Righting Human Wrongs

New York’s roughly $260 billion state budget was already a month late by the time Gov. Kathy Hochul and legislative leaders started talking about money last week.

That’s the upside-down normal for New York’s budget-making process, where major decisions about how to spend billions of dollars affecting millions of people wait until the governor strikes a deal on policy priorities that often have little to do with dollars and cents.

New York’s budget is a stack of bills that go far beyond government spending, negotiated in private by the governor and two legislative leaders while rank-and-file lawmakers, lobbyists and the press scramble to learn any details they can.

Hochul and lawmakers are nearing a handshake deal on a spending plan for the state’s 2026-27 fiscal year, which began April 1. Once it’s passed, it’ll be the latest state budget since 2010, when the stalemate lasted into the summer.

This year’s tardy budget has some lawmakers wondering aloud whether it’s time for things to change.

“ I don't want this to be written in a way that I'm trying to like antagonize the governor,” Assembly Speaker Carl Heastie, a Bronx Democrat, told reporters last month. “I'm just saying this process frustrates me.”

There are still major aspects of the spending plan up for negotiation, including billions of dollars for the state’s education and healthcare systems as well as a boost in retirement benefits for public workers — all of which will be divvied up out of public view.

When reporters try to ask Hochul about the specifics of the talks, she often declines to discuss them in public — arguing it would hurt her negotiating position.

“Nice try trying to get me to  negotiate the budget in front of all of you, but I'm not going to do that,” Hochul said Tuesday when asked about state funding for cities. “I'm not taking the bait.”

At Hochul’s insistence, talks on the budget’s fiscal aspects — including education aid and small grants for lawmakers’ pet projects — waited until last week, according to Heastie, who sits at the negotiating table with Hochul and state Senate Majority Leader Andrea Stewart-Cousins.

That’s when Hochul and legislative leaders began to reach consensus on her biggest policy proposals, including reforms to the state’s car-insurance laws, limits on local governments cooperating with federal immigration agents and a partial rollback of the state’s 2019 climate law.

“There is an inordinate amount of time that's been spent on policies generally that the governor puts forward,” Stewart-Cousins, a Yonkers Democrat, said Tuesday. “We just can't rush through those things.”

A governor-led process

Late budgets and lengthy debates over policy aren’t just the Hochul way, they’re the New York way.

State lawmakers have long complained about the New York state budget process, which has largely been in place for a century. The state constitution and court precedent grants the governor significant power to craft a spending plan and various levers to exert leverage over the Legislature as they negotiate the particulars.

But the Democrat-dominated Legislature has been wary of picking a public fight with Hochul, a Democrat who has drawn the conclusion that her leverage intensifies in what she calls “overtime” — the days and weeks after the budget was due, when lawmakers have their paychecks withheld by law.

For several years, Heastie has removed each of the governor’s non-fiscal proposals when Assembly Democrats put out their proposed spending plan each March. But it’s largely a symbolic protest; each year, the governor’s proposals have found their way into a final spending plan.

Changing the budget process to swing power back to the Legislature in a meaningful way would likely require an amendment to the state constitution, a lengthy process that would require voter approval. That didn’t go well for lawmakers in 2005, when they last advanced an amendment to change the process; voters defeated it by a 2-to-1 margin.

“ Passing a constitutional amendment that has to go before the voters — now you have governor versus the Legislature, and I don't know who wins that campaign,” Heastie said.

Then there’s the issue of transparency.

Each of the dozens of policy issues negotiated by Hochul and legislative leaders will be put into one of 10 bills that collectively make up the state budget.

But often, many of the most controversial issues are placed into a single bill — a piece of legislation known as the “Big Ugly” in Albany parlance. That forces lawmakers to cast a single up-or-down vote on a number of disparate issues — including some they may oppose and others they definitely support, making the bill difficult to vote against.

“They'll throw everything and the kitchen sink into it so that people who maybe aren't comfortable voting for it are stuck,” said Assembly Minority Leader Ed Ra, a Long Island Republican. “And they'll do it in the least transparent way they possibly can. The ink won't be dry, but it'll be on the floor.”

Diane Savino, a former longtime Democratic state senator from Staten Island, was in office for four different governors, including Hochul. Each brought their own touch to budget negotiations.

David Paterson, for example, forced lawmakers to vote on spending cuts in short-term budget extenders when the budget was late. Andrew Cuomo, on the other hand, prioritized on-time spending plans as a symbol of government functionality.

Hochul, meanwhile, is more than comfortable waiting out her legislative counterparts, even if it means the budget’s late, Savino said.

“She's not giving in until she gets what she wants,” Savino said. “I said this when she became governor: She's a tough chick from Buffalo. Don't mess around with her, OK? She just has a different style.”

Robert Megna, who served as state budget director for three different governors including Hochul, is a fan of the state’s executive-driven budget process. He contrasted it with the federal budget, where Congress dominates the process and “ throws the president's budget out five minutes after they get it.”

“I'm a supporter of the executive budget process,” said Megna, who’s now the president of the Rockefeller Institute, a think tank that’s part of the state university system. “But I don't have some fantasy in my head that it means there's no conflict. Of course there's going to be conflict because you're spending people's scarce tax money, and people are going to fight over how that should be spent.”

E.J. McMahon, an adjunct fellow for the Manhattan Institute, a conservative think tank, said there are simple changes the Legislature could make to improve the budget process. That includes creating a nonpartisan Legislative Budget Office to analyze the budget and create cost estimates, and moving the start of the state’s fiscal year to June 1.

But he contends the Legislature isn’t doing enough to use the power it does have in the budget process. That includes standing up to the governor if she insists on negotiating policy in the spending plan.

 ”This is all baloney, to use the technical phrase,” McMahon said. “‘Oh, she's loading us up. She's introducing other issues.’ OK, well, ignore them.”

Budget overtime

Hochul has presided over late state budgets each year since taking office in 2021, often painting them as evidence that she’s willing to fight for her priorities — which, she believes, are in line with New Yorkers’ priorities.

She’s quick to tick off a list of legislative accomplishments secured in budget overtime in years past, including a school cellphone ban, bolstered penalties for retail theft and rollbacks to the state’s cash bail reforms.

This year, Hochul says her priorities are about making New York more affordable. That includes changes to the state’s car-insurance laws that she contends will drive down rates.

It comes as she’s up for re-election against Republican Bruce Blakeman, the Nassau County executive who is also running on an affordability theme.

“I’d like to be done,” she said last week. “My hands are ready to shake. But we just have to work through some more details because my priorities are very important to not just me, but also to the people of this state.”

Blakeman said  he would prioritize on-time budgets if he wins in November. But the Republican would face a vastly different challenge than Hochul when it comes to negotiating with the Legislature, which is dominated by Democrats.

“Kathy Hochul's … the leader of the state,” he said Monday. “Her party has a majority in the Senate and the Assembly, and she can't get a budget passed. That shows a terrible lack of leadership on her part.”

Hochul, meanwhile, has said Blakeman will be beholden to President Donald Trump if he wins. The Republican candidate was scheduled to meet with Trump at the White House on Tuesday.

“I know he's going to get his marching orders,” Hochul said. “He's got to find out what Donald Trump wants him to do in the state of New York, because this would be what he would do if he was to be ever elected.”

Lawmakers passed a short-term budget extender for the ninth time on Monday. Legislative leaders said they hope to put a final spending plan to a vote next week.

Good Wednesday afternoon in New York City, where a 28-year old woman is accused of posing as a Bronx high school student.

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New York City has won a $31 million judgment against the owners of two long-troubled Bronx apartment buildings, the largest civil penalty obtained by the city's housing department in its history — and one that will give the city significant leverage over the buildings' future, officials said Wednesday.

The city’s housing agency secured the judgment against Karan Singh and Rajmattie Persaud, the owners of Robert Fulton Terrace and Fordham Towers in the Bronx, where tenants and officials said roughly 500 families have lived for years with broken elevators, rat infestations, failing appliances and stretches without hot water or heat.

“For years, Singh and Persaud let more than 1,000 violations accumulate while they collected rent month after month,” Mayor Zohran Mamdani said at a press conference Wednesday morning at Robert Fulton Terrace. “ They are on Public Advocate Jumaane Williams' list of worst landlords, and for good reason.”

Mamdani has made cracking down on bad landlords and steering property sales to what he calls “responsible buyers” a priority of his administration, though the litigation against the two Bronx property owners began under Mayor Eric Adams in 2024. Those efforts haven’t always been successful. Earlier this year, the Mamdani administration tried to block the bankruptcy sale of more than 5,000 rent-stabilized apartments owned by Pinnacle Group, but a federal judge approved the sale over the city’s objection in January.

As part of the judgment, an independent chief restructuring officer has been appointed to oversee the buildings, and Mamdani said that officer has already hired a property manager to begin making repairs. To help fund those repairs, the city has frozen more than $900,000 from the owners' bank accounts.

Officials said the buildings are already in foreclosure, and Fannie Mae, which holds the mortgage for both, is moving to take them from Singh and Persaud.

Attorneys for the two landlords did not immediately respond to a request for comment Wednesday.

The $31 million judgment will be converted into liens on the properties, meaning any future buyer will have to deal with the city, said Housing Commissioner Dina Levy, who organized tenants in the same buildings in 2009.

“This judgment will make it nearly impossible for anybody to purchase the buildings without coming to deal with us first,” Levy said in an interview with Gothamist.

City officials said they are pushing Fannie Mae to find a buyer approved by the tenants and housing agency who would preserve the buildings.

Robert Fulton Terrace opened in 1967, Mamdani said during the press conference. Apartments were marketed to middle-income families as "luxury you can afford," with rents of $29.30 per room and a quarter of units set aside for seniors.

“For working families, these apartments offered a path to a life of dignity. This is what the American dream had felt like,” the mayor said. “But as the years wore on, the dream of luxury you can afford descended into a nightmare. The two buildings were sold to a series of speculators, and soon fell into a pattern of disrepair and foreclosure.”

Mamdani described residents going without hot water for days on end and broken elevators trapping people in “17-story towers.”

“These conditions, to put it very simply, were inhumane,” he said.

Ahshaki Long, president of Fordham Towers' tenant association, said she’s lived in the building for 25 years.

“I have lived through those violations, what they really meant, not as a list on a report, but as an everyday challenge that affected my sense of safety, comfort and dignity,” Long said during the press conference. “We are struggling with broken elevators that make it difficult just to get home; rats and roaches that turn living spaces into sources of stress; old and failing appliances that are never replaced; persistent leaks that damage our homes; and mold that threatens our health.”

The tenants’ frustration was clear. During a question-and-answer period following officials’ formal remarks, one tenant spoke up to press Mamdani on whether any of the $31 million in penalties would reach residents.

“Are we going to be reimbursed for not having a heater for the last three years and having to buy heaters? No stove? No refrigerator working?” the man asked. “ Anything going into the tenants' pockets for all the stuff that we invested? And now y'all just coming to the table and saying, ‘OK, this needs to be done.’ But we've been living this way for a long time.”

Others began to speak up, too.

“Tell him,” one person said. “Yes!”

“When we going to be reimbursed for our suffering?" the man asked.

Mamdani acknowledged previous lawsuits against the owners hadn't changed the conditions much, but said he was focused on making sure this time would be different.

“There have been a number of false dawns in this city when it comes to actually listening to tenants,” he said. “I do not begrudge any tenant their frustration. If I had to pay out of my pocket for the services that my rent were supposed to be paying for, I, too, would have to see until I actually believed it.”