BY JEFF CHUDZINSKINorth Country This Week

State legislators and Governor Kathy Hochul have struck a "general agreement" on the state budget for 2025-26 four weeks after the bill was originally due.

"After nearly a month past its due date, Governor Hochul announced a budget deal. The devil is in the details so of course, there’s no details beyond what she’s touting and no actual bills for lawmakers to study until it’s brought to the floor for debate and vote. From start until now (and likely through completion), this process has been an embarrassment," Senator Dan Stec said in a public statement.

The $254 billion budget, a sharp increase from last year, was stalled for weeks as Hochul and legislative leaders sparred over multiple policy demands, including changes to discovery laws, involuntary mental health commitments and a "bell-to-bell ban on cell phones."

The spending plan represents a $2 billion decrease from Hochul's original proposal but is far lower than the request of the legislature.

“Despite the chaos and uncertainty emanating out of Washington, we still made it work,” Hochul said Monday night.

“We never lost sight of the people we were sent here to serve.”

But Assemblyman Scott Gray said the deal is not yet finalized, with another budget extender expected today, April 29, as state lawmakers debate a medical aid in dying bill, also known as "assisted suicide."

Gray said the debate consumed much of the legislative session Monday and is expected to yield multiple hours of debate on Tuesday as well.

The budget deal will include those changes to criminal justice and mental health law changes, along with the cell phone ban, however legislators have cautioned that more work may be required in the future if federal cuts impact state level programs, as has been proposed by the Trump administration.

Those cuts would require an act of Congress, including a proposal to cut funding to Medicaid.

Hochul said the state legislature may need to reconvene in the future to assess how to continue to fund such programs in the event that the federal government cuts hundreds of millions of dollars in federal aid.

According to state representatives, the state receives $93 billion for the federal government every year, more than half of which is used for Medicaid.

Nearly one third of the state's population is currently enrolled in the program.

The budget will also include tax cuts for low and middle class families, as well as an expanded child tax credit and checks of up to $400 for some New Yorkers.

Those funds would be distributed much like stimulus checks that were issued during the COVID-19 pandemic and will be based off of the most recent tax filings.

As part of the deal, 8.3 million New Yorkers will have the lowest income tax rates in 70 years, Hochul said.

Some of those filers will also be eligible for the stimulus-style checks, which will distribute $400 to families and $200 to individuals who are deemed eligible. Income thresholds were not immediately available for under a previous proposal Hochul suggested individuals making less than $70,000 per year and households making less than $125,000 for families.

The child tax credit would also be tripled, up to $1,000 for children under four-years-old, and an increase to $500 for school-aged children, according to Hochul.

An extra $50 million was also allocated for local municipalities statewide to help local governments pay for essential workers, like police officers and firefighters, Hochul said.

Outside of the North Country, lawmakers agreed to allocate $400 million to make improvements in the city of Albany, earmarking an additional $68 billion for the Metropolitan Transportation Authority repair plan, as well as $1.2 billion for renovations to Penn Station in New York City, a project the Trump administration has said they will take over.

Hochul acknowledged that further work was required though, with some of the finer details still to be hammered out.

She said budget bills would be rolled out this week, with votes expected to take place into the weekend possibly.

Hochul said the key priorities were finalized, including her requested policy additions.

She said the budget as it stands accounts for what officials know at the moment, though changes at the federal level could throw a monkey wrench into the agreement.

“The reality is, we can only devise a budget based on the information we have at this time,” she said.

“There is a possibility that we’ll have to come back later this year and update our budget in response to federal action.”

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