NYS budget process: Created in secret, with limited public review and getting 'worse'

ALBANY — The State Legislature next week is scheduled to vote on a $254 billion state budget that was due more than a month ago and negotiated behind closed doors. The details of what's in it won't become known to the public until a short time before lawmakers have to vote on it.

While Albany for decades has been notorious for its budget process, this year has laid the problems bare, say veterans of Albany in and outside government. This process has also done something rare in politics these days: It has united Democrats and Republicans, liberals and conservatives in opposition to a system that no one has been willing to change.

Under the budget process, governors and top legislative leaders of the majority parties strike a deal on spending, taxes and major policies through closed-door negotiations. The public and their representatives often don’t learn of the details until the deal is drafted in budget bills.

Every year, legislators complain they didn’t have enough time to analyze the many provisions in the budget before they were compelled to vote on them. In most years when a budget is late, legislators must either vote for the whole budget — and all the spending choices and policies in it — or risk shutting down government.

"Policies adopted through the budget process are rushed and secretive and not as carefully considered as they should be," said Susan Lerner, executive director of Common Cause New York, a watchdog group. "Policy issues should be debated and discussed in the normal session, not hashed out behind closed doors with strong-arm tactics."

Assembly Ways and Means Committee Chairman J. Gary Pretlow (D-Mount Vernon) on Thursday presented the latest schedule for passing the budget, including the expected use of the governor’s "messages of necessity."

Governors use messages of necessity to suspend the constitution’s requirement of three days’ public review before a vote. Although intended to allow quick action for natural disasters and other emergencies, governors over the past 30 years have mostly invoked them for political emergencies.

With or without messages of necessity, state budgets are usually adopted — often overnight — in marathon sessions, such as the two days planned for next week.

"This seems to get worse each and every year," said Assemb. Ed Ra (R-Garden City South).

The secretive process begins with closed-door negotiations between a governor and the majority leaders of the Senate and Assembly. Detailed briefings are only made to the Democratic majority conferences in their own closed-door meetings. In a long-standing practice, the progress or lack of progress isn’t shared with the public or the minority conferences, which are now held by Republicans.

"I’ve seen the least lack of transparency in this budget as I have in my going-on-44 years in the legislature," Sen. James Tedisco (R-Saratoga) told Newsday in an interview. "They say democracy dies in darkness. It’s getting dimmer and dimmer."

Hochul didn’t respond to the criticism about the process and whether she would issue messages of necessity. But she has said the lengthy negotiations in private have allowed her to achieve important criminal justice and other issues she couldn’t get through the normal legislative process with the more progressive Democratic majorities that control the legislature.

"Good things take time," Hochul told reporters.

Assembly Speaker Carl Heastie (D-Bronx) and Senate Majority Leader Andrea Stewart-Cousins (D-Yonkers) have frequently complained about the process. Under the constitution, governors have a lot of leverage in crafting budgets.

Heastie last week continued to criticize the process. He said Court of Appeals rulings made nearly 30 years ago gave governors leverage and control of budget negotiations, calling it a "gigantic mistake."

The legislature, however, also can cut the governor out of the process, pass its own budget, then try to override the governor’s vetoes in public sessions. That happened in 2003 under Republican Gov. George Pataki. But in Albany, that’s considered a nuclear option.

"Albany’s budget process makes the Roman Catholic conclave look like an open bazaar," said Blair Horner of the New York Public Interest Research Group, referring to the process of choosing a pope.

He said New Yorkers should care. "It’s their money and they have no idea how it’s spent until after the decisions are made," Horner said in an interview.

But just how much public money would be spent and how it would be spent remained only an estimate late last week. The budget bills that legislators hope to introduce Monday or Tuesday will reveal the first details of the spending plan since negotiations began in late March.

"We still don't know the full picture of this budget without the bills," said Patrick Orecki of the independent Citizens Budget Commission on Thursday. "It’s safe to say that state spending growth this year will be the highest since the Great Recession, and likely much longer."

"Based on the few details we have now, this budget will increase annual spending by at least 11%, which is not a sustainable rate of spending growth," Orecki told Newsday.

Orecki also said no messages of necessity should be used.

"There is clearly no need to skip the aging process and rush thousands of pages of budget bills without opportunity for public review," he said.

Some details have been released on less controversial measures. Among them are one-time tax rebate checks of $400 that will go to most middle-class families that file jointly and $200 checks to single filers. Hochul said the budget also will reduce the tax rate for middle-class families to its lowest level in nearly 70 years. She said legislative leaders also agreed to her proposed tripling of the child tax credit to $1,000 per child under 4 years old, among several measures aimed at the middle class.

But the state budget is increasingly not just about spending and revenue, but also is packed with complex policy.

This year Hochul has included a proposal to change the discovery process before criminal trials at the behest of prosecutors who said cases were being dismissed over what they consider inconsequential pieces of evidence unintentionally kept from defense attorneys. Prosecutors blamed a progressive 2019 law that requires prosecutors to provide all evidence to defendants so they could decide whether to accept a plea bargain or risk a trial.

Another major policy Hochul says will be in the budget will allow police to send a person they suspect of being mentally ill to a psychiatric evaluation, which can take days. That measure replaces a higher threshold that the person must be a danger to themselves or others before involuntary committed.

Other policies Hochul said will be in the budget include a misdemeanor to restrict wearing masks by people committing crimes and banning student cellphones in the classroom.

Politics plays a role in the process. Hochul, who would be up for reelection next year, has used the budget to try to build a tough-on-crime image, as did former Gov. Andrew Cuomo beginning in 2011, and to stress that she's trying to make the state more affordable.

 I n recent election cycles, Republicans have made gains in a state dominated by Democratic voters in part by attacking the legislature's most progressive criminal justice measures along with complaining about the high cost of living.

John Kaehny of the Reinvent Albany good-government group called Albany’s budget process "a furtive farce."

"This month’s late, secret budget — which has still not been seen or voted on — was another step backward for transparency and accountability and will further erode already low public trust in New York State government," Kaehny told Newsday.

By Michael Gormley

michael.gormley@newsday.com@GormleyAlbany

Michael Gormley has worked for Newsday since 2013, covering state government, politics and issues. He has covered Albany since 2001.