By Hank Russell
It took almost a month, but it seems like an agreement has been reached on the 2025-2026 state budget. Governor Kathy Hochul made the announcement late April 28 and shared the details of the $254 billion budget.
As previously reported in Long Island Life & Politics, Hochul introduced a budget with an initial price tag of $252 billion. However, state legislative Democrats, led by Assembly Majority Leader Carl Heastie (D-Bronx) and Andrea Stewart-Cousins (D-Westchester), threatened to hold up the budget if Hochul did not include changes to the discovery law and make some radical criminal justice reforms.
LILP also reported that members of the GOP minorities in both the Assembly and the Senate expressed their anger that the budget was being held up over what they saw as pro-criminal measures. They also asserted that the delays would affect the school budgets, as the school districts were unsure if they were going to receive money from the state.
WPTZ-TV quoted Hochul as saying the budget is “a budget that will lift up all New Yorkers.”
On her X account, Hochul listed some of the items included in the budget, including:
- $5,000 for working families. This will be accomplished through the inflation refund, a middle-class tax cut, a child tax credit, access to child care and universal school meals
- Addressing the mental health crisis by clarifying and strengthening the state’s involuntary commitment laws, expanding Kendra’s Law to deliver long-term treatment, investing $40 million in Safe Options Support teams and providing around-the-clock shelter sites throughout the New York subway system
- Restricting smartphone use from bell to bell on school campuses, allowing schools to implement their own plans on cell phone use and requiring schools to give parents a way to contact their children
- Free community college to New Yorkers aged 25 to 55 at any SUNY or CUNY community college campus. This covers tuition, fees and books
- $357 million for gun violence prevention programs
- $8 million to increase safety along the Canadian border
- $35 million to protect places of worship and other vulnerable locations
- Preventing private equity firms from bidding on single- and two-family homes for the first 90 days on the market
“I promised New Yorkers to fight like hell to put money back in their pockets and make our streets and subways safer. That’s exactly what this budget will do,” Hochul said. “Working with our partners in the Legislature we’ve reached an agreement to pass a balanced, fiscally responsible budget. Good things take time, and this budget is going to make a real difference for New York families.”
LILP will continue to follow this story, including getting reactions from local state legislators.