Hochul claimed her office and lawmakers in Albany had agreed on the major policy issues including her auto insurance reforms that had stood in the way of a final budget deal.<\/p>\n
But fellow budget negotiator Heastie threw cold water on her claims of a budget agreement by pointing out that the money issues have yet to be decided. After all, he suggested, there is no budget agreement if there is no agreement on the dollars.<\/p>\n
\u201cBudgets are supposed to be about money, not policies. There\u2019s no budget deal,\u201d Heastie told the media<\/a> shortly after Hochul made her announcement. He said \u201cmany open issues on money\u201d remain.<\/p>\n New York Has Budget Deal That Includes Auto Insurance Reforms: Gov. Hochul<\/a><\/p>\n Heastie said a deal is \u201cclose\u201d but criticized the process that has focused on policies but not money for the most part.<\/p>\n Other lawmakers have echoed Heastie\u2019s assessment.<\/p>\n \u201cI find it alarming that the governor was out two hours ago stating that there\u2019s a budget deal\u2026 Yet there apparently is no agreement,\u201d Senate Minority Leader O\u2019Mara remarked.<\/a><\/p>\n Deputy Senate Majority Leader Mike Gianaris told Spectrum News<\/a> there is frustration over \u201cthe continued insistence on non-budgetary policy items into this budget conversation,\u201d he stated.<\/p>\n News reports indicated that in addition to the uncertainty over financial details, disagreements remain over taxes including a proposed second-home surcharge in New York City and on housing policy.<\/p>\n Hochul announced yesterday that the budget totals about $268 billion. She applauded that the deal includes agreement on auto insurance reforms, state environmental reviews, energy and childcare costs, federal immigration enforcement and other policies.<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019m not going to mince the words \u2014 the negotiations were not easy. There were very substantive disagreements, tough choices and powerful special interests trying to influence the outcome,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n NY Lawmakers Urged to Have Faith in Auto Insurance Numbers. But Do They?<\/a><\/p>\n She thanked Senate Majority Leader Andrea Stewart-Cousins and Heastie \u201cfor all of us spending a lot of time together, a lot of meals, a lot of conversations, getting to know each other at a personal level\u201d and reaching agreement on issues.<\/p>\n Stewart-Cousins has acknowledged \u201cconceptual agreements\u201d on major policies but has not said there is a final deal.<\/p>\n Details to Come<\/p>\n Hochul did acknowledge that details must still be worked out.<\/p>\n \u201cOver the next few days, the Legislature will be conferencing and voting on the budget bills, and as always, the final details will be worked out through that process,\u201d the governor said yesterday.<\/p>\n The nonprofit watchdog Citizens Budget Commission (CBC) is among the groups waiting for those details.<\/p>\n \u201cThe governor provided a smattering of details on state finances\u2014but to be clear, we have yet to see a budget,\u201d CBC President Andrew S. Rein said in a statement. \u201cWhat we do know is that the budget is bigger, but not likely better for fiscal stability compared to the governor\u2019s proposal,\u201d Rein stated.<\/p>\n CBC said it will analyze the full budget when the state releases the \u201cfull picture on how it plans to spend $268 billion of the people\u2019s money and what it means for the future.\u201d<\/p>\n The budget was supposed to be ready by April 1. But state lawmakers passed nine deadline extensions to keep the government functioning until they and the governor could come to an agreement. The current deadline expires May 11.<\/p>\n Hochul\u2019s Summary<\/p>\n According to Hochul\u2019s summary, the budget does not raise income or statewide business taxes and it maintains the governor\u2019s powers to make future adjustments if actions by the federal government require.<\/p>\n In her remarks yesterday, Hochul singled out the fight over auto insurance, \u201ca battle no one in the past had the fortitude to take on.\u201d<\/p>\n Do New Yorkers Pay Too Much for Auto Insurance?<\/a><\/p>\n Budget negotiators have apparently gone along with most of Hochul\u2019s auto insurance measures<\/a> while adding some of their own.<\/p>\n She said that auto insurance costs for New Yorkers were being driven up by \u201cstaged crashes, organized fraud rings, corrupt doctors and legal loopholes that bad actors have exploited for years.\u201d<\/p>\n She said \u201cthat nightmare\u201d ends with this budget, and the state is \u201cgoing to go after the ringleaders, cracking down on fraudulent claims and closing loopholes that let people who are at fault, or breaking the law, walk away with large payouts in the courtrooms.\u201d<\/p>\n She touted measures in the budget she said would make sure that insurance companies are playing fair. \u201cYou\u2019ll no longer have your rates set based on your education, your zip code or what you do for work,\u201d she told the public. \u201cWe\u2019re also putting a cap on the excess profits insurance companies bring in, and making sure that New Yorkers benefit from the savings our reforms create and not the insurance companies. It\u2019s only fair.\u201d<\/p>\n Top Photo: New York State Assembly Speaker Carl Heastie<\/p>\n \n Topics Interested in Legislation?<\/p>\n Get automatic alerts for this topic.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Don\u2019t pop the champagne yet. That is effectively what New York State Assembly Speaker Carl Heastie advised Gov.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":224524,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[9,45829,2080,11,10,49,43742,51,50],"class_list":["post-224523","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-york","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-auto-insurance","tag-new-york-governor-kathy-hochul","tag-new-york-headlines","tag-new-york-news","tag-new-york-state","tag-new-york-state-budget","tag-new-york-state-headlines","tag-new-york-state-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/224523","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=224523"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/224523\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/224524"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=224523"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=224523"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=224523"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/NY-Gov.-Kathy-Hochul-580x387.jpg\")
New York Gov. Kathy Hochul<\/p>\n
\n Legislation<\/a>
\n New York<\/a>\n <\/p>\n