Less than one month from the New York state budget deadline, a handful of issues continue to dominate the discussion: Immigration, potential tax hikes and revenue-raising options and an impending battle over the state’s 2019 climate law.
It has taken some twists and turns to get here.
Two of those things — the push for tax hikes on the wealthy on behalf of New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani by the state Senate and Assembly, and potential changes to the rigorous standards by which the state is working to reduce carbon emissions being pushed behind the scenes by Gov. Kathy Hochul — were not in the governor’s executive budget proposal. While Hochul did propose immigrant protections in her initial budget pitch, the contours of the discussion around what to do about state and local law enforcement cooperation emerged later.
The governor has shown no interest in raising taxes, and Democratic state lawmakers have shown no interest in rolling back the climate law.
Hochul, Senate Majority Leader Andrea Stewart-Cousins and Assembly Speaker Carl Heastie have indicated that a deal on immigration would come before the rest of the state budget is passed.
Asked Wednesday if that was still the case, Hochul said, “Yes.”
“I’m anxious to get it done,” she said. “More time has passed than I would like.”
Hochul implied that it was the push by Democratic state lawmakers for a more extensive immigration package, centered around the New York for All Act, that is holding things up.
“This can’t go on the way it is. I want the Legislature to work with me sooner rather than later,” she said. “I have plans that I think make a lot of sense and could help in situations that are unfolding literally by the day in this state.”
Conversations are ongoing behind the scenes. The state Senate has been discussing ways to craft a package that would incorporate as much of New York for All as possible along with other legislation.
Those conversations came in the form of a “working group” put together by Stewart-Cousins in recent weeks.
Hochul has stopped short of New York for All’s strict limit on cooperation between ICE and state and local governments, instead proposing an end to formal agreements at the local level, known as 287(g) agreements, along with a slate of other proposals — making it easier for New Yorkers to bring legal action if they feel their constitutional rights were violated and protecting certain sensitive locations from being accessible to ICE without a warrant.
While there has been talk of the Senate passing bills separately, Stewart-Cousins indicated that at this point the preferred outcome would be to push forward with negotiating a three-way agreement with the Assembly and Hochul.
“Trying to get something that’s pretty close to New York for All,” she said.
State lawmakers returned to the Capitol Wednesday for the first time since reaction began to heat up around a memo circulated by the Hochul administration late last week pointing to potential rising utility costs if the state’s climate law, with its lofty emissions goals and related programming, is left unchanged. The memo is in the context of legal action challenging the “cap and invest” portion of the law.
“What I’m trying to do is sound the alarm,” Hochul said Monday. “What I’m foreseeing then is for us to meet the goals by the timetable set by the Legislature. There’s going to be enormous costs to families.”
Potential changes could range from altering the way the state counts emissions to adjustments to the deadlines by which certain benchmarks must be met.
Stewart-Cousins called on Hochul to put the cards on the table:
“I just want to know what the proposal is, so at this point I don’t know what there is to discuss,” she said with a laugh. “Obviously, there is a memo, and obviously we are committed to affordability and we have always said we want to do things right by the environment.”
Stewart-Cousins said once a proposal is outlined, a “robust discussion” can ensue.
Assemblymember Deborah Glick chairs the Environmental Conservation Committee and is not in favor of making changes to the law.
“They have floated some trial balloons, most of which have gone pop,” she said of the Hochul administration’s recent outreach.
Glick disputed the scope of the data in the memo, released by the New York State Energy Research and Development Authority, arguing, as others have, that there were revenue-generating and cost-cutting aspects of the climate law that don’t appear to have been taken into account.
Around the Capitol on Wednesday, she and others were calling on the governor to have any conversation about rollbacks out in the open, not in the budget. Glick expressed exasperation that the conversation has not even begun in earnest with any sort of concrete proposal as of March 4, with 15 session days remaining until the deadline.
“Every executive likes to use the pressure of the budget to hold the Legislature hostage. We should have a thorough discussion of where we are going,” she said. “If anything, it should not be part of the budget.”
Friday, Hochul’s Budget Director Blake Washington indicated that the governor would be glad to take a pathway outside of the budget, if not for resistance from the Legislature.
“In a perfect world, we would gladly do it before the budget,” he said. “It’s best to address these issues in a collegial way, in a way that embraces all of the parties’ needs in this, but also in a way that reflects the needs of New Yorkers.”
Assemblymember Steven Otis indicated at a rally to preserve the law on Wednesday afternoon that the affordability conversation can be had without talk of rolling the law back in the darkness of budget negotiations.
“Let’s have hearings, let’s have dialogue, and let’s have a conversation that addresses all needs,” he said. “But let’s not change our climate plan.”
It comes as Republicans spent the day continuing to call for a course correction after years of railing against the climate law, calling on Hochul to go big in the budget while pushing for changes to broader state climate policy.
“The time frames that we have put into place, they’re ridiculous. Legislatively, they are ridiculous. They cannot be met,” Senate Minority Leader Rob Ortt said.