NYAPRS Note: With increased clarity around bail and housing and other proposals, it appears we will have a NYS budget agreement in the coming days, perhaps at week’s end. Recognizing this, NYAPRS staff and members have spent the last 2 weeks engaged in intensified advocacy action in support of an 8.5% COLA, the approval of a Daniel’s Law pilot program, the development of an upstate clubhouse program in Buffalo, passage of Clean Slate legislation and mental health parity protections. Stay tuned for details and recommended actions.
Legislature Passes Budget Extender As Sides Near Deal
“I’m pretty optimistic we will see budget bills” this week, Senate Finance Chair Liz Krueger said.
By Joseph Spector Politico April 24, 2023
ALBANY, N.Y. — The state Legislature passed its fifth budget extender Monday to keep government operating through Friday as the sides seemed optimistic that an agreement is within reach this week.
With the budget now 25 days late, lawmakers returned to the state Capitol in hopes of being able to vote in the coming days to pass the latest state budget since 2010, when it wasn’t approved until August.
“I’m pretty optimistic we will see budget bills” this week, Senate Finance Chair Liz Krueger (D-Manhattan) said on the Senate floor.
Lawmakers told POLITICO that they were close with Gov. Kathy Hochul on deals that would toughen the state’s bail laws, add more money for school lunch programs and limit how much New York City would have to pay to fund the Metropolitan Transportation Authority.
The issue over whether to increase the number of charter schools in the city remained unresolved, lawmakers and aides said, and they were also trying to work out whether to expedite a minimum wage increase. Hochul has proposed to boost the minimum wage by linking it to inflation, but lawmakers want to go beyond the current $15-an-hour minimum sooner than the Democratic governor has proposed.
Assembly Speaker Carl Heastie told reporters that there’s a few thorny details to still work out, such as findings ways to crack down on illegal marijuana shops — something that legislative leaders had not previously noted was part of budget talks.
As for expanding charter schools in the city, Heastie said, “The governor wants them, most people in the Legislature don’t want them. We’ll see if there’s a compromise.”
Lawmakers and Hochul are moving at a faster pace after the sides agreed Thursday to drop negotiations over Hochul’s proposal to require municipalities to build 800,000 new homes over the next decade. Legislators balked at making it a mandatory program and Hochul wouldn’t accept an opt-in program tied to state incentives.
“I think housing will be something we’ll continue to talk about post budget,” Heastie said.
There’s the potential to provide more funding for the state’s Emergency Rental Assistance Program, including a bail out for the New York City Housing Authority, which carries about $450 million in arrears.
Assembly Ways and Means Chair Helene Weinstein (D-Brooklyn) said as her chamber was passing the $5 billion extender, but said she was “hopeful that this is our last” one.
“I believe that negotiations are nearing an end, and I am hopeful that we will be able to vote on budget bills, if things continue to go well, by the end of this week,” she said on the Assembly floor.
Assemblymember Ed Ra (R-Nassau) said the goal should be to introduce the budget bills early in the week to give the public and lawmakers time to review them and pass then “in the light of day.”