Saturday, June 14, 2025
As the State Legislature puts the finishing touches on the 2025–26 budget, the outcome must be looked at through the prism of both the politics and the policy.
From the political perspective, Gov. Kathy Hochul put forth her best budget yet, because she was the driver of all the major issues of contention. In her past budget processes, she was seen as a passenger in the car driven by state legislative leaders.
Hochul championed easy-to-sell, mom-and-apple-pie proposals, such as the cellphone ban in schools. Other proposals, such as district attorney discovery reform, mask bans for protesters, and providing greater ability to confine the mentally ill, were all measures generally supported by the public. Though the budget came in late, most residents will probably give Hochul a pass because they saw her fighting for causes they mostly agreed with.
On the other hand, from the policy perspective, it was yet another clunker. The primary negative of the spending plan was its sheer size. New York’s budget is now a whopping $254 billion. This is an enormous 47 percent increase from just before the pandemic, when it was a mere $173 billion. To put this in proper perspective, the state of Florida, which has 3 million more people and no state income tax, has an overall budget of $115 billion.
This budget-spending free-for-all proves again why New York state needs a spending cap. Over the last five years, 30,000 New Yorkers have fled to south Florida, bringing with them $9 billion that would otherwise be sitting in New York.
Another policy clunker was an additional tax on businesses in the metropolitan area to pay for the Metropolitan Transportation Authority‘s insatiable spending appetite. Last year, Long Islanders were spared from this tax increase, as it applied to New York City, but this year, higher-earning companies will see a near doubling of their MTA payroll tax. Small companies will owe less taxes to the MTA, but overall, Long Island businesses will be hit with a significant increase. This is proof positive that it’s long overdue that the MTA should be placed under a financial control board, as the Center for Cost Effective Government has suggested.
As for the other policy initiatives, the jury is still out as to whether they will be effective. The mask ban is not what the governor wanted. It’s a compromise that only allows police to arrest protesters for wearing masks if they are first accused of a significant misdemeanor. That’s far more restrictive than the mask bans that were in place before the pandemic.
Just this month, mask-wearing radicals again besieged Columbia University, occupying the student library in the middle of finals. They didn’t seem deterred by the new mask ban. We need to know who these hooligans are so they can be expelled, prosecuted or deported as facts deem appropriate.
The district attorney reforms are better than nothing, but they didn’t go as far as the District Attorneys Association wanted.
The horrible reforms in 2019 forced D.A.s to provide nearly all information related to cases within an unreasonably short period of time. It was so burdensome and unrealistic that it led to a huge spike in cases against violent offenders never being brought to trial in the first place.
The courts will now have a bit more discretion to determine if D.A.s are acting in good faith, and will also require the disclosure of only “relevant” information, as opposed to a whole file. It’s still a question as to whether this will be enough to get us back to where we were before the 2019 reforms that led to massive recidivism and a huge drop in potential cases against violent criminals.
The fanfare around the confinement of the mentally ill may be overblown. The final compromise supplies more money for more beds, but it’s unknown at this point whether there is enough power vested in mental health officials to confine the truly problematic mentally ill on the verge of violence.
The budget was over 30 days late, and the question is whether it was worth it. Time will tell.
Steve Levy is president of Common Sense Strategies, a political consulting firm. He has served as Suffolk County executive and as a state assemblyman, and is host of “The Steve Levy Radio Show.” Comments? Steve@commonsensestrategies.com.
