisis Monitor created by the Right to Counsel NYC coalition.

“You can't just keep kicking it down the road because basically you're kicking people down the road…I think it's incumbent on the state to do this,” Rosenthal said of HAVP, in a phone interview.

The Assemblymember stressed the broader ramifications of ensuring that people can remain in housing while also providing a lifeline to those suffering homelessness. “It will house people, first of all,” she said. “And, by having greater housing stability for people – for those who only care about economics – there will be less spending on hospital stays and housing court and prisons and shelters because people will actually have a place to call their own.”

Pushing back against the governor’s concerns about costs, Rosenthal noted that the state can regulate its costs by assessing both the need for rental vouchers as well as the state’s fiscal ability to pay for them, just as the federal government does for Section 8.

Rosenthal also reiterated her chief criticism of the governor’s housing plan, that it doesn’t address the immediate housing crisis, unlike HAVP. “There's no solution to today's burning issue, which is we need to help people pay the rent,” she said.

RuthAnne Visnauskas, who helped craft the Housing Compact as Hochul’s state housing commissioner, said in a March 30 appearance on Gotham Gazette’s Max Politics podcast that HAVP and other tenant protections were still under consideration in the budget amid negotiations over Hochul’s housing agenda, which she helped craft. “Everything is still on the table,” she said, in response to a question about the Legislature’s focus on HAVP and other tenant protections. “So I would imagine that those things will stay in the conversation until the end…Nothing comes out the way it goes in. So I think, it’s still to be determined where we end up on all these pieces.”

As housing advocates have noted, the governor's plan also does not come with affordability requirements for the new housing that will be created across the state, though she argues that more abundant housing supply will be part of the affordability solution and that the Housing Compact is a complement to her five-year, $25 billion affordable housing plan passed in last year’s budget.

“HAVP is a critical investment in addressing housing insecurity in our State,” said Cea Weaver, campaign coordinator for the Housing Justice for All coalition. “As Governor Hochul pushes for a new Housing Compact, we have to keep in mind that without HAVP, nothing will guarantee that new housing will be affordable to tenants and homeless New Yorkers.”

(photo: Mike Groll/Office of Governor Kathy Hochul)

While another potential rollback of bail reforms has taken center stage in state budget negotiations for the second straight year, the fates of a swath of other criminal justice programs are being quietly hashed out.

Governor Kathy Hochul and state legislative leaders are in the midst of pinning down the contours of a roughly $230 billion state budget, already past the April 1 start of the new fiscal year. Even with the focus on bail, all parties are talking about a holistic suite of criminal justice-related policies with hundreds of millions of dollars at stake.

On everything from funding for prosecutors and public defenders to alternatives to incarceration and pretrial services, there is both major daylight and points of accord between the governor's executive budget plan and the State Senate’s and Assembly's one-house budget resolutions.

The main sticking point in the budget negotiations has been Hochul's emphasis on removing a bail standard that requires judges to consider the "least restrictive" means of securing a defendant's return to court. The governor is also focused on funding for law enforcement, district attorneys, and gun violence prevention. The Legislature, on the other hand, has raised the stakes for criminal legal services, especially funding for public defenders, while backing many of the violence and drug reduction spending programs in Hochul's plan. Other long sought reforms, like the Clean Slate Act, elder parole, and protections for juvenile interrogees, however, appear to be off the table, according to reporting from The City.

"New Yorkers are concerned about public safety, the rising cost of housing, and ensuring high-quality schools for all our kids, and any budget deal must make progress on these core issues," Hochul said in a statement last week as she announced a budget extension until April 10. "I have been negotiating in good faith with the legislature, but it is clear there is more work to be done before we reach an agreement." The governor and Legislature are expected to pass another budget extender on Monday to fund state government operations until April 17. 

Assembly Speaker Carl Heastie told reporters last week that "bail is now taking up pretty much all the oxygen and everything else is second." Heastie and Senate Majority Leader Andrea Stewart-Cousins, each commanding Democratic supermajorities, have made it clear they are opposed to further changes to the bail reforms of 2019, which removed cash bail for most nonviolent felonies and has been adjusted every legislative session since its enactment.

"We want to help to clarify the judicial discretion as well as keep the integrity of our bail law," Stewart-Cousins said at a press availability in the Capitol on March 30, a day before the budget deadline. "So again, it's a productive conversation and I have every feeling that we can get to a good end."

Both chambers passed their own-one house budgets in which they outlined various lines of funding to support criminal justice and public safety programs, including the implementation of bail and other recent reforms. Among them are funding to implement changes to discovery laws, also passed in 2019, that were intended to open up the sharing of evidence between prosecutors and criminal defense attorneys. Both Hochul and Mayor Eric Adams have said additional funding is needed to support lawyers struggling to comply with the new more stringent discovery requirements and reduce a growing court backlog.

Albany leaders have also yet to settle how much will be included for so-called alternatives to incarceration, a growing menu of diversion programs that often include social services for people convicted of a crime. Questions remain about how funding will be distributed for pretrial services, another type of diversion programs, this one for defendants to avoid jail before a conviction. The programs have expanded around the state in the wake of the 2019 bail reforms as a cashless alternative to bail.

The governor's budget includes hundreds of millions of dollars for local law enforcement agencies and district attorney's offices. In total, the executive budget projects spending $8.1 billion, or 3.5% of the total budget, on public safety agencies in the new fiscal year. That money will go to the Department of Corrections and Community Supervision, Division of Criminal Justice Services, the state police, Division of Homeland Security, Indigent Legal Services, and Division of Military and Naval Affairs.

Also at stake is roughly a third of a billion dollars included in the executive budget for gun violence prevention and intervention initiatives. According to the Division of the Budget, that money represents a $110 million increase from last year, much of it going to local police departments, prosecutors, and law enforcement task forces. The governor's office did not provide a list that accounted for the full $337 million. At least some of that funding, including gun violence interrupter programs known as SNUG Street Outreach, was included in the Senate and Assembly proposals.

Funding for Prosecutors, Public Defenders
In 2020, a new state discovery law took effect that required prosecutors to automatically turn over evidence within tighter timeframes to defenders, part of a series of criminal justice reforms that included the elimination of cash bail for most nonviolent crimes. The new demands placed on lawyers come amid excessive court delays and a rise in city and statewide jail populations, as defendants await trial. Hochul and Mayor Eric Adams have blamed the reforms for a growing backlog of cases in criminal court, which they claim has contributed to spikes in recidivism and violent crime.

"Our prosecutors need help as they've been underfunded for a long time, so we're proposing to help them play their role in the process by increasing funding from $12 million to $52 million and increasing coordination among all law enforcement agencies," Hochul said at a March 22 press briefing in the State Capitol.

In testimony before a joint legislative budget hearing in February, Mayor Adams acknowledged that the city's district attorneys and public defenders "are overwhelmed and need our help immediately." "The state must make a major investment in them now or risk depriving defendants of their constitutional right to a speedy trial — delaying justice for victims and continuing the unprecedented level of attrition within each of these offices," he said.

Hochuls executive budget includes $40 million to help prosecutors outside of New York City meet more stringent discovery rules, on top of $52 million in “aid to prosecution,” up from $12.5 million, for district attorney offices statewide. The discovery funding would help DAs hire staff and purchase the technology needed to store and process evidence, money they argue is desperately needed.

Much of the new “aid to prosecution funding” is to hire hundreds of prosecutors to help "develop crime strategy plans and reduce case backlogs," according to the governor's budget book. The allocation comes on top of funding from counties and federal grants; New York City pays hundreds of millions of dollars more for its five DAs.

Publicly funded defense attorneys have argued they too need funding to keep up with the new, much-needed influx of evidence.

"We have a lot of the same costs and the same impacts," said Lisa Schreibersdorf, executive director of Brooklyn Defenders Services. "We need to get the technology up to speed, we have to collect all that same evidence, we have to store it, organize it, sort it, share it."

Public defenders, who provide legal representation to the state's poorest residents, have seen an exodus of employees drawn to firms with lighter caseloads and better pay. The strain means fewer lawyers available to clients, who are predominantly Black, Latino, and immigrant New Yorkers.

The Senate one-house budget includes $50 million for prosecutors to comply with the new discovery rules, $10 million more than Hochul's allocation. It also gives $40 million to public defenders for the same purpose and another $47 million for other “Aid to Defense” funding for public defender organizations, for a total of $87 million – something left almost completely out of the governor's proposal (the governor included $7.6 million to the state's “Aid to Defense” fund and nothing to public defenders for discovery).

"When the governor…didn't put anything at all for the defenders, it was very disheartening," Schreibersdorf said.

The Assembly's one-house budget goes even further, raising discovery funding for prosecutors to $100 million (half to New York City's five DAs and half to the rest of the state). And it matched that funding, $100 million, to criminal defenders. The Assembly budget also includes another $40 million for the Aid to Defense fund.

The executive budget fell short in funding requested by the state Office of Indigent Legal Services to represent parents in family court, including when custody of a child is at stake. Hochul included $359 million for ILS, the same level as last year, and $23 million short of ILS's budget request this year. 

[Read: As Prosecutors Get Budget Boost, Public Defenders Seek More Funding Too]

Alternatives to Incarceration and Pretrial Services
The executive budget includes nearly $32 million for alternatives to incarceration (ATI) – a range of community supervision, treatment, and employment-oriented programs available to some defendants in lieu of prison. The allocation doubles the $15.7 million that was included in the budget adopted last year (in total, the Department of Criminal Justice Services (DCJS) awarded more than $17 million last fiscal year).

Hochul also proposed $11.5 million for reentry services, including $7.7 million in new funding.

"It demonstrates New York's leadership in this area and this increased funding, we know, is certainly long overdue," said Andre Ward, associate vice president for public policy at the Fortune Society, a service provider for justice-involved and formerly incarcerated individuals. He was referring specifically to the governor's boost in ATI funding.

"Especially important, as we see more people with serious mental illness, there needs to be increased funding for more clinical and peer services," he said, which would be supported by the new allocations.

On ATI, the executive and Assembly one-house budgets are nearly identical, allocating roughly $32 million, with the minor exception of an Assembly carveout of $300,000 in federal Justice Assistance Grants (JAG), which can be used for a swath of law enforcement purposes, including ATI and re-entry services. Hochul's JAG proposal of $6 million is still $1 million less than previous years, according to the Senate's resolution, which restores that funding. The Senate also included an additional $2.7 million in legislative grants for "community safety and restorative justice," which similarly includes ATI and re-entry services.

Some state legislators and advocates had their hopes dashed when the executive and one-house budgets left out the Treatment Not Jails Act, which would expand mental health treatment courts statewide. Every county would be required to open diversion courts that offer social services and supervision in place of prison-time for people with severe mental illness and a growing list of special needs. Over a third of each chamber has signed onto the bill, sponsored by State Senator Jessica Ramos and Assemblymember Phara Souffrant Forrest, both Democrats. Pieces of the measure may still make it into the final budget agreement and lawmakers are eying the rest of the legislative session to try to get it across the finish line.

The executive budget also includes $20 million for pretrial services, a nonmonetary alternative to jail that was included in the bail reforms passed in 2019. Under the program, defendants may participate in various levels of community supervision by designated pretrial services agencies in order to ensure they return to court. New York City has been piloting a form of pretrial services, known as supervised release, since 2016, using nonprofit providers that often make referrals to other social services.  Many counties throughout the state lacked the same experience and infrastructure, relying instead on local probation departments to deliver the services, which some defenders fear may be less independent of prosecutors than private providers.

A portion of the governor’s $40 million allocation to prosecutors for discovery reform implementation may also be used for pretrial services.

The Assembly and Senate resolutions both meet the executive budget request of $20 million for pretrial services. The Assembly also included an additional $5 million for grants from the legislature for pretrial and legal services.