Apr 30, 2025
April 28, 2025- Albany, NY- Governor Kathy Hochul today announced an agreement has been reached with legislative leaders on key priorities in the Fiscal Year 2026 New York State Budget. (Darren McGee/ Office of Governor Kathy Hochul)
State lawmakers will begin voting in the next couple of days on a state budget now that Gov. Kathy Hochul and legislative leadership have conceptually agreed on the 2025-26 state budget.
The total budget is estimated to come in at a cost of $254 billion and, Hochul said, does not raise income or statewide business taxes. The conceptual agreement also gives Hochul the ability to make future adjustments if actions by the federal government require.
On Thursday the state budget will be exactly a month late.
“I promised New Yorkers to fight like hell to put money back in their pockets and make our streets and subways safer. That’s exactly what this budget will do,” Hochul said late Monday in a news release. “Working with our partners in the Legislature we’ve reached an agreement to pass a balanced, fiscally responsible budget. Good things take time, and this budget is going to make a real difference for New York families.”
Hochul said the budget includes her proposed Inflation Refund checks at a cost of $2 billion to provide direct cash assistance to more than 8 million New Yorkers with checks of up to $400 per family and the governor’s cell phone use ban in schools that includes a $13.5 million investment to help schools implement the ban.
The budget also strengthens involuntary commitment laws by allowing hospitals to involuntarily commit mentally ill New Yorkers to their care if patients cannot meet their basic needs. The wording is a change from the previous standard, which allowed involuntary commitment only when a patient posed a physical threat to themselves or others. Hochul said the budget also improves Kendra’s Law, invests $16.5 million in Assisted Outpatient Treatment and $2 million in state Office of Mental Health staffing.
Hochul also said legislative leadership agreed to discovery reform to reduce the number of cases being thrown out on technicalities while investing $120 million in funding for discovery law compliance for prosecutors and defense attorneys. Exact changes won’t be known until legislation implementing the changes is introduced for state legislative approval.
The budget also includes a $1 billion investment in climate priorities, including assistance to electrify homes, thermal energy networks, EV charging infrastructure and renewable energy projects. Last week, state Sen. George Borrello, R-Sunset Bay, took to the Senate floor last week to speak about the Trump Administration’s order stopping construction of an offshore wind project located off of the shores of Long Island and pushing the state to take the same action. Borrello said he would then reprogram the money that was to be spent on offshore wind projects to help with the state budget.
“We have the opportunity in this budget to take the billions of New York state taxpayer dollars that were dedicated to that ridiculous boondoggle and put it back into this budget and maybe offer a discount to our taxpayers that are already overburdened,” Borrello said. “So let’s kill the offshore wind on our end as well which, is nothing but a taxpayer-funded boondoggle that puts money into foreign countries like China and let’s bring it back to New York state. So I’m voting yes to keep moving (the budget extender) forward with the understanding that we have the opportunity to close the entire gap, entirely, for every single dollar the federal government has for whatever reason not given to us by eliminating waste, fraud and abuse in New York state’s budget. We should do that in this budget.”
The Biden administration sought to ramp up offshore wind as a climate change solution, setting national goals to deploy offshore wind energy, holding lease sales and approving nearly a dozen commercial-scale offshore wind energy projects. The nation’s first commercial-scale offshore wind farm opened a year ago, a 12-turbine wind farm called South Fork Wind 35 miles (56 kilometers) east of Montauk Point, New York.
Federal Interior Secretary Doug Burgum recently directed the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management to halt construction on Empire Wind, a fully-permitted project. He said it needs further review because it appears the Biden administration rushed the approval. The Norwegian company Equinor is building Empire Wind to start providing power in 2026. Equinor finalized the federal lease for Empire Wind in March 2017, early in President Donald Trump’s first term. BOEM approved the construction and operations plan in February 2024 and construction began that year before Trump’s order to halt the project.
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