N.Y. lawmakers push back on Hochul budget plans, reject bail changes and raising charter cap

ALBANY — Democrats in the state Legislature put forth their fiscal wish lists on Tuesday, outlining priorities and pushing back on some of Gov. Hochul’s top policy items — including her ambitious housing plan and proposed changes to the state’s bail law.

The one-house resolutions, which include progressive priorities, tenant protections and new taxes on the wealthy to assist the cash-strapped MTA, set the table for an intense period of negotiations leading up New York’s April 1 budget deadline.

Hochul, a Democrat elected to a full term last November, unveiled her own $227 billion budget blueprint last month.

The counter proposals from the Dem-led Senate and Assembly strip many of the non-fiscal policy items Hochul had hoped to see included, such as lifting the cap on charter schools and amending the state bail law to give judges wider leeway when deciding whether to jail someone pretrial.

Hochul’s plan is to eliminate a portion of the law directing judges to use the “least restrictive” option available to ensure a defendant shows up to court.

Senate Majority Leader Andrea Stewart-Cousins (D-Yonkers) and Assembly Speaker Carl Heastie (D-Bronx) have both expressed reservations about once again addressing the issue.

The state’s bail laws have been a lightning rod of political controversy since the Dem-led Legislature approved an overhaul in 2019 that limited pretrial detention for most nonviolent crimes.

The law was amended in 2020 to make more offenses bail eligible, such as criminally negligent homicide and manslaughter, and tweaked again last year to allow judges to consider previous offenses and whether a gun was involved or an order of protection was violated when setting bail.

Republicans and moderate Democrats, including Mayor Adams, have blamed cashless bail for spikes in violent crime and called for granting judges more discretion despite little evidence linking the two.

Lawmakers are also pushing back on Hochul’s proposed tuition hikes for SUNY and CUNY schools and dropped several other agenda items the governor touted in her State of the State address earlier this year from their one-house budgets.

Notably missing from the Legislature’s proposals is the governor’s plan to allow more charter schools to operate in the five boroughs, a plan panned by progressives and the politically-powerful teachers union.

Also absent from the Senate resolution is Hochul’s call to ban all flavored tobacco products, including menthol cigarettes. Senate Dems, however, are on board with the governor’s plan to raise taxes by a dollar per pack.

The Senate also put forth several changes to Hochul’s plans to address New York’s housing crisis, including tweaking her proposal that would require all municipalities hit certain targets in coming years.

Lawmakers want to remove Hochul’s mandatory requirements and proposed overrides of local zoning and instead offer towns and cities incentives for smart growth, including $500 million in state assistance.

Several progressive policy items are included in the Senate measure, such as eviction protections for tenants and a million dollars to implement the Clean Slate Act, a measure that would seal criminal records.

Hochul, Stewart-Cousins and Heastie must now hammer out their differences as the start of the new fiscal year fast approaches and tensions were already high following the Senate’s rejection of the governor’s first choice to lead the state court system last month.

Last year’s budget was more than a week late due to Hochul’s insistence that tweaks to the bail law be included in the spending plan.