State Legislature starts to pass $229B budget — a month late

ALBANY — The State Legislature on Monday started passing the $229 billion state budget, one month after it was due.

“I’m very happy to say we are finally getting to be able to pass our budget,” said Senate Majority Leader Andrea Stewart-Cousins on Monday. “Would I have wanted it earlier? Yes.”

The public and legislators got their first look at the details of some of the budget in the early hours of Monday. Those elements include $2 billion worth of additions to Gov. Kathy Hochul’s budget proposal from Feb. 1. The total 2023-24 budget will be more than $3 billion  larger than the 2022-23 budget.

Hochul called the budget a “blueprint for the future of New York” with policy measures such as her revision of a law on bail that she says are well worth the lateness of the budget.

Assembly Speaker Carl Heastie (D-Bronx) blamed the delay in approving a budget on Hochul’s inclusion of those policies in the spending plan, but argued that a good budget is more important than an on-time budget.

The budget approval is the latest in more than a decade.

The new budget, when finally adopted midweek, will include a record level of school aid at $34.5 billion, an added tax of $1 per pack to cigarettes to discourage smoking, a raise in the minimum wage to $17 an hour in New York City, on Long Island and in Westchester that will be phased in by 2026. The current minimum wage is $15 for those areas. The budget doesn’t include any increases in the income tax, the result, in part, of an $8 billion surplus.

On Monday, the legislature began passing bills that authorized spending that includes: $1.6 billion to fund the Metropolitan Transportation Authority and to ease future fare increases; $100 million for road repairs in New York City and the suburbs; added funding for construction and renovation at public colleges without increasing tuition for New York State residents at the State University of New York and City University of New York; $500 million for “distressed and safety-net hospitals,” and $150 million to expand prekindergarten programs.

Measures directly impacting Long Island include a bill that authorized $455 million in loans and grants to renovate the Belmont Park racetrack. The spending includes the purchase of nearby land and demolition of some existing buildings as part of renovation of the historic track. The project will open its infield and replace the grandstand and clubhouse with a smaller, modern facility and allow for year-round racing while providing open space for more uses of the land.

The budget negotiated behind closed doors was intended to improve affordability in New York State, Hochul said, but Republicans on Monday called the rising spending part of the reason for an exodus of young New Yorkers and retirees to other states.

“It’s out of control,” said Sen. Thomas O’Mara (R-Big Flats). “It’s not even the complete package … overall, the amount of spending and the amount of taxing that impacts the cost of living in New York and the cost of doing business in New York is too much and unsustainable.”

O’Mara referred to the fact that not all of the nine budget bills were printed Monday. The traditional “big ugly,” the name for an omnibus bill of the most controversial spending and policy that gets voted on last, won’t likely surface until Tuesday.

The budget bills were expected to easily pass because they have already been approved by the Democratic supermajorities in the Senate and Assembly in their closed-door conferences. The Republican minority conferences got their first look at the bills Monday and complained that hindered their analysis.

“We’re a month late,” said Assemb. Edward Ra (R-Franklin Square). “I continue to think we can do better.”

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.