Poll: City & State readers see a late April or early May state budget

Gov. Kathy Hochul has said that she’s willing to hold up the state budget for as long as it takes to get legislative leaders to agree to her policy proposals – but most City & State readers expect the budget to be wrapped up in the next couple weeks.

More than 380 people entered City & State’s 2025 state budget poll, with guesses ranging from April 10 at the earliest to Aug. 8 at the latest.

The poll was first made available on April 9, and two sunny-eyed optimists predicted that the budget would be finished the very next day – only to soon be disappointed. The most popular guess was April 30 (with 31 guesses), closely followed by April 25 and April 29 (with 28 guesses each) and April 24 and May 2 (with 22 guesses each).

Most readers expect that the budget will be finalized in the last week of April. In fact, more than a third of all guesses were for somewhere between April 24 and April 30. Bizarrely, though, only two people guessed that the budget would be finished specifically on April 27.

If budget negotiations drag into May, as City & State has reported they might, readers expect them to be wrapped up relatively quickly in the month. Of the 133 people who guessed that the budget would be finished some time in May, 51 guessed it would be finished between May 1 and May 3.

Fortunately, few people seem to think we’re headed back to the bad old days of the Pataki administration, when budgets weren’t finished until the late summer. Only 11 people guessed that the budget would be finalized in June, July or August.