Assembly and state Senate release ‘one-house’ state budget proposals

The state Senate and Assembly released their one-house rebuttals to Gov. Kathy Hochul’s executive budget proposal, enabling official negotiations on this year’s state budget to begin in earnest. State Senate Majority Leader Andrea Stewart-Cousins, using her usual parlance, said they were at “the beginning of the middle.” Neither document made major, wholesale changes to the governor’s budget, but they did include some notable differences – particularly on discovery reform, involuntary commitment and Hochul’s rebate check proposal. 

In what promises to be one of the major points of contention this year, both chambers removed Hochul’s proposed language that would change the state’s discovery law. In 2019, lawmakers approved significant changes to the discovery law – which governs how and when prosecutors need to turn over evidence to the defense – meant to ensure defendants have faster and fairer access to evidence that can be used to defend themselves. But prosecutors have complained that some provisions of the law are too onerous, and some penalties for mistakes too severe, and have pushed for rollbacks to the 2019 reforms. Hochul heeded their requests in her budget, including the tweaks that district attorneys asked for. 

While Hochul and prosecutors have insisted that the changes are fairly minor and don’t represent a complete return to the old system, which effectively allowed prosecutors to wait until the eve of trial to hand over evidence, criminal justice reform advocates have decried Hochul’s proposal as effectively turning back the clock on the reforms. They’ve launched a campaign dubbed “Protect Kalief’s Law” to fight against any changes to the law.

Attempts to make changes to the law have failed in the past, but Hochul’s push this year is stronger than in the past. Lawmakers have resisted rollbacks to criminal justice issues like bail reform in the past, but Hochul has historically won in the end. “I do think the reforms are working and been successful,” Assembly Speaker Carl Heastie told reporters on Tuesday. But I did say that I'm willing to look at the things that the district attorneys have raised.” The state Senate one-house resolution similarly said the chamber “remains  committed” to developing “a  balanced solution that ensures prosecutors fulfill their discovery obligations while also preventing the dismissal of serious cases for mere technicalities.”

Debates over criminal justice reforms have held up state budgets in the past, with Hochul once delaying the budget for weeks to ensure her proposed rollbacks to the bail law were included. Although the governor hasn’t said yet whether discovery changes will be a line in the sand for her, Heastie predicted that it would likely emerge as one of the key issues that could contribute to a late budget. “The only areas that I'd say we're really going to have loads of discussion is probably on the (involuntary commitment) and discovery,” Heastie said.

The Assembly entirely omitted the governor’s proposal to change the involuntary commitment law – with Heastie referring back to his longstanding position of “no policy in the budget” – from its one-house budget proposal, while the state Senate only removed the most controversial part of the governor’s proposal. Specifically, the upper chamber kept in provisions related to “care coordination” while removing Hochul’s proposed expansion of the standard used to commit someone. “We understand that people are rightly concerned, and we are too, which is obviously why we’ve invested more in mental health,” Stewart-Cousins told reporters. “We just want to make sure that we get it right and that we’re working on this issue.”

The state Senate also made a change to one of Hochul’s marquee affordability proposals – individual rebate checks of up to $500 for millions of individuals and families around the state. The upper chamber proposed only sending the checks to seniors and shifting the payments to occur over three years rather than one. Stewart-Cousins described the change as part of a “three-legged stool” affordability package that also includes the Working Families Tax Credit and the reduction of the unemployment tax burden for small businesses. “We expect that in the first year for the youngins, as you call them, working families, etcetera, there will be at least a half a million dollars coming back into the pockets of that cohort of people,” Stewart-Cousins said. The Assembly made no changes to Hochul’s proposed rebate checks, which Heastie said poll well.

The Legislature also made changes to another of the governor’s marquee proposals. The Assembly removed Hochul’s measure to ban cellphones in schools, although Heastie said his members support the idea broadly. In the state Senate, legislators tweaked language to permit phones during non-instruction time and to prohibit schools from suspending students for using their phones. Hochul said she was still digesting the one-house budgets, but told reporters that she will fight for a bell-to-bell phone ban. “This is what the experts say, this is what the parents want, this is what the teachers want,” Hochul said. 

Both chambers also included measures that they have included in past one-house budget proposals that have never made it into the final spending plan. The Legislature proposed increasing the income tax rate of the top two income brackets by 0.5% as part of the renewal of the millionaire’s tax. And the chambers pitched raising the corporate tax rate for businesses making over $5 million from 7.25% to 9%. The governor has consistently opposed most tax increases.

The state Senate and Assembly also once again included the Housing Access Voucher Program into their one house rebuttals. The measure, which would provide rental assistance for people who are homeless or facing imminent homelessness, has broad support from real estate and tenant advocates alike. But Hochul has consistently negotiated it out of the budget, citing the projected cost of the program.

On the environmental side, the state Senate once again inserted language to enact the NY HEAT Act, a top priority for many climate activists. The measure has passed the Senate before but has never made it over the finish line in the Assembly. Although the lower chamber included a portion of the legislative language related to the NY HEAT Act in their one-house resolution last year, it does not appear this time. 

One thing lawmakers didn’t include in their one-house budgets was any change to the timeline for the state’s Consumer Directed Personal Assistance Program, or CDPAP, transition. The state is meant to complete the move to a single fiscal intermediary from the hundreds currently operating by April 1. Hochul has said the transition is meant to save the state hundreds of millions of dollars by cutting down on fraud within the popular Medicaid program that provides homecare for hundreds of thousands of New Yorkers. But opponents, including other fiscal intermediaries and home care agencies, have said the state is moving far too slowly to hit the deadline, to the detriment of consumers and home care workers alike.