For a minute, it seemed like Governor Kathy Hochul wanted this year's state budget dance to be a forward-looking one—one that would focus on the affordability issues championed by her as well as New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani, like universal child care. In previous years, Hochul had used the budget cycle to demand changes to the state's 2019 criminal justice reforms, derailing negotiations in 2024 and 2025.
In recent weeks however, Hochul has revealed the grand concession she will seek to extract from the state legislature this year—she wants to roll back parts of the state's 2019 landmark climate law, the Climate Leadership and Community Protection Act, which mandates cutting New York's emissions to 40 percent below 1990 levels by 2030 and then to 85 percent below 1990 levels by 2050.