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Max Politics Podcast: Senator Leroy Comrie on the MTA in State Budget Negotiations


Senator Leroy Comrie (photo: Kevin P. Coughlin/Governor's Office)


April 21, 2023 - Max Politics Podcast: Senator Leroy Comrie on the MTA in State Budget Negotiations

State Senator Leroy Comrie, a Queens Democrat who chairs the Senate's committee with MTA oversight, joined the show to discuss how the MTA is factoring into state budget negotiations, plans for funding the transit authority, whether the state budget will advantage subway and bus riders, the future of Penn Station area redevelopment plans, housing and bail policy negotiations, and more.

Listen to the conversation and let us know what you think, on Twitter @TweetBenMax. You can listen to the show through the embedded audio below or download the episode wherever you get your podcasts at Max Politics.

Read more: Max Politics Podcast: Senator Leroy Comrie on the MTA in State Budget Negotiations

Max Politics Podcast: Major Transit & Climate Issues in State Budget Negotiations, with Betsy Plum & Julie Tighe


Electric buses are one place transit meets climate (photo: Darren McGee/Office of Governor Kathy Hochul)


April 21, 2023 - Max Politics Podcast: Major Transit & Climate Issues in State Budget Negotiations, with Betsy Plum & Julie Tighe

As New York state budget negotiations continue, there are major transit and climate issues being decided. Betsy Plum of Riders Alliance and Julie Tighe of League of Conservation Voters joined the show to break down the most pressing topics on transit and climate and what to watch for as a state budget deal is finalized by Albany leaders. Plum is up first on the episode, followed by Tighe starting at about 27:36.

Listen to the conversation and let us know what you think, on Twitter @TweetBenMax. You can listen to the show through the embedded audio below or download the episode wherever you get your podcasts at Max Politics.

Read more: Max Politics Podcast: Major Transit & Climate Issues in State Budget Negotiations, with Betsy Plum...

Major Climate and Energy Policies Being Decided in Albany State Budget Negotiations


Gov. Hochul talks green energy (photo: Governor's Office)


As Governor Kathy Hochul and the Legislature continue to hammer out the details of the overdue $230 billion state budget, there are major climate and energy policies at stake that environmental advocates say are crucial to meeting New York’s climate goals.

Already about three weeks late, the state budget has been held up over the governor’s insistence on further changes to the bail law and wrangling with the Legislature over her ambitious “Housing Compact” agenda. But there is also unresolved debate about many other important topics, including climate and energy policies. The governor, two houses of the Legislature, and advocates have expressed various priorities, some of which may be accomplished in a grand budget deal with other issues that could wait for the post-budget legislative session.

Hochul’s Marquee Climate Proposals
In her executive budget, Hochul proposed several major climate policy items including, chiefly, a “cap-and-invest” program that sets declining caps on greenhouse gas emissions and requires major greenhouse gas emitters and fuel distributors to purchase allowances for their emissions.

The revenue raised from the program would be reinvested in the green energy economy, job creation, and a minimum of 35% into disadvantaged communities that have historically suffered from environmental injustice. About $1 billion of the revenue raised by the program would go to providing a Climate Action Rebate to New Yorkers to cover higher energy costs.

The cap would be reduced every year, in order to meet the state’s overarching emissions goals set by the Climate Leadership and Community Protection Act (CLCPA) of 2019. The act requires a 40% reduction in statewide emissions by 2030 and an 85% reduction by 2050 compared to 1990 emissions levels. It mandates that 70% of the state’s electricity should come from renewable sources by 2030 and that 100% of the state’s electricity should be emissions free by 2040.

In December, the state’s Climate Action Council, created by the CLCPA, approved a mandated Scoping Plan with recommendations for meeting the targets set by the law. That plan informed Hochul’s policy agenda released in January and her subsequent executive budget in February. But questions remain whether the governor and Legislature will take strong enough action to scale up renewable energy projects and whether the state will have the ability to produce enough clean energy, particularly in the face of political opposition from Republicans, lobbying by the fossil fuel industry, and criticism from everyday New Yorkers who may face higher energy costs.

“We have the nation's most ambitious plan. We're proud of it. But I am never one to rest on our laurels. Not now, not ever,” Hochul said of the state’s climate plan in her executive budget presentation in February. “We'll continue to ensure a cleaner, healthier environment for future generations. We'll make those investments today that promote energy affordability, reduce emissions and invest in clean air and water. And one of those ways is to implement a nation-leading Cap and Invest program. This will limit greenhouse emissions, it prioritizes health and it's established to ease the financial burden on hardworking families, homeowners and renters, especially our seniors who are so worried and struggling to pay their utility bills, especially during this brutally cold winter.”

Earlier this month, as Politico New York first reported, the governor proposed a change to the CLCPA that would have revised the timeline for measuring methane emissions, essentially weakening the law. But she quickly walked back the proposal in the face of widespread outrage from Democrats and environmental advocates.

However, Basil Seggos, commissioner of the state Department of Environmental Conservation, indicated to Politico that the attempt to rewrite the law may not be entirely off the table. “The other other elements that we’ve discussed recently may take time to get done. We may get it done during the budget. That may happen during the session; it may take the course of a year,” he said. “The fundamental takeaway is it’s full steam ahead for cap-and-invest with the climate action rebate and any other elements we’ll take up as soon as we can.”

In a separate interview earlier this month with News 10, he said, “We need to develop a program that will work for New York. We want to remain at the vanguard of climate action nationally, right? But it must be affordable.”

“Governor Hochul's Executive Budget makes transformative investments to make New York more affordable, more livable and safer, and she continues to work with the legislature to deliver a final budget that meets the needs of all New Yorkers,” said a spokesperson for the governor, in a statement.

Hochul also put forth an all-electric buildings proposal to ban fossil fuel hookups in new construction starting in 2025, a phased-in ban on the sale and installation of fossil fuel heating equipment in existing buildings, and a version of the Build Public Renewables Act (BPRA), allowing but not requiring the New York Power Authority to build public renewable energy projects.

She also included other major investments in her proposed budget, such as $500 million in clean water infrastructure funding, $400 million for the Environmental Protection Fund, $400 million to provide relief to New Yorkers with high energy bills, and $200 million to improve state parks. The state is also set to move ahead on implementation of the $4.2 billion Environmental Bond Act that voters approved this past fall.

The state has already completed many renewable energy projects – including eight major ones in the last six months – and has several others underway or in the offing including wind, solar and hydroelectric infrastructure. Last year, Hochul also approved two new pipelines, the largest transmission projects in the state in 50 years, that will deliver renewable energy from upstate New York and Canada to New York City.

Negotiations Between the Governor and Legislature
Between the governor’s proposal and the Senate’s and Assembly’s respective one-house budget resolutions, there are various points of difference which are now being negotiated.

For instance, the Senate embraced the cap-and-invest program, with stronger guidelines, while the Assembly did not. The Senate also endorsed a full-strength BPRA after passing it last year and again this year, while the Assembly has not acted on the proposal at all. The Senate also backed the Waste Reduction & Recycling Act proposed by Hochul, while the Assembly did not.

Both houses have supported the All-Electric Buildings Act that would ban gas hookups in new construction but with faster timelines than what the governor proposed.

The Senate called for $500 million for the Environmental Protection Fund, while the Assembly allocated $435 million. And both houses proposed $600 million clean water infrastructure funding, surpassing the executive budget by $100 million.

Democrats in the Senate seem more focused on ensuring that climate policy is included in the budget, while the Assembly has shown some reluctance to expeditiously pass complicated non-fiscal items, with Speaker Carl Heastie repeatedly saying over the years that he does not like to do policy in the budget.

Among the other major proposals floated in the Senate include the Climate Change Superfund Act, which would collect $75 billion over 25 years from oil and gas producers to fund infrastructure projects, and the NY HEAT (Home Energy Affordable Transition) Act, which would ensure that families don’t spend more than 6% of their income on energy bills.

Perspective from Key Legislators
“We in the Senate believe we need to work with the governor to put guardrails around the cap-and-invest program and how that money is going to be spent, especially. So we are engaging on that,” said Senator Pete Harckham, a Westchester Democrat who chairs the Senate’s Committee on Environmental Conservation. Harckham has sponsored the Climate and Community Protection Fund bill, which was included in the Senate one-house budget, and which would ensure that funds raised by the cap-and-invest program are spent on the goals of the CLCPA including improving building efficiency, energy infrastructure and public transit, job training for impacted workers, energy affordability rebates, and more. “We're talking about billions of dollars annually so it's important that that money does not go to the general fund,” he added.

Harckham did say that certain extended producer responsibility (EPR) proposals aimed at packaging reduction and recycling – which Hochul has also voiced support for – will be addressed after the budget is approved. “That will be the big lift after the budget,” he said of taking on waste.

He also didn’t preclude the possibility that major proposals like the All-Electric Buildings Act or the Build Public Renewables Act would be on the post-budget session agenda (the Legislature is in session through June). “We’d do them as standalones after the budget, but my personal hope is we get a nice package done in the budget,” said Harckham.

Assemblymember Deborah Glick, chair of the Assembly’s Committee on Environmental Conservation, agreed that those policies are likely to be on the post-budget agenda. “Generally speaking, the Assembly's position has always been that we don't put big policy issues in a budget, and that is why the budget is late,” the Manhattan Democrat said in a phone interview.

State Senator Kevin Parker, a Brooklyn Democrat who chairs the Senate’s Committee on Energy and Telecommunications, said in a phone interview that some version of cap-and-invest, All-Electric Buildings, and Build Public Renewables are likely to be approved in the budget.

After the budget, he said one of his top priorities will be to “continue to battle against the cost of energy,” considering that New Yorkers are still struggling with utility arrears because of the pandemic. “We really need to find ways to lower those costs and get them under control…it doesn’t make sense to have sustainable energy that you can’t afford,” he said. 

Additional Voices
Regardless of whether environmental policies are approved in the budget or before the Legislature concludes it works for the year, legislators and advocates say it's vital that major action should happen this year to follow the state’s climate scoping plan established under the CLCPA. The state will also have significant resources at its disposal with the $4.2 billion bond act approved last November and the federal Inflation Reduction Act, which makes major climate investments, among other funding and policy advancements.

The NY Renews coalition of more than 300 groups, including environmental organizations, labor unions, community groups and faith communities, has been pursuing a three-part Climate, Jobs & Justice Package to push the state on the various policies currently under consideration. The coalition supports the cap-and-invest program, and is urging its passage along with the Climate Change Superfund Act and the Climate and Community Protection Fund in the budget.

“The climate crisis is an existential crisis, which is already impacting every single worker,” said Katherine Nadeau, NY Renews steering committee member and program director of Catskill Mountainkeeper. “And we need the governor and the legislature focused on not only responding to climate impacts but also working to reduce our greenhouse gas emissions.”

“There is an ecological clock ticking that is far bigger than Albany,” she said, insisting that the state needs to hold polluters accountable while investing in the communities that have been hardest hit by climate change. “If the governor and the Legislature let the budget clock run out without setting up the framework that will allow us to keep New Yorkers safe from the worst impacts of the climate, this will be a tremendous missed opportunity.”

Pat McClellan, policy director of New York League of Conservation Voters (NYLCV), a nonprofit group, said the cap-and-invest program must be included in the budget. “We’re concerned that if they don't do it as part of the budget, they're not going to get to it post-budget and we’ve lost another year of making enough climate progress,” he said.

NYLCV is also part of the Upgrade New York coalition, including labor unions, the building industry, and climate justice advocates, pushing the state to decarbonize all state facilities by 2040. “The state should be leading the way and putting its money where its mouth is,” he said.

Republicans have broadly pushed back against the governor’s and Legislature’s climate agenda, arguing that the rate of transitioning to clean energy will drive energy costs higher for New Yorkers already struggling with utility bills, make it harder for businesses to operate and drive an outmigration to states with lower costs and friendlier policies.

“No one can tell us how much [the CLCPA] will cost,” said Senator Rob Ortt, the Republican minority leader, pointing to the governor’s own attempt at revising the law as evidence that even Democrats believe it is flawed.

Ortt – who dubbed the governor’s major climate idea the “cap-and-tax” proposal – argued that Democrats have turned to taxing job-creating businesses to fund the state’s climate goals instead of the politically unpopular decision to tax consumers. “It’s going to drive these companies out of New York,” he said.

But his biggest objection was that the rush to move away from fossil fuels will leave the state with an unreliable energy grid. “My argument is the State of New York should be working on a diversified energy portfolio,” he said. Without a mix of energy sources including fossil fuels and renewable energy, he said the state would suffer more power outages at crucial moments that can affect health and safety such as during the major snowstorm in Buffalo in December.

“Even if you think this is the most important thing facing the country and the state, there’s got to be a smart way to do this. It might be a slower way, it might be less coercive, and that's probably the better way,” said Ortt.

He did seem resigned to accepting that some form of the All-Electric Buildings Act would get approved, since there seems to be three-way agreement among the governor and legislative majorities on the proposal.

Democrats have, of course, said they are working to protect businesses, and that climate action will also be good for consumers and the economy.

“We're trying to put some guardrails in place to protect those low- to moderate-income [New Yorkers] and small businesses from any impacts,” Harckham said.

“Consumers are eventually going to be paying less on their utility bills, because energy will be less expensive,” he added. “We’ll lower our health care costs and we'll be creating 130,000 high-paying union jobs. So there are a lot of upsides to this as we go forward.”

***
by Samar Khurshid, senior reporter, Gotham Gazette
     

Read more by this writer.

Note - this article has been updated to reflect that the new proposed Climate Change Superfund Act would raise $75 billion over 25 years, not $30 billion over ten years. 

Hochul, Legislature Look to Allocate $337 Million to Fight Gun Violence; Where's It Going?


Gov. Hochul discusses gun violence prevention funding plans (photo: Governor's Office)


Acrimony in state budget talks over bail and discovery reform belies broad agreement between Governor Kathy Hochul and the Legislature on putting more than $330 million toward combating gun violence.

Shootings have always plagued New York's cities but became a major public focus in recent years amid a pandemic-era spike in gun violence following decades of decline. Four out of five shooting victims in New York City are Black, most of them young men, and officials have been pursuing a suite of solutions to prevent violence and human losses that reverberate throughout communities.

A cornerstone of the governor's criminal justice agenda is a proposed $337 million for violence prevention and intervention – money that will go to new police units and task forces, youth employment, and local organizations focused on stemming the factors that lead to crime and gang-involvement. The "historic investments" include a $110 million increase from last fiscal year's budget at a time when gun violence remains above pre-pandemic levels despite recent drops that followed jumps in 2020 and 2021.

The roughly $230 billion state budget is more than two weeks late as Hochul, Senate Majority Leader Andrea Stewart-Cousins, and Assembly Speaker Carl Heastie, all Democrats, wrangle over the governor's insistence on further watering down bail reforms passed in 2019, among other high-profile issues. Drawn out negotiations have forced the parties to pass two state budget extenders to ensure state bills are paid, with a third on the way this week.

But on the flip side of the policy debate is a question of resources to mitigate gun violence, and on that front there is little daylight among negotiators.

Both the Senate’s and Assembly's budget resolutions included the same $337 million allocation that Hochul had in her February executive budget (with an additional $10 million from the Assembly, and $20 million from the Senate, for a "violence interrupter" program called SNUG Street Outreach).

In total, their gun-violence plans contain a mix of police, social service, and unspecified funding, according to a Gotham Gazette analysis of line items provided by the Governor's Office.

Tucked in the governor's executive budget was roughly $126 million earmarked for gun violence prevention with few spending requirements and not subject to competitive bidding laws or review by the New York State Comptroller. That means, if passed, the governor would have the discretion to spend many millions of tax dollars on favored programs and groups, whether law enforcement or community organizations, or funnel it to other entities under the broad purpose of reducing gun violence.

"We're going to keep investing in our communities, those that are most under siege from gun violence and redeploying our State Police to be that extra help on the ground that the cities are asking us for," Hochul said when she announced her executive budget February 1.

"We cannot rest until every single New Yorker feels safe in their homes, in their streets, on the subway, their places of work," she said the next month, at a March 22 press conference announcing a drop in shootings and homicides after two major election cycles, in 2021 and 2022, dominated by crime. She used the opportunity to again tout the $337 million allocation.

Where the Money May Go
In Hochul’s budget, the total anti-gun violence agenda skews toward law enforcement, with at least $120.2 million earmarked for state and local police and correction agencies, prosecutors, and crime task forces. That funding comes on top of hundreds of millions more from other state funding pots.

Of the $120 million, more than $58 million would go directly to the state police operating budget. According to a spokesperson for Hochul, that money includes personnel, equipment, and supplies to support gun trafficking interdiction units, gun tracing, social media analysis, and participation in federal task forces. The largest portion is to the State Police’s "community stabilization units," which provide those resources to local police departments.

Upwards of $36 million would go to a homicide reduction strategy known as Gun Involved Violence Elimination, or GIVE. In her State of the State agenda, Hochul said the funding will be used to hire 150 local police officers and prosecutors focused solely on guns in the jurisdictions with the highest shooting rates outside of New York City.

Hochul is also looking to establish a new "Crime Analysis Center" in New York City, which, along with the 10 existing centers, would provide further state aid to police and prosecutors.

Earlier this year, the governor also announced the expansion of a pilot program known as "Supervision Against Violent Engagement," or SAVE, run by the state’s Department of Corrections and Community Supervision, to step up its surveillance of people on parole who are suspected of being at a high-risk of reoffending.

A smaller chunk – $92.6 million – is for non-law enforcement services, including $65.1 million for youth employment, $25 million for community-based violence interrupter groups, and Hochul's Office of Gun Violence Prevention, now in its second year. Violence interrupters deploy outreach workers and resources in low-income communities to divert individuals, particularly young people, from gangs and criminal activity.

"People who are truly trying to get to the right answers want to look at the data and they want to figure out what we can do to help community actually stem this tide of violence, whether it's investing more resources…trying to deal with the proliferation of guns," Senate Majority Leader Andrea Stewart Cousins told reporters this week in response to questions about bail in the budget.

"Follow the data, meet the community needs where they are and be honest with ourselves that there are a lot of things we can do," she said.

Another $105.1 million is for nonspecific "crime reduction." That allocation, along with another $21 million for SNUG Outreach ($31 million in the Assembly's resolution, and $41 million in the Senate's), includes language that exempts it from competitive procurement and the independent review of the Office of the State Comptroller, which are in place to ensure tax dollars are spent efficiently and in the public interest. In total, Gotham Gazette found more than a third of Hochul's gun violence proposal is not subject to competitive bidding or full comptroller oversight, particularly the ability to review decisions on selecting vendors before contracts are signed.

Spending in the Shadows
Mark Johnson, a spokesperson for Comptroller Thomas DiNapoli, condemned the maneuver, which is used to circumvent laws in place to prevent politically-motivated decisions and is part of a much larger “lump sum” pattern.

"Exempting these funds from a competitive process that is required by state law is not in the public interest and undermines the state’s ability to ensure the best value is achieved and taxpayer dollars are protected," Johnson said in a statement to Gotham Gazette.

A spokesperson for Hochul defended the noncompetitive spending as necessary to expedite urgently needed funding for what Hochul and others have identified as a crisis. The spokesperson noted that the State Comptroller retains audit authority. Heastie and Stewart-Cousins' offices did not respond to Gotham Gazette inquiries.

That untethered money includes Hochul's signature $70 million allocation for communities to rebuild after gun violence. The governor has touted it as an investment in neighborhoods like Buffalo's East Side, which has some of the highest rates of gun violence in the state's second largest city and was devastated by a mass shooting at a supermarket last year. The pot is subdivided into $20 million for government-nonprofit partnerships to "serve the needs of communities and residents" and $50 million in capital funds for "innovative crime-reduction strategies."

"This was a city that was traumatized, but you realize this happens not just in the aftermath of a mass shooting, but it's the day-to-day-to-day," Hochul said in March of the $70 million included in her executive budget.

"We're also focusing on $31 million for crime reduction, youth justice, and gang prevention programs," she said, calling it "a holistic approach" to driving down shootings. The budget gives the executive branch latitude to spend this money on a wide range of law enforcement or social programs with little specificity.

Gotham Gazette cross-referenced these pots against a database of lump sum funding included in a recent report from Citizens Budget Commission and Reinvent Albany. The government watchdogs identified $14.8 billion such funding across Hochul’s entire executive budget.

Despite spreading hundreds of millions of state dollars on dozens of programs, there is little evidence of how these initiatives impact communities beyond the broadest measurements of shootings and other crime.

Support for the Agenda
Hochul received praise for her agenda from public safety advocates and local elected officials, including Mayor Eric Adams, who has centered gun crimes and quality-of-life in his first year-plus on the job.

In a February statement responding to Hochul's executive budget, Adams called the public safety agenda "robust" and praised the governor for including money “that would protect New Yorkers by investing in upstream solutions, helping to address the problem of recidivism, and making commendable investments to hire more lawyers to reduce case backlogs.”

In addition to the $318 million gun violence spending, Hochul included another $87 million for prosecutors, including to implement 2019 changes to the state discovery laws. The Senate and Assembly each included more funding, along with a significant boost to public defenders, who were left almost completely out of Hochul's spending plan.

"The city is committed to fighting for additional resources to ensure we can address the ongoing bottlenecks in our criminal justice system," Adams added.

When asked to comment on the full scope of the governor's anti-gun violence  proposal, a spokesperson for the mayor referred Gotham Gazette to the February statement.

"The Governor’s budget is well-crafted," said Richard Aborn, president of the Citizens Crime Commission, a nonprofit public safety advocacy group. "By spreading funds over a wide range of activities - from community based interventions to forensics to law enforcement, the budget acknowledges and supports the notion that reducing gun violence is a complex, multi-faceted, challenge requiring a comprehensive approach."

***
by Ethan Geringer-Sameth, reporter, Gotham Gazette
     

Read more by this writer.

Max Politics Podcast: Breaking Down State Budget Negotiations, with Liz Benjamin & Ken Lovett


Gov. Hochul and other state leaders (photo: Governor's Office)


April 14, 2023 - Max Politics Podcast: Breaking Down State Budget Negotiations, with Liz Benjamin & Ken Lovett

Liz Benjamin and Ken Lovett, two veteran Albany journalists now in public affairs consulting, joined the show to discuss New York state budget negotiations, the power dynamics at play in the capital, key issues being negotiated among Governor Hochul and the Legislature, and more.

Listen to the conversation and let us know what you think, on Twitter @TweetBenMax. You can listen to the show through the embedded audio below or download the episode wherever you get your podcasts at Max Politics.

Read more: Max Politics Podcast: Breaking Down State Budget Negotiations, with Liz Benjamin & Ken Lovett

CUNY Funding a Key Issue in State and City Budget Negotiations


 

Gov. Hochul speaks at LaGuardia Community College CUNY (photo: @CUNY)


Funding for the City University of New York, CUNY, is among a number of major focus issues as elected officials negotiate a new state budget this month and a new city budget by July.

Lawmakers, students, faculty, and others are concerned about proposals in both Governor Kathy Hochul’s and Mayor Eric Adams’ budget proposals, which are now the source of negotiations with their respective legislatures. Though Hochul included a modest increase in overall funding for CUNY in her January executive budget, she also proposed tuition increases that have been widely criticized. Adams, meanwhile, has offered cuts in city funding for CUNY, some of which have already gone into effect, with others proposed for next fiscal year.

On Thursday, CUNY students, faculty and elected officials rallied outside the governor's New York City office to demand substantial increases in funding for CUNY and to push back against any tuition hikes. 

CUNY is funded by all three levels of government and its own tuition revenue, among other funding streams like alumni, corporate, and philanthropic giving. The new state budget, expected this month after the April 1 start of the new state fiscal year has already been missed, will then impact the city budget passed in June — and both will go a long way in determining CUNY’s budget and future.

Many stakeholders, including students, faculty, and members of the State Legislature and the New York City Council, have pushed back against the proposed cuts and tuition increases, while seeking to significantly increase funding for CUNY in the upcoming state and city budgets. In a formal response to Mayor Adams’ preliminary budget, the City Council recently called on the administration to “restore and baseline $36.9 million in programmatic initiatives and cuts” to CUNY funding.

Over 271,000 students are enrolled across CUNY’s 25 colleges. Enrollment has decreased university-wide, though mostly at the community colleges, dropping more than 10% during the pandemic, though there has been some recent rebound. At community colleges, one metric shows a roughly 30% decline in enrollment since 2018. The CUNY Reconnect program, in part spearheaded and funded by the New York City Council, has shown cause for optimism, re-enrolling over 16,000 students in the 2022-23 academic year (6,000 more than projected) as it brings former CUNY students back into the fold — progress some say is at risk amid consideration of tuition increases and budget cuts.

CUNY senior colleges’ operating budgets are funded up to 60% by New York State, with capital budgets covered 100% by the State. Meanwhile, CUNY community colleges are largely funded via the New York City budget, which covers approximately 47% of all those costs – meaning almost all capital expenses and about one-third of all operating costs. The remaining community college expenses are covered by tuition and funding from the state.

In recent months, CUNY leaders have testified at state and city legislative budget hearings, alternately arguing against budget cuts, in support of modest tuition increases, and that CUNY can make do with what it is being given by state and city leaders, generally speaking, even if some programming is harmed. At the same time, CUNY faculty, staff, and students as well as their allies in government and beyond have testified and lobbied to increase investments in the university system, which largely educates lower- and middle-income students from the five boroughs and is a proven source of socioeconomic mobility.

At a March New York City Council higher education committee hearing on the mayor’s preliminary budget plan for next fiscal year, CUNY Chief Operating Officer Héctor Batista underscored the value of a robust CUNY for New York. Not only does CUNY graduate approximately half of all nurses in the city — about 1,800 per year — but it provides degrees for about one-third of all new teachers in New York City public schools. And, Batista told the City Council, “More than 80% of CUNY graduates stay in New York and contribute to the city’s economic, civic, and cultural life.”

The New York State Budget
Hochul’s $227 billion executive budget, released February 1, included $5.7 billion in appropriations for CUNY, including $1.92 billion in state assistance for operating funds, $3.15 billion from various funding sources (federal aid, grants and scholarships, tuition, and fees) and $643 million in new capital funding (in addition to $3.44 billion reappropriated for capital projects).

At the state legislative higher education hearing on the governor’s executive budget proposal later that month, CUNY Chancellor Felix Matos Rodríguez testified that Hochul’s proposal for CUNY includes $642.7 million in new funding for the capital budget and $94 million more in operating funds than the current fiscal year. Hochul’s proposed CUNY funding includes $119.7 million for community colleges, according to that testimony. The chancellor also defended the proposed tuition increase.

In mid-March, the two houses of the Legislature passed their one-house budget resolutions, which helped set the stage for final negotiations on a new spending plan, which are ongoing as the new fiscal year already began on April 1 (state leaders have passed 'extenders' to pay the state's bills).

The State Assembly proposed investing $1.1 billion in new capital funding for CUNY, compared to the governor’s $643 million proposal, and $246 million more in operating funds than the governor’s proposal, for a total of $2.17 billion, while also rejecting any tuition increases. The Assembly also proposed setting aside $470 million for an endowment matching fund and proposed increasing state funding for CUNY community colleges by 4%, an $8 million increase.

“This spending plan ensures that New York State’s higher education system remains affordable, competitive, and a national and international pinnacle of postsecondary education,” said Assemblymember Patricia Fahy, chair of the Assembly higher education committee, in a statement. 

The Senate’s budget not only rejected tuition hikes, but proposed $149 million in additional operating aid to CUNY over Hochul’s proposal and tweaked the $643 million capital increase proposal by instead recommending a restoration of $435 million in flexible capital funding, among other smaller capital investments.

The New York City Budget
Mayor Adams’ preliminary budget for CUNY for the city’s 2024 fiscal year, which begins July 1, is $1.27 billion — a $168.5 million cut compared with the budget adopted in June 2022 for the current fiscal year, according to City Council budget documentation. Virtually the entire decrease is focused at CUNY community colleges, which the city is primarily charged with funding, and where there have been significant enrollment drops.

And that’s on top of the $13.7 million cut in city funds for CUNY that the mayor made in the middle of the current fiscal year and is already being felt at the schools.

The city’s capital commitment plan for CUNY is about $412.4 million across fiscal years  2023-2027, including about $98.9 million for next fiscal year (FY 2024) — a number likely to increase, as unspent capital funds from the current year are rolled forward.

While the mayor has promised that his budget would not allow cuts to affect “pedagogical,” or student-facing, jobs, at the City Council higher education committee preliminary budget hearing, members’ questioning of CUNY executives revealed that this simply would not be the case.

“It’s impossible to absorb a $170 million cut at the community college level without affecting instruction. We will do our absolute level best to meet the needs of our students, but there is no question that there will be an impact,” said CUNY Provost Wendy Hensel, clarifying for the Council that student-facing jobs will be cut. “There’s no doubt that money matters in terms of recruiting [professors],” Hensel added, pointing out that CUNY will struggle to remain competitive if the salaries they provide are stagnant.

Of many CUNY programs on the chopping block, two are particularly harmful to students and even the university’s bottom line. One, CUNY’s Accelerate, Complete, and Engage (ACE) program, is “designed to help students complete their academic journey to the bachelor’s degree on time,” according to CUNY’s website. It is based on another program, the award-winning Accelerated Study in Associate Programs (ASAP), which also aligns services, in this case to help students earn their associate’s degrees, mostly at CUNY community colleges.

When probed for statistics at the Council hearing, Hensel said that ASAP actually saves the university $6,500 per student, compared with students not in the program, based on its record of graduating students in under four years. With large numbers of CUNY students participating in ASAP, the program generates an estimated $80 million per year in savings. It has already been designated to be cut next fall. City Council Member Eric Dinowitz, a Bronx Democrat who chairs the Council’s higher education committee, responded by saying that CUNY had presented “not the wisest investment choices in this budget.”

Another successful program set to lose funding is CUNY Reconnect, which costs $4.4 million annually, but generates roughly $80 million in tuition funds in the same time period. Spearheaded by New York City Council Speaker Adrienne Adams and CUNY Chancellor Matos Rodriguez, the program assists people who have previously left CUNY to re-enroll. It initially had the target of re-enrolling 10,000 students for this academic year but far exceeded that goal, and enrolled over 16,600 students as of this current semester.

Until the state and then city budgets are passed in the coming weeks and months, funding for CUNY and specifically its seven community colleges remain in the balance.

While capital projects at senior CUNY colleges are fully funded by the State, community colleges require 50% of funds to be matched by local entities.

Bátista of CUNY told the City Council that CUNY is requesting $745 million in capital support, to be provided by the city and state in total – roughly equivalent to the $742 million appropriated between the city and state for fiscal year 2024. Dinowitz pointed out that the need for this support has been evident, citing that Bronx Community College was forced to move courses online after weeks without heat late last Fall.

Dinowitz further addressed the need for ADA compliance as part of capital improvements, calling the addition of ramps and elevators not simply discretionary, but vital — and indeed legally required – for providing access to education. Bátista agreed that ADA compliance is necessary, but added that “our need is tremendous” and that at the moment CUNY is doing all it can to simply “triage” current infrastructure issues. “The money that we get does not really cover all the challenges we have at the university,” he said.

Professional Staff Congress (PSC) of CUNY President James Davis, whose union includes roughly 30,000 CUNY faculty and staff members, testified further about the contributions CUNY makes to the city in economic and cultural impact, and the impossibility for the university and PSC members to thrive without more investment.

“We urge the Council to understand CUNY for what it is, a beacon of hope for working-class New Yorkers and an unparalleled driver of social and economic mobility,” Davis said in his testimony to the City Council, in which he outlined the need for an additional $35.5 million to hire 264 full-time academic advisors along with $11 million to train mental health advisors.

PSC-CUNY, which is now beginning to negotiate a new contract with CUNY after its prior one expired in February, has since made a statement commending the proposed budgets from the Senate and Assembly. With sights set on passing the New Deal for CUNY legislation, that would, among other things, make tuition free, Davis said, “The Legislature’s opposition to tuition hikes and the investments they have prioritized can bring us closer to realizing a New Deal for CUNY while protecting students and staff from painful cuts to academic programs and student services threatened by pandemic enrollment declines and the expiration of federal stimulus.”

In a brief interview, Davis told Gotham Gazette that it is time for a serious shift in how government funds CUNY. “Every year, we’re [testifying] in Albany, and at City Hall, because we're in the public sector. And we just can't afford to stay on the sideline. There’s been a decade or more of caps and flat budgets for the university, and it winds up really affecting our members and the students that we serve.”

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by Talia Barrington, Gotham Gazette

Read more by this writer.

Samar Khurshid contributed to this story.

Note - this article has been updated. 

'It's Incumbent on the State To Do This': Lawmakers ‘Optimistic’ Housing Access Vouchers will be in Budget Deal


A place to call home (photo: Michael Appleton/Mayor's Office)


As Governor Kathy Hochul tries to convince the Legislature to support her ambitious housing agenda focused on increasing the supply of homes, legislators seem unwilling to do so without including in a state budget deal major protections for current tenants including a new rental voucher program.

The Housing Access Voucher Program (HAVP) would provide state-funded rental subsidy vouchers to those experiencing homelessness or facing evictions and at risk of homelessness, regardless of immigration status. The bill is sponsored by State Senator Brian Kavanagh and Assemblymember Linda Rosenthal, two Manhattan Democrats who chair their chambers’ respective housing committees.

“It's just a natural fit with all the other programs and solutions and ideas around housing,” Rosenthal said in a phone interview. “It's just a no-brainer, because you know what? There weren't this many homeless people 20 years ago. It just keeps increasing and we don't have solutions.”

In January, the bill was passed by the Senate housing committee, followed by its approval in the Assembly housing committee in February. Then, just as they did last year, both legislative chambers allocated $250 million for the statewide program in their one-house budget resolutions passed in March. But the push for its inclusion in the budget this year appears to be more concerted.

Last year, Hochul opposed the inclusion of HAVP in the budget because of its price tag, though New York Focus reported that her office’s cost projections were massively inflated at $6 billion annually and the Legislature insisted it was ready to start at the $250 million allocation.

Hochul has continued to express concerns about the costs of the program. “My position is that I want to relook at the numbers and see what the numbers would look like today in terms of the cost,” Hochul said in March, according to Gothamist. “But you’re basically suggesting that we establish a state version of the federal Section 8 program, which we know it’s a very expensive program to run.”

However, the HAVP bill also does not provide for unlimited funding for all who might qualify. Modeled after the Section 8 Housing Choice Voucher program, it caps a tenant’s rent burden at 30% of their income and only funds as many rental vouchers as the state allocates funding for each year. At $250 million, it would create about 20,320 vouchers, according to estimates from the Housing Justice for All advocacy coalition. For comparison, New York City alone had 73,868 individuals in homeless shelters on April 11, according to the Department of Homeless Services daily census. That included 45,750 individuals from 14,079 families.

This year, Hochul is seeking the Legislature’s approval for her proposed “Housing Compact,” aimed at building an estimated 800,000 new homes statewide over the next decade using a combination of regional housing growth mandates (with enforcement mechanisms), increased development around transit hubs, zoning and environmental review reforms, tax incentives, and more. Housing and changes to bail laws are the main issues initially being negotiated as the state budget deadline has been pushed to at least April 17, well past the April 1 start of the new fiscal year, using extenders to ensure state bills are paid.

“Governor Hochul's Executive Budget makes transformative investments to make New York more affordable, more livable and safer, and she continues to work with the legislature to deliver a final budget that meets the needs of all New Yorkers,” said Justin Henry, a spokesperson for Hochul, when asked for comment about the governor’s position on the HAVP.

The Senate and Assembly both rejected the idea of mandated housing growth targets in their one-house budgets, offering financial incentives to localities that voluntarily meet those goals. But they have also insisted that the governor's plan must be accompanied with short-term measures like HAVP and the “good cause eviction” bill which would protect tenants against significant rent raises and expand protections against evictions.

“There's a lot of elements that [Governor Hochul] had included in her goal and I think our one-house [budget resolution] has demonstrated that we had things that we would also want to have a conversation about as it relates to housing,” Senate Majority Leader Andrea Stewart-Cousins told reporters on Tuesday in Albany. “We know that tenant protection is as important as building new units and we also know that affordability is an issue everywhere. So it is a very broad conversation.”

Spokespeople for Stewart-Cousins and Assembly Speaker Carl Heastie did not respond to inquiries about the status of HAVP in budget negotiations.

HAVP has broad support not just from Democratic lawmakers who have supermajorities in both legislative chambers and housing and homeless advocates, but also from the real estate industry and the landlord lobby, two sides that more often than not find themselves at cross purposes over housing policy.

“Direct rental assistance is a proven cost-effective method of ensuring people can stay in their homes and access new ones if so preferred,” the Real Estate Board of New York said in testimony submitted at a March 1 joint legislative hearing on housing. “Enabling additional and more effective use of rental assistance, especially in high-amenity areas, will expand housing choice for New Yorkers across neighborhoods.” REBNY is among many groups supportive of HAVP and Hochul’s housing plan.

In interviews, State Senator Kavanagh and Assemblymember Rosenthal seemed optimistic that HAVP would be included in the state budget, emphasizing that it is imperative to any comprehensive housing policy agenda.

“I think it's fair to say that HAVP is still a very strong priority for the Senate,” Kavanagh said, declining to disclose specific details from the internal budget negotiations.

He said he was “optimistic” that the budget would include some form of HAVP, given the amount of support behind the proposal. “I think everybody understands that developing housing over the long-term is not going to address the immediate crisis that many people are experiencing now,” he added. “Putting rental assistance on the table is a really important part of addressing the homelessness crisis, the eviction crisis, and just the crisis of rent poverty that people are dealing with where they're just paying way too much of the rent and their housing stability is threatened as a result.”

Kavanagh first introduced the bill in February 2020, before the pandemic made it even more necessary to provide stability to tenants in New York. “HAVP was viewed as a sort-of new and ambitious idea then, but over the last three years, it has become almost universally popular at this point,” he said.

After the pandemic era eviction moratorium was lifted, an eviction crisis has again developed, with nearly 160,000 active eviction cases statewide in housing court as of April 2, according to the Eviction Crisis Monitor created by the Right to Counsel NYC coalition.

“You can't just keep kicking it down the road because basically you're kicking people down the road…I think it's incumbent on the state to do this,” Rosenthal said of HAVP, in a phone interview.

The Assemblymember stressed the broader ramifications of ensuring that people can remain in housing while also providing a lifeline to those suffering homelessness. “It will house people, first of all,” she said. “And, by having greater housing stability for people – for those who only care about economics – there will be less spending on hospital stays and housing court and prisons and shelters because people will actually have a place to call their own.”

Pushing back against the governor’s concerns about costs, Rosenthal noted that the state can regulate its costs by assessing both the need for rental vouchers as well as the state’s fiscal ability to pay for them, just as the federal government does for Section 8.

Rosenthal also reiterated her chief criticism of the governor’s housing plan, that it doesn’t address the immediate housing crisis, unlike HAVP. “There's no solution to today's burning issue, which is we need to help people pay the rent,” she said.

RuthAnne Visnauskas, who helped craft the Housing Compact as Hochul’s state housing commissioner, said in a March 30 appearance on Gotham Gazette’s Max Politics podcast that HAVP and other tenant protections were still under consideration in the budget amid negotiations over Hochul’s housing agenda, which she helped craft. “Everything is still on the table,” she said, in response to a question about the Legislature’s focus on HAVP and other tenant protections. “So I would imagine that those things will stay in the conversation until the end…Nothing comes out the way it goes in. So I think, it’s still to be determined where we end up on all these pieces.”

As housing advocates have noted, the governor's plan also does not come with affordability requirements for the new housing that will be created across the state, though she argues that more abundant housing supply will be part of the affordability solution and that the Housing Compact is a complement to her five-year, $25 billion affordable housing plan passed in last year’s budget.

“HAVP is a critical investment in addressing housing insecurity in our State,” said Cea Weaver, campaign coordinator for the Housing Justice for All coalition. “As Governor Hochul pushes for a new Housing Compact, we have to keep in mind that without HAVP, nothing will guarantee that new housing will be affordable to tenants and homeless New Yorkers.”

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by Samar Khurshid, senior reporter, Gotham Gazette
     

Read more by this writer.

Hochul, Legislators Look to Pass Holistic Criminal Justice Improvements


 

(photo: Mike Groll/Office of Governor Kathy Hochul)


While another potential rollback of bail reforms has taken center stage in state budget negotiations for the second straight year, the fates of a swath of other criminal justice programs are being quietly hashed out.

Governor Kathy Hochul and state legislative leaders are in the midst of pinning down the contours of a roughly $230 billion state budget, already past the April 1 start of the new fiscal year. Even with the focus on bail, all parties are talking about a holistic suite of criminal justice-related policies with hundreds of millions of dollars at stake.

On everything from funding for prosecutors and public defenders to alternatives to incarceration and pretrial services, there is both major daylight and points of accord between the governor's executive budget plan and the State Senate’s and Assembly's one-house budget resolutions.

The main sticking point in the budget negotiations has been Hochul's emphasis on removing a bail standard that requires judges to consider the "least restrictive" means of securing a defendant's return to court. The governor is also focused on funding for law enforcement, district attorneys, and gun violence prevention. The Legislature, on the other hand, has raised the stakes for criminal legal services, especially funding for public defenders, while backing many of the violence and drug reduction spending programs in Hochul's plan. Other long sought reforms, like the Clean Slate Act, elder parole, and protections for juvenile interrogees, however, appear to be off the table, according to reporting from The City.

"New Yorkers are concerned about public safety, the rising cost of housing, and ensuring high-quality schools for all our kids, and any budget deal must make progress on these core issues," Hochul said in a statement last week as she announced a budget extension until April 10. "I have been negotiating in good faith with the legislature, but it is clear there is more work to be done before we reach an agreement." The governor and Legislature are expected to pass another budget extender on Monday to fund state government operations until April 17. 

Assembly Speaker Carl Heastie told reporters last week that "bail is now taking up pretty much all the oxygen and everything else is second." Heastie and Senate Majority Leader Andrea Stewart-Cousins, each commanding Democratic supermajorities, have made it clear they are opposed to further changes to the bail reforms of 2019, which removed cash bail for most nonviolent felonies and has been adjusted every legislative session since its enactment.

"We want to help to clarify the judicial discretion as well as keep the integrity of our bail law," Stewart-Cousins said at a press availability in the Capitol on March 30, a day before the budget deadline. "So again, it's a productive conversation and I have every feeling that we can get to a good end."

Both chambers passed their own-one house budgets in which they outlined various lines of funding to support criminal justice and public safety programs, including the implementation of bail and other recent reforms. Among them are funding to implement changes to discovery laws, also passed in 2019, that were intended to open up the sharing of evidence between prosecutors and criminal defense attorneys. Both Hochul and Mayor Eric Adams have said additional funding is needed to support lawyers struggling to comply with the new more stringent discovery requirements and reduce a growing court backlog.

Albany leaders have also yet to settle how much will be included for so-called alternatives to incarceration, a growing menu of diversion programs that often include social services for people convicted of a crime. Questions remain about how funding will be distributed for pretrial services, another type of diversion programs, this one for defendants to avoid jail before a conviction. The programs have expanded around the state in the wake of the 2019 bail reforms as a cashless alternative to bail.

The governor's budget includes hundreds of millions of dollars for local law enforcement agencies and district attorney's offices. In total, the executive budget projects spending $8.1 billion, or 3.5% of the total budget, on public safety agencies in the new fiscal year. That money will go to the Department of Corrections and Community Supervision, Division of Criminal Justice Services, the state police, Division of Homeland Security, Indigent Legal Services, and Division of Military and Naval Affairs.

Also at stake is roughly a third of a billion dollars included in the executive budget for gun violence prevention and intervention initiatives. According to the Division of the Budget, that money represents a $110 million increase from last year, much of it going to local police departments, prosecutors, and law enforcement task forces. The governor's office did not provide a list that accounted for the full $337 million. At least some of that funding, including gun violence interrupter programs known as SNUG Street Outreach, was included in the Senate and Assembly proposals.

Funding for Prosecutors, Public Defenders
In 2020, a new state discovery law took effect that required prosecutors to automatically turn over evidence within tighter timeframes to defenders, part of a series of criminal justice reforms that included the elimination of cash bail for most nonviolent crimes. The new demands placed on lawyers come amid excessive court delays and a rise in city and statewide jail populations, as defendants await trial. Hochul and Mayor Eric Adams have blamed the reforms for a growing backlog of cases in criminal court, which they claim has contributed to spikes in recidivism and violent crime.

"Our prosecutors need help as they've been underfunded for a long time, so we're proposing to help them play their role in the process by increasing funding from $12 million to $52 million and increasing coordination among all law enforcement agencies," Hochul said at a March 22 press briefing in the State Capitol.

In testimony before a joint legislative budget hearing in February, Mayor Adams acknowledged that the city's district attorneys and public defenders "are overwhelmed and need our help immediately." "The state must make a major investment in them now or risk depriving defendants of their constitutional right to a speedy trial — delaying justice for victims and continuing the unprecedented level of attrition within each of these offices," he said.

Hochuls executive budget includes $40 million to help prosecutors outside of New York City meet more stringent discovery rules, on top of $52 million in “aid to prosecution,” up from $12.5 million, for district attorney offices statewide. The discovery funding would help DAs hire staff and purchase the technology needed to store and process evidence, money they argue is desperately needed.

Much of the new “aid to prosecution funding” is to hire hundreds of prosecutors to help "develop crime strategy plans and reduce case backlogs," according to the governor's budget book. The allocation comes on top of funding from counties and federal grants; New York City pays hundreds of millions of dollars more for its five DAs.

Publicly funded defense attorneys have argued they too need funding to keep up with the new, much-needed influx of evidence.

"We have a lot of the same costs and the same impacts," said Lisa Schreibersdorf, executive director of Brooklyn Defenders Services. "We need to get the technology up to speed, we have to collect all that same evidence, we have to store it, organize it, sort it, share it."

Public defenders, who provide legal representation to the state's poorest residents, have seen an exodus of employees drawn to firms with lighter caseloads and better pay. The strain means fewer lawyers available to clients, who are predominantly Black, Latino, and immigrant New Yorkers.

The Senate one-house budget includes $50 million for prosecutors to comply with the new discovery rules, $10 million more than Hochul's allocation. It also gives $40 million to public defenders for the same purpose and another $47 million for other “Aid to Defense” funding for public defender organizations, for a total of $87 million – something left almost completely out of the governor's proposal (the governor included $7.6 million to the state's “Aid to Defense” fund and nothing to public defenders for discovery).

"When the governor…didn't put anything at all for the defenders, it was very disheartening," Schreibersdorf said.

The Assembly's one-house budget goes even further, raising discovery funding for prosecutors to $100 million (half to New York City's five DAs and half to the rest of the state). And it matched that funding, $100 million, to criminal defenders. The Assembly budget also includes another $40 million for the Aid to Defense fund.

The executive budget fell short in funding requested by the state Office of Indigent Legal Services to represent parents in family court, including when custody of a child is at stake. Hochul included $359 million for ILS, the same level as last year, and $23 million short of ILS's budget request this year. 


[Read: As Prosecutors Get Budget Boost, Public Defenders Seek More Funding Too]

Alternatives to Incarceration and Pretrial Services
The executive budget includes nearly $32 million for alternatives to incarceration (ATI) – a range of community supervision, treatment, and employment-oriented programs available to some defendants in lieu of prison. The allocation doubles the $15.7 million that was included in the budget adopted last year (in total, the Department of Criminal Justice Services (DCJS) awarded more than $17 million last fiscal year).

Hochul also proposed $11.5 million for reentry services, including $7.7 million in new funding.

"It demonstrates New York's leadership in this area and this increased funding, we know, is certainly long overdue," said Andre Ward, associate vice president for public policy at the Fortune Society, a service provider for justice-involved and formerly incarcerated individuals. He was referring specifically to the governor's boost in ATI funding.

"Especially important, as we see more people with serious mental illness, there needs to be increased funding for more clinical and peer services," he said, which would be supported by the new allocations.

On ATI, the executive and Assembly one-house budgets are nearly identical, allocating roughly $32 million, with the minor exception of an Assembly carveout of $300,000 in federal Justice Assistance Grants (JAG), which can be used for a swath of law enforcement purposes, including ATI and re-entry services. Hochul's JAG proposal of $6 million is still $1 million less than previous years, according to the Senate's resolution, which restores that funding. The Senate also included an additional $2.7 million in legislative grants for "community safety and restorative justice," which similarly includes ATI and re-entry services.

Some state legislators and advocates had their hopes dashed when the executive and one-house budgets left out the Treatment Not Jails Act, which would expand mental health treatment courts statewide. Every county would be required to open diversion courts that offer social services and supervision in place of prison-time for people with severe mental illness and a growing list of special needs. Over a third of each chamber has signed onto the bill, sponsored by State Senator Jessica Ramos and Assemblymember Phara Souffrant Forrest, both Democrats. Pieces of the measure may still make it into the final budget agreement and lawmakers are eying the rest of the legislative session to try to get it across the finish line.

The executive budget also includes $20 million for pretrial services, a nonmonetary alternative to jail that was included in the bail reforms passed in 2019. Under the program, defendants may participate in various levels of community supervision by designated pretrial services agencies in order to ensure they return to court. New York City has been piloting a form of pretrial services, known as supervised release, since 2016, using nonprofit providers that often make referrals to other social services.  Many counties throughout the state lacked the same experience and infrastructure, relying instead on local probation departments to deliver the services, which some defenders fear may be less independent of prosecutors than private providers.

A portion of the governor’s $40 million allocation to prosecutors for discovery reform implementation may also be used for pretrial services.

The Assembly and Senate resolutions both meet the executive budget request of $20 million for pretrial services. The Assembly also included an additional $5 million for grants from the legislature for pretrial and legal services.

***
by Ethan Geringer-Sameth, reporter, Gotham Gazette
     

Read more by this writer.

The High Stakes of Hochul's Housing Compact


Gov. Hochul talks housing (photo: Kevin P. Coughlin/Governor's Office)


Governor Kathy Hochul is attempting a major course correction in New York’s approach to housing creation in this year’s state budget and the stakes couldn’t be higher. For the governor, weakened after a tighter-than-expected election that won her a first full-term, it could be a major legacy-making achievement even if its effects aren’t felt immediately. And for New Yorkers, it could be the first meaningful step towards truly easing the state’s acute housing shortage and reducing the atmospheric cost of housing in the state.

Though it faces some opposition in the Legislature, Hochul’s focus on housing supply also meets legislators’ prioritization of tenant protections, laying the ground for a potentially seismic compromise that incorporates significant elements of both.

“A lot is at stake," said Rachel Fee, executive director of the New York Housing Conference (NYHC), a nonprofit advocacy group. "This is a framework for housing supply, which is the core issue impacting housing affordability in New York,” referring to Hochul ambitious plan. 

In the decade before the pandemic, New York State created more than 1.2 million jobs but only about 403,000 units of housing. Housing production in the state lags far behind many other jurisdictions. New York City, for instance, created only 27 new homes for every 1,000 residents between 2011-2020, a slower rate than many major cities including Los Angeles, San Francisco, Washington D.C., Miami, Seattle, and Austin. New York’s suburbs are even worse, with the lowest rates of new housing permitted between 2010 and 2018 compared to suburbs in Massachusetts, Connecticut, Southern California, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and Northern Virginia.

Hochul has proposed a “Housing Compact” designed to fulfill the state’s need for 800,000 homes across the state in the next ten years. It involves three major elements – requirements for regional and local housing growth (3% in each locality downstate and 1% upstate over three years) along with enforcement mechanisms; and major rezonings around MTA transportation hubs to encourage more housing density near mass transit.

Third, the plan also includes easing environmental review regulations that have often slowed housing development, a property tax exemption for localities that allow accessory dwelling units, and several proposals specific to New York City including eliminating the floor-area ratio (FAR) cap in the city to allow more dense buildings, allowing conversions of underused office space to housing (along with a proposed tax credit to encourage set asides for affordable units in those developments), and allowing the city to provide amnesty to existing basement apartments as well as a pathway toward safe, legalized units.

To support localities in their housing efforts, Hochul also allocated in her budget proposal $250 million for an infrastructure fund and $20 million for planning and technical assistance.

“I'm leaning hard into this idea of building more housing simply because other states are far ahead of us,” Hochul said in the city of Cohoes last month. “We're losing people to our neighboring states because they have more supply, therefore the prices are cheaper. Again, it's real simple economics here. So that's what I'm focusing on. I'm supporting communities that have their own vision. I'm encouraging others who don't have the same vision to understand that this is a matter of survival. Building more housing and creating housing - all levels of housing.”

“I want people 150 years from now to look back and say, ‘What we did in 2023, investing in these communities, building the housing people need, was a catalyst for a future, which was absolutely unstoppable,’" she added.

Though some believe they could be doing more, the governor and her team have made significant efforts to raise support for the Housing Compact since she first announced it in her State of the State speech in January. The governor held roundtables on the housing crisis in every region of the state, and she has touted the Compact, and local support for it, in Syracuse, Albany, Rochester, Rye Brook, Patchogue, and White Plains, the governor’s office said.

RuthAnne Visnauskas, the Hochul-appointed state housing commissioner who helped craft the Compact, has also held 75 meetings on the issue with state lawmakers, mayors, town supervisors, county executives and community groups, according to the governor's office. More than 100 organizations and nonprofit groups have announced support of the Compact.

A Slingshot Strategies poll, commissioned by the pro-development group Open New York and released March 1, found that 64% of registered voters support the governor’s overall housing agenda, which also had 66% in support in Westchester and Putnam Counties — two of the key suburban battleground areas where the push for more housing can be particularly fraught.

A Siena College poll released March 27 found that 90% of New Yorkers said that affordable housing is a serious problem in the state, coming in close behind the 92% who said the same about crime. Nearly half, 45% of voters, supported the housing target mandates proposed by Hochul while 37% opposed them. Support and opposition were also split along party lines – 67% of Democrats support the idea while 63% of Republicans oppose it.

The Democratic majorities in the State Senate and Assembly, however, did not embrace it – in their one-house budgets, both chambers instead proposed voluntary growth targets with $500 million in incentives for localities through infrastructure funding. Both Democrats and Republicans have pushed back against the proposal’s enforcement mechanism, which would override local control over housing and zoning.

While promoting the Compact on Long Island last month, Hochul said that building more homes is essential to ensure that the state’s economy can keep growing and that people can find an affordable place to live throughout the state. “We've created so many more jobs than ever before, but we've not kept pace with building the housing,” she said. “And communities large and small all have a capacity to just grow a little bit more. Some want to grow big; some want to keep their small character. I understand that and they should. But we have to open up the doors so we can get people to be able to live here."

“I think [the Housing Compact] was one of the most bold and courageous proposals that she had this session,” said Neal Kwatra, founder of Metropolitan Public Strategies, a consulting firm. Kwatra said that the governor’s plan was naturally bound to receive some opposition as she attempts to deal with an intractable issue, but he has “honestly been really troubled” by the response to the governor’s plan from her own party.

He also noted that while a majority of Republican voters have rejected the governor’s plan, Democratic voters are on board. “If Democrats stuck together, this is a no-brainer because there is widespread statewide Democratic Party primary voter support. There is independent voter support for this concept,” he said.

“I don't want to be hyperbolic about it but this to me is not dissimilar to fights we've had throughout this country's history, on issues like bussing, on school desegregation,” Kwatra added, echoing those who see Hochul’s plan in part as an opportunity to advance fair housing goals. “Anytime we decide to bring more people to the party, namely all of society, all of our citizens, we have this kind of tension.”

Housing experts and advocates say that the Housing Compact could be a historic reset to housing policy in the state with the appropriate eye on the future, but that it can only work if there are growth mandates in place. Exclusionary places unfavorable to change, they point out, are not going to be easily swayed by the offerings of infrastructure funding to accompany new housing that current homeowners do not welcome.

As Visnauskas and others have said, New York took lessons from other jurisdictions where an incentives-only approach has repeatedly failed to produce the necessary level of new housing. There’s also broad agreement that the governor’s best opportunity to get approval for the compact is in the budget, since it contains fiscal incentives tied to housing targets and because she will lose the major budget process leverage she has in the post-budget legislative session.

Carrots and Sticks
The proposal to set mandatory targets for housing creation is seen as the most essential to progress but has proven to be the most controversial aspect of the Housing Compact. Under Hochul’s plan, if localities either fail or refuse to meet growth targets or take any zoning actions to encourage new housing to be built, real estate developers would be able to use a fast-track method to get approvals for projects by appealing to the courts or a new state-level Housing Review Board.

“We feel very strongly about the mandate, and that without that this is not really a policy that is going to have a lot of impact,” said Visnauskas, in a recent appearance on Gotham Gazette’s Max Politics podcast. “And frankly, that we don't have a lot of time to do what other states did, which is work this out over the course of the next decade and maybe get to a mandate then, because the housing crisis is too real and too severe for too many people.”

As Visnauskas and Hochul have explained it, the Compact gives localities a great deal of say in how they grow, but they must grow their housing supply, before any enforcement or overrides kick in.

Republicans and some Democrats, particularly those representing the suburbs, have broadly criticized the mandate, insisting on maintaining “local control, not Hochul control.”

“Certainly, her proposal of having a statewide board that would overrule local government is inappropriate and probably unconstitutional,” said State Senator Patricia Canzoneri-Fitzpatrick, a Nassau County Republican, in a phone interview. “Her proposal would, in essence, nullify the votes of all of my constituents to elect intermediate levels of government and overrule them and say, ‘We don't really care what your local zoning says.’…That kind of dictator edict is not well received by anybody.”

Speaking to reporters on Monday, Assembly Speaker Carl Heastie, a Bronx Democrat, said any local zoning overrides were a tough sell for the Legislature. “As a state legislator, deference to local control is something that…you try to be respectful of,” he said. But he did concede that localities, particularly in the suburbs, need to build more housing and eliminate outdated regulations that have restricted new development. “I do think that you can try to deal with all of those things but you just have to try to figure out what's the best way to accomplish this,” he said.

Senate Majority Leader Andrea Stewart-Cousins, a Westchester Democrat, similarly said that every aspect of the Housing Compact was up for negotiation, even the growth mandate. “I'm not opposed to the ‘stick,’ as they say, but I don't like to start with sticks. I want to start with ‘carrots’ and community engagement so that we can get to the end that we'd like,” she said.

She insisted that Senate Democrats are looking at housing “holistically” and that there are issues that also need to be addressed, including the Housing Access Voucher Program, “good cause eviction” protections, and tenant rent-arrears funding. “I've always said our conference looks at it holistically. We know that we need to build more housing in New York. And we also know that we need to keep tenants in their housing,” she said.

Supporters of the Compact say the governor should not budge on the mandate, even if other aspects of the compact are dropped which could be addressed in the future.

“The governor really needs to hold the line and stay very strong on the proposal for the housing compact,” said Annemarie Gray, executive director of Open New York and a former New York City housing and planning official, in a phone interview. “[W]e need a statewide framework that has to be real, required, enforceable, permanent; that actually really makes sure every part of the state adds housing opportunities. And that has to be at the center of the proposal.”

Gray and others like Fee do say that the Compact could be improved and negotiated in different ways, and perhaps there could be more flexibility in the density requirements and local control.

“I think we do have to push localities to do their part, but I think we also have to be listening to what are some real concerns on how to fix this,” said Fee, who recently wrote an op-ed recommending areas of potential compromise. And the governor’s team is listening to feedback. Visnauskas said on the podcast that the proposal could be changed, for instance, to give some relief to localities that have already been steadily building housing or passing zoning reforms towards that goal.

But Fee insisted that the mandates should remain, instead of the incentive-only proposal floated by the Legislature. “What's on the table right now is an incentives-only approach which we feel will be totally ineffective,” she said. “And I think the Governor has been clear that she's not going to go for that and part of the reasoning is, we don't have time to waste. We've seen that this has failed in other states.”

‘It Has to Get Done in the Budget’
Asked about whether a housing deal needs to get done as part of the state’s massive budget agreement, Visnauskas pointed out that the growth targets are linked to the infrastructure and planning assistance funds proposed by the governor and Legislature.

“All those things, from my perspective, seem very much tied up in a budget conversation. These housing policies are very much related to the dollars that are in the budget. So I think it has to get done now,” she said. Some legislators have floated the idea of negotiating housing policy in the post-budget legislative session. Most experts and advocates agree that for Hochul to pass something truly transformational for the state’s future, it should be done in the budget, where the governor’s leverage is strongest and the opportunities for grand bargains are biggest.

“It has to get done in the budget,” said Fee. “The governor has no leverage to do this outside the budget process.”

There are also tax incentives that Hochul and others, like Mayor Eric Adams, have argued are crucial to the success of the plan. Both Adams and Hochul have insisted on the need to replace the 421-a affordable housing tax credit, which expired last year. Hochul had proposed and later abandoned an alternative 485-w proposal, which she did not revive this year. Instead she proposed an extension on the completion deadline for buildings to receive 421-a credits, and has put the onus on the Legislature to come up with a new replacement program.

But it's not just the fiscal implications that matter. Hochul came into her first full-term after a bruising election. She bested her Republican opponent, then- U.S. Rep. Lee Zeldin, by just six points, the closest governor’s race in decades. Then, she expended significant capital when she unsuccessfully nominated Hector LaSalle as the state’s next chief judge, rebuked by the State Senate, which rejected his nomination. Hochul is also now, for a second year in a row, insisting on changes to the state’s bail law in order to move ahead on the budget overall, frustrating many legislators and leading to questions about whether she will be able to get as much of her housing plan passed as she could have if she made it the top priority in negotiations.

While Hochul appears to have the most on the line politically, there’s also the imperative for legislators to act, as the housing crisis has continued to become more acute, deemed by many as a leading cause of the state’s population loss over the years.

“I don't think there's any point in kicking this can down the road. It's been kicked several times already,” said Fee, who has met with many legislators and others to pitch the Compact and potential compromises. “Coming out of this pandemic, it feels like we have really such intensity around our housing crisis right now. There are so many households with significant arrears at risk of eviction. There are so many migrants coming to New York and we have no housing to offer them. Between rents and home prices, both have gone through the roof. And all of that, to me, points to, we need to add more housing.”

Gray from Open New York echoed that concern. “We absolutely have to do this in the budget,” she said. “We don't have time to waste with people sleeping on the street, with people getting displaced right now, and with people just really not nearly having enough housing opportunities. And we're really supportive of tenant protections as part of a package as well, but it's just the act of taking meaningful steps to solve the housing crisis. You can't wait another year.”

‘A Real Legacy for Her’
While the conversation around bail reform has sucked all the oxygen out of the room in early final-stretch negotiations between the governor and the Legislature, her housing agenda has the promise of becoming a major legacy item of her tenure.

“If the Housing Compact is enacted, this will be a landmark legislation for the governor,” said Fee, “and it's a politically brave move and one that she knew would be faced with resistance, and she's moving forward anyway, because she thinks that's the right thing to do in New York, and one that's going to help solve our affordability crisis.”

“This is the first governor that has prioritized housing in the way she has, prioritized zoning reform and really started to tackle these issues in the way that she has,” Gray said. “I absolutely think that this has all of the ingredients to be a real legacy for her.”

“Certainly, yeah, it's a legacy project,” said Queens Borough President Donovan Richards, who has been supportive of housing and economic development in his borough and beyond. More housing supply is particularly necessary as Queens feels the squeeze from neighboring Long Island communities that have failed to grow, he said. But he did say that the success of the Compact will depend on implementation and investment. “Even if it passes, there's no magic wand that all of a sudden increases housing tremendously,” he said. “Different tools need to be put in place that would enable things to actually be built.”

Richards is among several borough presidents who are eager to see more housing built in their boroughs and who have praised Hochul’s proposal, as has Mayor Adams, who sees Hochul’s plan as potentially very helpful to his own plan to build 500,000 units of new housing over a decade.

“No New York governor has ever tackled this the way she’s proposing to,” said Sean Campion, Director of Housing and Economic Development Studies at Citizens Budget Commission (CBC), a nonprofit group that has examined New York’s slow pace of housing growth and the impediments to fixing it. CBC, like Open New York and New York Housing Conference, is supportive of the Housing Compact.

He noted, however, that other states have already gone down this road and are building far more housing than New York. “Yes, it would be truly part of your legacy if it passes,” he said of Hochul, “and succeeds at increasing production, but this is just a basic thing that almost every other state in the country acknowledges is the problem and is trying to do something about.”

***
by Samar Khurshid, senior reporter, Gotham Gazette
     

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'Those are the Things That Keep States Strong': Senator Krueger on Top Priorities and Budget Negotiations


Senator Liz Krueger (photo: NY Senate)


Lawmakers in Albany are in the midst of crafting a new budget, with negotiations now stretching beyond the April 1 start of the new fiscal year. Democratic Governor Kathy Hochul and the two houses of the State Legislature, both with Democratic supermajorities, are likely to pass a budget “extender” so the state can pay its bills, especially payroll, as they continue negotiations this week.

State Senator Liz Krueger, a Manhattan Democrat who leads the Senate’s finance committee, has been at the center of the budget process, co-chairing weeks of legislative hearings on Hochul’s $227 billion executive budget and helping to craft the Senate’s one-house budget resolution, which was passed mid-March.

Just after both houses passed their one-house budgets and negotiations with Hochul’s office were set to intensify, Krueger joined Gotham Gazette’s Max Politics podcast to discuss Senate Democrats’ priorities, negotiations with the Governor, and more.

Hochul’s executive budget, released February 1, and building upon her January State of the State policy agenda, set the stage for the process. The governor, who just won her first term in the role but is negotiating her second budget since ascending from lieutenant governor, included many proposals in her budget, taking on a wide range of issues and offering several measures controversial with the legislative majorities. They included a sweeping and ambitious housing plan, a push to increase the cap on charter schools in New York City, further changes to the state’s bail law to allow for more pre-trial detention, a plan to fund the Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA), major climate and energy policies, and much more.

On the podcast, Krueger offered a broad response to the governor’s agenda, in large part through the lens of the Senate’s one-house budget. She stressed that while lawmakers are opposed to a number of Hochul’s ideas, there’s agreement on many others, and room for negotiation on key areas where there is disagreement.

“It’s quite the challenge to narrow that down into an actual sort of summary of what our budget would support and not support in the governor’s budget, what we would add, what we would subtract, and what we would replace,” Krueger said of the process of crafting the one-house budget resolution, which is non-binding and more of a negotiating document. “It’s fairly complex, and we come out with a very long laundry list of things we agree and disagree with."

Of the final stretch of budget negotiations, Krueger said, “It’s the staff of a governor, the Assembly, and the Senate in rooms together saying, ‘OK, this is what my house wants. This is what my house wants. This is what the governor wants. Can we come to an agreement? Can we agree to throw it away because we’re never going to come to an agreement? Can we negotiate something we can all live with?,’ And we build toward a final set of budget bills that need to pass both houses.”

Of the potential for budget negotiations to go into April, past the start of the new fiscal year, as they now have, Krueger said, “I’ve been here 20 years, and I always tell everyone, ‘Bring extra underwear.’”

On the podcast, Krueger touched on many of the Senate majority’s priorities and responses to Hochul’s proposals, the status of budget negotiations at the time in mid-March, and what she expected to come.

Criminal Justice
On the issue of criminal justice and how it fits into this year’s budget, Krueger said legislators have “a much longer list than we think the governor does.” While bail reform has been a controversial and dominant issue for years and is again this year, Krueger said there is little appetite for revisions again this year.

"We've done bail reform several times,” Krueger said on the podcast. “We've done hearings already this year looking at the data that's coming out. I don't think there's much room in either house of the Legislature to take on bail again."

“There’s criminal justice issues we would love to come to agreement on, but we don’t think the actual problem of growth in crime was caused by bail or that it’s creating a new problem, so we would much rather focus on the other issues in crime,” Krueger continued. “We’ll see whether the governor’s willing to do that.” Indications before and after those comments are that Hochul is insistent again this year that changes to toughen the bail laws must be made in the budget, and like last year, it is proving key to why the budget is late.

Krueger, who was the lead Senate sponsor of the law that legalized adult use of cannabis in New York, also discussed efforts she’s leading that could be part of a budget deal to increase penalties on businesses selling illegal cannabis products, as well as for those who knowingly lease commercial space to the rapidly proliferating illegal smoke shops.

“The bill would significantly increase penalties on the illegal shops, because right now they don’t really think they face any penalties except an occasional sheriff coming through and pulling the stuff off their shelves — no other penalty, and that’s not working,” Krueger said. “What they’re selling is illegal product coming in from other states, that we don’t even know what it is, and the testing shows that some of it is pretty crappy stuff.”

There appears to be alignment among Hochul and the Legislature on taking some such measures, but the final details as yet to be seen.

Although she said that she does not intend to re-criminalize cannabis by means of fines, Krueger said she wants police departments across the state to understand that they have more authority than she currently sees them enforcing against the shops selling illegally, which has been a point of contention in New York City where Mayor Adams, the NYPD, and the Sheriff have performed limited enforcement. She said the bill would allow law enforcement to revoke tobacco and CBD licenses for good if sellers are caught peddling illegal cannabis products.

Education
In light of Governor Hochul’s controversial proposal to raise the cap, which has been hit, on charter schools in New York City, allowing for around 100 more of the privately-run public schools to be authorized.

“The city of New York doesn’t seem to want the expansion of charters, and the Legislature doesn’t want the expansion of charters, so I just don’t think there’s a lot of room there for any negotiations,” Krueger said on the podcast.

She acknowledged that Mayor Adams may be supportive of charter schools but noted that during his state budget testimony to the Legislature he said the city does not have the money to spend on rent for more charter schools, which by state law must be given school space at the city’s expense, whether in public or private buildings. Krueger said that the Legislature does not intend to allocate the roughly $1 billion the mayor asked for to pay for charter school rent if the cap is raised.

Krueger also noted that it’s a priority for the Legislature to pass and fund universal free school meals — meaning all children across the state could access free breakfast and lunch every day at school.

“Everyone seems to recognize the importance of children having nutritious meals,” she said. “They learn better, they have better IQs, they’re healthier. It’s a very low-cost option to really address the issues for so many children in the state.”

Housing
On housing and the governor’s major ‘Housing Compact’ plan, Krueger said Hochul’s language in her proposal “did not seem to be satisfactory to almost anyone.”

Hochul’s plan would add 800,000 new homes to the state in the next 10 years through the use of mandatory local growth targets, zoning mechanisms, and many other planks.

“Housing is absolutely critical, but there was so much disagreement with almost every one of the governor’s proposals,” Krueger said of how the Senate crafted its one-house budget, which stripped out most of Hochul’s proposals but did keep the growth targets, albeit not required, and additional incentive money for infrastructure for localities that do welcome housing production to meet the state’s massive need. “We don’t want to leave Albany this Spring without dealing with the housing crisis, but most of the governor’s proposals were not the ones that were going to go.”

Krueger's mention of Spring was indicative of her belief that much of housing policy could potentially be dealt with in the legislative session after a budget, given that the session runs into June. But other legislators and members of the Hochul administration insist housing must largely if not fully be dealt with in the budget.

Krueger added that the Legislature’s priorities on housing include significant rent-arrears funding for the New York City Housing Authority (NYCHA), funding for the Homeowner Protection Program, which provides legal assistance and resources to homeowners facing eviction, and other policies that are not focused on housing production.

On growth targets and mandates, Krueger said there are localities where many officials say they want to build more and they can now do so, without state action, even if there is less will other places. “When you look at the City of New York, we have elected officials who say they want all this to happen,” Krueger said on the podcast. “When you look at other counties, they don't always say they want this to happen, as you’ve pointed out with Long Island. So that’s why I’m trying to point out that maybe different carrots and sticks work differently in different parts of the state.”

Krueger indicated that the Senate’s budget was not a final offer in negotiations, but a starting point from the majority’s perspective, and that on growth targets, transit-oriented development, and more, there is room for discussion.

Krueger said she is open to Hochul’s proposal to convert commercial buildings to residential spaces, but added that she is pushing for mandatory affordable units as part of any shift in regulations. She also said that she is not against the governor’s proposal to authorize legal basement units in New York City, and believes that the city has a lot of potential to build in that direction.

Taxes and Tax Breaks
The senator added that despite Hochul’s pledge not to raise any income taxes this year, legislators in both houses have proposed a small income tax increase for those who make $5 million or more each year.

“We believe that the amount we’ve proposed increasing, on $5 million and up, would not impact people picking up and leaving and stop doing business in New York, but that money can go an incredibly long way to help us pay for the priorities that make the state a great state,” Krueger said.

Krueger asserted that people are more likely to stay in New York or locate their residences and businesses here if budgets invest in bolstering infrastructure, and bettering quality of life, rather than focusing on minimizing tax rates.

“We have money to invest in education because what do businesses want? They want an educated workforce to work for them, they want access to utilities, and we’re heading rapidly to a green economy of green utilities,” Krueger said. “Those are the things that keep states strong, and actually help them pull out of bad economic times quicker.”

Krueger maintained that she is against Governor Hochul’s proposals to increase the state’s film and TV tax credit program to $700 million per year, but said that she was overruled by other legislators and the Senate budget supported the increase.

“If I was queen for a day, I probably would not be including that in the budget, but I have total respect that I am one legislator who needs to negotiate with my own conference as well as the Assembly and the governor,” Krueger said on the podcast. She said she is, overall, against various tax credit programs and other business deals, and against the governor’s proposed state loan for a complete renovation of Belmont race track, which was also supported in both legislative houses’ budget resolutions.

Other Issues
The interview also touched on MTA funding, cost-of-living increases for workers at nonprofits the state contracts with, climate policy, and more.

“We put a lot of proposals in for our commitment to a green system of energy and the economy, and some revenue sources,” Krueger said on the podcast. “I keep telling everyone: If we don’t get climate change right, it doesn’t really matter what else we do, because we won’t be around to deal with it.”

Listen to the full discussion here.

***
by Abby Wilson, Gotham Gazette

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Uncertain Future for New Public Campaign Finance System in State Budget Negotiations


Inside the State Legislature (photo: Mike Groll/Office of Governor Kathy Hochul)


Despite funding in the executive and legislative budget proposals, lawmakers have not ruled out shelving the state's fledgling public campaign finance system for the upcoming election cycle.

Rumors that lawmakers were considering delaying the new small-dollar matching program as part of budget negotiations have been swirling since such talks were first reported by Spectrum News in late February. A few weeks later, however, the State Senate and Assembly one-house budget resolutions each met Governor Kathy Hochul's proposed $39.5 million for the new system – including $25 million for matching funds and $14.5 for administration.

But the apparent accord on the program has not been enough to assuage fears among reformers that the long-sought public financing system will be postponed in the adopted budget. A spending and policy plan is due by the April 1 start of the new state fiscal year, though budgets in Albany are often late.

Passed by Democrats in 2020, the system applies to candidates for statewide and state legislative seats, lowering individual contribution limits to candidates and establishing a public matching fund that multiplies low-level in-state or in-district contributions. Proponents, including many of the Democrats who currently make up supermajorities in the Senate and Assembly, argued the system would help reduce the impact of deep-pocketed donors in elections, encourage candidates to engage more voters, and make elections more competitive.

The public funds, offering a 6-to-1 match or greater to donations up to $250, are set by law to begin being paid out in the next state election cycle — the 2024 races for all 213 seats in the State Legislature. The Public Campaign Finance Board that is administering the program has already been appointed and for the past few months has been hiring staff, holding trainings, and setting out regulations for the system.

Despite the progress (and $20.6 million already allocated by lawmakers last year), the program's fate remains uncertain. Last week, Senate Majority Leader Andrea Stewart-Cousins avoided ruling out the possibility of delaying the implementation of the matching funds program when asked about it on The Capitol Pressroom.

"I have no idea," she told host David Lombardo of the chances of postponing the program in the adopted budget. "Both of our houses had campaign finance as does the governor's, so I have no expectation of anything falling off the table but we'll see."

Stewart-Cousins is one of three top officials, along with Hochul and Assembly Speaker Carl Heastie, all Democrats, who are leading negotiations of a roughly $230 billion state budget.

A coalition of advocates for campaign finance reforms and the public matching system are in Albany this week pushing to make sure the funding is in the final budget with no postponement.

“As the budget is finalized, our state’s leaders must cement their commitment to this groundbreaking program – not only by funding it, but also by ensuring that it remains available to candidates for the 2024 elections, some of whom have already started opting in," wrote Joanna Zdanys, senior Counsel at the Brennan Center for Justice and a member of the coalition, known as Fair Elections NY.

"Recent news pieces have reported rumblings that some lawmakers want to see the program delayed. There is absolutely no reason to do so," Zydanys told Gotham Gazette. "The program is ready to go, and this reform – which New Yorkers have long called for, and support by large majorities – is an essential way for everyday voters to have a greater say in our state’s politics.”

Asked to respond to Stewart-Cousins' remarks, a spokesperson for Hochul pointed to the governor's commitment in the executive budget.

"Governor Hochul's Executive Budget makes transformative investments to make New York more affordable, more livable and safer, and she continues to work with the legislature to deliver a final budget that meets the needs of all New Yorkers," wrote the spokesperson, Hazel Crampton-Hays, by email.

Lawmakers have expressed to advocates that part of the concern is over the expected price tag of the public match in the next state elections – estimated at $100 million, a majority of which would need to be included in next year's state budget if it is not included in the upcoming plan. But few have spoken publicly on the record about the status of talks.

On Thursday, a group of advocates and legislators spoke against defunding or delaying the program at rally in the State Capitol hosted by Fair Elections NY.

"For people who want to stop it, we are here to say you can't," said Assembly Member Harvey Epstein, a Manhattan Democrat. "We passed it because we're going to fight for it and are going to ensure that the money stays in the budget [and] there is no delay. There is no reason to delay."

"I'm hopeful as budget negotiations continue that we can get what we fought for," said Assembly Member Linda Rosenthal, another Manhattan Democrat, who also spoke at the rally.

Democratic Senator Rachel May of Syracuse said she "desperately" wanted to see the system in place for the 2024 state elections. "I'm proud that our majority leader supported putting the money in the budget this year and I will work with her to make sure that it stays," she said.

Spokespeople for Stewart-Cousins and Heastie did not provide statements in response to requests for comment. Nor did the chairs of the Legislature's finance and elections committees.

Senator Jessica Ramos, a Queens Democrat and longtime proponent of a public campaign finance system, defended the program but didn't rule out a delay. "I maintain that public matching is an important tool for the health of NY's democracy," she said in a statement provided by a spokesperson when asked if she was open to postponing. "The budget process is moving forward and we will see what the final language looks like as it progresses."

Reached by phone, Assembly Member Jeffrey Dinowitz, a Bronx Democrat, was not unsettled by the idea of postponing the system and painted the start-date of the campaign finance program as a question of preparedness.

"I don't think it would make a big difference," he said of a potential delay. "We have to make sure it's ready to be up and running."

Some lawmakers are still looking to make changes to the program even with Board operations underway.

A day after Hochul announced her $227 billion executive budget, Dinowitz introduced a bill that would eliminate the requirement that only funds from small donors (below $250) would be matchable; instead the first $250 of any sized contribution, up to the maximum limit, would be eligible for matched dollars. Some advocates are concerned the change would eliminate the advantage of seeking small donations and nullify a key feature of the legislation: to limit the influence of big election spenders and encourage candidates to focus on a broad swath of voters and donors.

"People are going to give what they want to give, what they're able to give. I think if the intent is really to force contributors not to give more than $250 then that's almost coercive," he said, noting that the purpose of the bill is to bring the state system in line with New York City's lauded campaign finance program, which matches contributions over the small-dollar threshold.

The bill has the co-sponsorship of a number of progressive Assembly members including Rosenthal and a number of democratic socialists. But it has no counterpart bill in the State Senate.

"That's probably a post-budget discussion and we have plenty of time for that," Dinowitz said of getting one. "Plenty of time."

***
by Ethan Geringer-Sameth, reporter, Gotham Gazette
     

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