New York\u2019s state budget is late. It\u2019s the fifth year in a row, and Gov. Kathy Hochul and state legislative leaders in the Democrat-led Senate and Assembly are confident it will be wrapped up relatively soon.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s a pattern that one good-government watchdog group doesn\u2019t want you to get too comfortable with, even if most people aren’t intimately familiar with the process or its implications.\u00a0<\/p>\n
State Senate Majority Leader Andrea Stewart-Cousins has a system for updating the press and others who are tuned into Planet Albany on where the sometimes agonizingly slow process of negotiating New York\u2019s massive and chronically late budget with Hochul and Assembly Speaker Carl Heastie stands.<\/p>\n
\u201cAs you probably have imagined, we\u2019re still at \u2018the beginning of the middle,\u2019 as it turns out,\u201d she said Tuesday before pausing as reporters murmured.<\/p>\n
\u201cWas there a\u2026?\u201d she said with a laugh, correctly guessing that casual bets had been taken over how close the process was to the \u201cend of the end,\u201d prior to her arrival. \u201cWho won?\u201d she asked, before someone answered, \u201cI don\u2019t think anybody won,\u201d in a moment of levity amid an otherwise in-the-weeds run-through of where various policy discussions stand.<\/p>\n
In describing negotiations, Heastie sometimes takes reporters on a journey from outer space when deadlocked, to eventually \u201cthe same street\u201d when a sticky budget issue is nearly settled.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think we might be in the same galaxy, but I don\u2019t know if we\u2019re on the same planet yet,\u201d he said of conversations around Hochul\u2019s car insurance proposal<\/a> Wednesday.<\/p>\n The governor\u2019s system is to simply imply that reporters should not even bother asking for closed-door specifics. As budget negotiations get underway, most questions on where things stand receive the same answer: \u201cI don’t negotiate in public.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cNice try,\u201d she will sometimes add with a smile if someone makes a particularly valiant attempt to circumvent the typical response.<\/p>\n After five straight late budgets under Hochul, it can at times seem normal and routine, but some good-government watchdogs are sounding the alarm that it shouldn\u2019t.<\/p>\n \u201cReally bad things happen in Albany, often when we don\u2019t know about them,\u201d said John Kaehny, executive director of Reinvent Albany.<\/p>\n He stressed that as more of New York\u2019s legislative session gets eaten up by policy-driven budget debates, it\u2019s the public that ultimately suffers when state law is crafted or changed in a closed-door budget detour, rather than through the usual progression of passing both houses and ultimately being sent to the governor\u2019s desk for her signature or veto.<\/p>\n The state budget also must be approved by the Legislature and signed by the governor \u2014 but the process meanders in a different way after Hochul makes her executive budget proposal in January, with new items sometimes becoming public either at the end of the process or through the press.<\/p>\n \u201cWe don\u2019t have information about what\u2019s going on because the budget process is more secretive and less leaky,\u201d he said, adding that when individual bills are negotiated after passage, there are more open conversations between the bill\u2019s sponsors, leadership and the governor\u2019s office following the bill\u2019s initial passage through both houses. \u201cThere are no sponsors with axes to grind or points to make, so that means that journalists and the public don\u2019t know what\u2019s going on as much during the budget process, and that\u2019s not good for democracy.\u201d<\/p>\n New York\u2019s complicated budget process has grown unwieldy and increasingly skewed toward the governor, even if the state Constitution prescribes a co-equal legislative branch and executive.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s on the governor\u2019s home field, and she has a huge advantage,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n Heastie said the finer points of a governor\u2019s proposal\u00a0can leave legislative leaders with few choices other than to dig in if members have significant concerns, as was the case with Hochul\u2019s push to change discovery laws last year, and to a lesser extent, her push around car insurance this year.<\/p>\n \u201cThe hell is in the details,\u201d he said. \u201cOnce you start diving into the details, you say, \u2018Is this something we could really be OK with doing?\u2019 \u201d<\/p>\n While late is not ideal, Kaehny encouraged the Legislature to stand up if they don\u2019t feel one of Hochul\u2019s proposals should move forward.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s really up to the Legislature to say no,\u201d he said. \u201cYou can\u2019t abuse the budget process and make it what is essentially the big game versus the regular legislative session.<\/p>\n