Forget King Andrew. Queen Kathy has arrived.

The king is dead, long live the queen.

Gov. Kathy Hochul seemed to escalate the public rhetoric around budget talks on Thursday, taking barely-veiled jabs at her partners in the state Legislature and insisting that legislators needed a “strong individual” like her to get tricky policy done. Her new comments came after legislative leaders have similarly begun hinting at their frustrations more publicly than usual and as the delayed budget rolls into its 11th day past the deadline.

At a testy press conference in her Albany office, Hochul reaffirmed her commitment to relaxing the state’s discovery laws and then highlighted policy achievements from her first three budgets to justify her fourth late budget in a row. It was proof, according to her, that a delayed spending plan was worth it if it meant forcing lawmakers to approve her agenda. “These are things that I have to put in my budget because they were not going to happen in the normal course of events, or at least the majority of them,” Hochul said.

A governor has incredible control over the budget process, and both Hochul and her predecessor, former Gov. Andrew Cuomo, took advantage of that fact to insert non-budgetary policy priorities in the spending document. It gives the executive leverage in ways usually not possible during the typical legislative process. On Thursday, Hochul characterized this as a necessity, asserting that she had to flex her power in order to compel the Legislature to get tricky or significant policy done. “They don't have an aggressive individual driving results, and that's me,” she said in reference to the Legislature. “I changed the culture.”

And while New York voters elected their local officials to represent their interests, Hochul seemed to offer herself as the sole arbiter of the needs of New Yorkers. The governor said she has “respect” for individual lawmakers who represent their local districts, but she needs to “look at what 20 million New Yorkers want and what's important to them.”

Hochul is certainly no stranger to contentious budget negotiations or fights with the Legislature. The state budget in 2023 got approved a little over a month past the April 1 deadline as the governor stood firm on making changes to bail reform, much like how she’s digging in on discovery now. That followed the state Senate’s historic rejection of her pick for the state’s top judge – a fight that grew so contentious that the governor at one point threatened to sue the Senate. But Albany observers agreed that her Thursday comments represented a notable shift in rhetoric, which has traditionally remained civil in public. 

One Albany insider called the governor’s tone “horrible” and predicted that her apparent disrespect for a coequal branch of government would come back to “nip her in the butt.” 

Another source noted that the governor has on some occasions spoken in a similar manner to legislative leadership during closed-door meetings, but she has never before used that tone in her public remarks. A different Albany observer said her comments were “a really unnecessarily provocative thing to say in the middle of a delicate negotiation.” And a fourth quipped that based on the comments, they believed the budget negotiations would drag on until May – of next year.

A spokesperson for Assembly Speaker Carl Heastie did not take too kindly to the governor’s words. “In 2024, nearly 800 bills passed both houses outside of the budget process addressing wide ranging issues affecting New Yorkers,” Mike Whyland, the spokesperson, said in a statement to City & State. “Clearly our members know their districts and they also know how to pass bills and get things done.” He added that Heastie has made it clear that his chamber is open to reviewing the discovery laws and doesn’t need to be “cajoled” into considering changes by putting them in the budget. A spokesperson for state Senate Majority Leader Andrea Stewart-Cousins did not offer comment.

Heastie himself has been fairly direct and blunt with his budget commentary this year. He has never made a secret of his disdain for including policy in the spending plan, but earlier this week, he introduced legislation that would require legislators to be  paid during a budget delay if unrelated policy is included in the budget proposal. Right now, lawmakers don’t get paychecks until the budget passes, while the governor does. It was the first bill of its kind in recent memory and drew an icy response from Hochul’s office.

The speaker has also openly expressed a degree of frustration over the negotiations over discovery, telling reporters this week that the Legislature had offered several compromises to Hochul and district attorneys, but that “at some point, we need them to compromise as well.” But Heastie has still made a point to broadcast that the legislative leaders and the governor were still working cooperatively towards a common goal and shared the same interests. “We are not trying to go to war with Gov. Hochul,” he told Spectrum News in an interview on Wednesday, also calling the governor “a good friend.”

Hochul’s point about getting tricky policy done in the budget is not entirely without merit. For a long time, measures that may not have the votes to pass as standalone bills have gotten wrapped up into larger bills, whether the budget or an omnibus “big ugly” at the end of session. That provides some political cover to lawmakers who don’t want to be on the record voting in favor of a bill if their support is needed for passage, since another part of the bill usually contains something more favorable. 

But that is hardly the case all the time. For example, Cuomo tried multiple times to approve marijuana legalization in the state budget, which would give him the control to shape the program how he wanted. After it fell out of the budget more than once, the ex-governor all but dared lawmakers to pass the tricky legislation themselves. They did so as a standalone bill in 2021. Something similar happened when lawmakers approved sweeping rent laws at the end of the 2019 legislative session, another thorny issue that went unaddressed for much of that year.

Since Hochul has taken office, lawmakers have also managed to approve long-stalled bills that for years had failed to gain traction. Three years in a row, lawmakers approved the 30-year-old Grieving Families Act to update the state’s ancient wrongful death laws. Hochul vetoed it each time. She did, however, sign the Climate Change Superfund Act last year, which lawmakers passed after several years and which was lauded as a major environmental victory by advocates. Hochul also signed the Clean Slate Act, which had been a major point of contention in Albany for several years and ultimately passed as a standalone bill in the Legislature in 2023.