State Senate leader: Budget negotiations on ‘pause’

According to state Senate Majority Leader Andrea Stewart-Cousins, state budget negotiations have hit a “pause” as policy debates gum up progress, even if they are at the “beginning of the end.” 

Gov. Kathy Hochul has indicated that her key priorities in the budget don’t have much room for daylight. Between discovery reform, involuntary commitment, a cellphone ban in schools and a mask ban, Hochul is willing to wait as long as it takes for a deal that meets her wishes, even as New York needs to answer pressing fiscal questions like funding for the Metropolitan Transportation Authority’s capital plan. She told reporters last week that “summers are nice here too,” referring to a prolonged negotiation in the statehouse. 

But Stewart-Cousins and Assembly Speaker Carl Heastie are essentially in a holding pattern until Hochul presents language they can bring to their members – leaving the state budget, now eight days late, at a standstill. 

“We want to get it done, but we want to do it the right way,” Stewart-Cousins told reporters Tuesday. “There's a lot of policy, as you know, being discussed, and actually, it seems that every day we have new policies being brought up. Like I say, nature abhors a vacuum. Apparently, budgets abhor vacuums as well.” 

Even now, new policy ideas are filtering in from the executive chamber. After Hochul and Lt. Gov. Antonio Delgado’s very public split saw him leave the 2026 gubernatorial ticket, she put forth a proposal Monday to end the practice of gubernatorial and lieutenant governor candidates running in separate primaries. This is after she reintroduced a mask ban proposal, inspired by pro-Palestinian protests last year, in late March after it wasn’t in her formal budget proposal. 

“It does add to things that we have to talk about within this context of trying to close the budget,” Stewart-Cousins said. “And so as I said, it seems that the more it stays open, the more policies that emerge. And frankly, we are trying to close down the budget, and less policy would help.”

Heastie has been adamant for years that he doesn’t want to see policy in the state budget. According to him, the cellphone ban in schools is a done deal, but discovery reform remains a stumbling block. This week, Hochul has enlisted district attorneys to help stump for her proposed changes to the law.  

Members of the Black, Hispanic, Puerto Rican and Asian Caucus have opposed the governor’s proposed changes to the law and suggested instead codifying a 2023 court decision, which they say would address prosecutors’ concerns about case dismissals without undoing the 2019 reforms to the law. Like Hochul, they are prepared to stay in Albany for as long as it takes to find a palatable solution – even if that means cancelling the Legislature’s planned two-week break to observe Passover. 

The job of negotiating the budget has been made even more difficult by the looming threat of federal cuts to the state budget. The state currently receives $91 billion from the federal government, and Stewart–Cousins reiterated on Tuesday that the state isn’t in a position to make up the difference if New York’s Republican delegation can’t persuade federal leadership to hold off on some of the more drastic cost-saving measures. 

“We as a state, cannot backfill these federal gaps,” she said. “We cannot. So there is no large amount of money that is going to backfill all of these cuts and all of the potential of the cuts. So we really need for our Congress members to do their job.”