Top NY legislator wants to curb Gov. Hochul’s power as budget talks stall

A top New York lawmaker wants to remove much of Gov. Kathy Hochul’s leverage in the state budget process as negotiations over a more than $250 billion spending plan drag on.

Assembly Speaker Carl Heastie, a Bronx Democrat, will introduce a bill that would allow state lawmakers to keep receiving their paychecks when they miss the state’s April 1 budget deadline — but only if the governor includes unrelated policy items in her budget proposal.

Gothamist obtained a draft of the legislation Tuesday. A spokesperson for Heastie said the speaker intends to introduce it Wednesday morning.

Under current law, the state withholds lawmakers’ pay if a budget isn’t in place by April 1, giving the governor significant leverage once negotiations go into overtime. The lawmakers’ checks are released once a final budget is approved.

Heastie has long expressed frustration with governors inserting unrelated policy measures in the state budget process, which he says distracts from discussions about the budget’s actual dollars and cents. Under his proposal, governors would still be able to propose policy in the budget — but only if they give up their strongest leverage when the budget is late.

“This is why, year after year after year, budgets are late,” Heastie said Tuesday, referring to non-budgetary policy initiatives. “It's never late because of the numbers — never late.”

The proposal marks a double-edged broadside against Hochul, a fellow Democrat who frequently pushes her top policy priorities in the budget process and has held out beyond the deadline each year since taking office in 2021.

And it speaks to the current state of negotiations over the budget, which was more than a week late on Tuesday. Hochul and legislative leaders have been at an impasse, largely over the governor’s push to change the state’s criminal discovery laws.

Hochul’s office didn’t respond kindly to Heastie’s bill.

“If the highest-paid state legislators in America are worried about their paychecks, there's a much easier solution: come to the table and pass a budget that includes Governor Hochul's common-sense agenda,” Hochul spokesperson Avi Small said in a statement.

Hochul has been pushing for four major policies as part of this year’s state budget, which Small said “have the overwhelming support of New Yorkers.”

Of those, she and lawmakers have reached a tentative agreement to prohibit students from using smartphones during the school day from opening bell to closing bell.

Heastie said the governor and legislative leaders also made progress on the governor’s proposal to change the state’s involuntary commitment law, which would make it easier for municipalities to remove people from the streets and hospitalize them if they’re suffering from a mental health crisis.

But the Legislature and governor have not been able to agree on criminal discovery laws, which Hochul wants to change to make it easier on prosecutors if they mistakenly fail to disclose certain evidence ahead of a criminal trial. They’ve also struggled to reach consensus on Hochul’s effort to create new criminal penalties for harassment while wearing a mask, which the governor began pushing amid protests over the Israel-Hamas war last year.

As the impasse continues, lawmakers aren’t receiving their pay.

On Thursday, Majority Leader Crystal Peoples-Stokes, a Buffalo Democrat who is the second-highest-ranking lawmaker in the Assembly, said lawmakers are more concerned about standing on their principles than getting their paychecks on time.

“It's hard, it's difficult,” she said. “You have to make different changes in your life. But it's doable when you stand principled on the issue.”

Lawmakers have approved a series of short-term budget extenders since missing the April 1 deadline, which the governor has crafted and signed into law. Hochul could choose to insert her budget priorities into those extenders, which would force lawmakers to approve them or fail to fund state operations.

So far, Hochul has opted against taking that approach.

The current budget extender runs through Wednesday. Lawmakers will have to approve a new one on Thursday.