If budgets are "moral documents," what does it mean that the New York State budget, passed in the wee hours of Thursday morning, leaves 450,000 New Yorkers without health insurance coverage and severely delays the state's response to the climate crisis?
Despite the $268.5 billion state budget being two months late, Governor Kathy Hochul should be happy, because this is basically the document she wanted, including changes to state laws that may lower car insurance premiums, a buffer zone bill that makes it a crime to protest too closely to religious institutions, and $1 billion in "energy credit" rebates that will go out as $150 or $200 checks to more than 8 million New Yorkers.
Hochul also didn't have to take the political risk of passing significant new taxes on the rich, or more robust immigration protections—partly because she neutralized her left flank by signing fat checks to Mayor Zohran Mamdani, allowing him to keep his campaign promise of universal childcare alive, and buying his silence on the more odious choices like the climate law evisceration and kicking hundreds of thousands of people off of their Essential Plans in four weeks. (The Mamdani administration has not responded to our request for comment on the budget.)
State lawmakers, who in theory supported many of the more progressive positions, but in practice seemed worn down by the unusually drawn-out and secretive budget process, and who hadn't taken a paycheck since April 1, voted to get on with it. (After the vote, they lined up for their backpay checks.)
"If you own a car and you need to insure the car, then Albany did something for you this year," Michael Kinnucan, the health policy director at the left-leaning Fiscal Policy Institute, told Hell Gate. "But if you own a body and you need to insure a human body, then you're really out of luck."