New York Fails to Make April 1 Budget Deadline
New York State is in a position it has not faced in recent years: a sort of financial limbo.
Legislative leaders failed to reach an agreement on a 2022-23 New York State budget. to hand over to lawmakers to meet a midnight deadline. Lawmakers left Albany overnight with issues like bail reform, crime and the response to the lingering pandemic still unresolved.
Blair Horner of the New York Public Interest Research Group told Spectrum News the current budget process, Governor Kathy Hochul’s first in the Executive Mansion, is the most secretive he’s seen in his long career as a political watchdog.
In addition to planned changes to the 2019 bail reform that some claim has fueled an increase in crime, Hochul’s $216-billion proposal most recently included state-taxpayer money to pay for building a new stadium for the Buffalo Bills. There is also a move to at least temporarily waive the state’s tax on gasoline to combat the skyrocketing costs of fuel. That tax brings in $2-billion to the state’s bottom line.
New York can operate on a contingency budget as the deadline to pass a final ledger is pushed back.
Legislators are gone for at least the weekend and Easter break is looming.
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