ALBANY, New York (WWNY) – Eight weeks past the deadline, state lawmakers gave their final approval to a $268 billion budget late last night.
It’s the latest budget in more than 15 years and covers state spending through March of 2027.
The deal pushes back a mandate on electric buses, expands universal pre-k, loosens restrictions in some pension plans, gives a rebate for high energy costs and bails out half a dozen cities.
The budget is $14 billion larger than he current budget and about $5.5 billion larger than what Governor Hochul first proposed in January.
Bus mandate delayed
Starting next year, all new school bus purchases were going to have to be zero-emission electric buses.
That deadline has been extended by 5 years, to 2032. The mandate for an entire fleet to be electric has also been extended to 2040.
Multiple north country districts had lamented the previous deadline as unreasonable.
Pre-k changes
By Fall 2028, universal pre-k will be expanded to full-day instruction for 4-year-olds.
The budget also moves to consolidate UPK and statewide universal full-day pre-k into one program.
Pensions sweetened
Around 780,000 public employees covered under the Tier 6 pension system will keep more of their money and likely see more in retirement.
It also lets people with 30 years of service retire up to five years earlier, at 58-years-old, instead of 63.
Tier 6 includes public employees who were hired in April 2012 or later.
The changes allow them to earn retirement benefits after 5 years instead of 10. In addition, their pension will be calculated based on the average of their three highest earning years rather than the five highest.
The pension changes also lower and restructure thei required contributions to retirement without affecting what they receive and boosts how much overtime they can factor into their final average salary figures 30-40 percent.
The reforms loosen restrictions that were meant to keep public employees from practices like ‘pension spiking’ – padding their final retirement number by working extra overtime, which critics say puts a larger burden on taxpayers.
Supporters of the reforms say it is unfair because employees hired before 2012 and before 2009 have better benefits.
Energy costs addressed
As for addressing high energy costs, this fall, the state will make payments of $100 to single tax filers who earn less than $150,000 a year, $150 to joint filers in that income range and $200 dollars to joint filers bringing in more than $150,000.
That’s a total payout of around $1 billion.
Cities helped
The budget also provides a total of $135 million to the cities of Yonkers, Buffalo, Albany, Rochester, Syracuse, and Mount Vernon, to close budget gaps for the next two fiscal years.
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