Gov. Kathy Hochul has reached a “conceptual agreement” with state lawmakers on a $237 budget for the next fiscal year that includes wide-ranging housing reforms, she announced Monday afternoon.
The tentative deal, reached two weeks past the initial deadline, is $4 billion higher than the governor’s initial spending plan for the 2025 fiscal year. It will include measures to crack down on illegal cannabis shops, $2.4 billion to help New York City pay for the migrant crisis, and many of Hochul’s proposals to combat retail theft.
“This budget is a blueprint for a safer, more affordable, more liveable New York,” Hochul said in a late-afternoon press conference at the state capitol. Adding some last-minute confusion, state senators had been told by Senate leaders just minutes earlier that no final deal had been struck, but Hochul appeared set on smoothing over any remaining disagreements.
The state Senate and Assembly will try to pass the budget by Friday. Hochul’s announcement Monday was light on specifics — as is tradition in Albany, details about the budget will emerge in the coming days once the budget documents are printed.
The housing deal, reached after years of failed attempts, appears to match the framework previewed last week: a new tax break for housing construction, a scaled-back version of “good cause” eviction protections, raising New York City’s cap on residential density, allowing bigger rent hikes for landlords who renovate stabilized apartments and incentivizing more office-to-residential conversions. Big developers and unions appear content with the deal, which comes with wage guarantees for workers, but tenant advocates have lamented the watered-down eviction measure, and landlords said it did little to help rent-stabilized building owners.
Finer points of those proposals, especially tenant protections, have yet to be finalized in talks between Hochul and Senate and Assembly leaders. The governor, acknowledging her prior opposition to the good cause proposal, said Monday that the deal would take a “balanced approach” intended to avoid discouraging new construction.
Tenant advocates blasted the scaled-back policy as a “sham”, while the Real Estate Board of New York, which had stayed quiet publicly, released a measured statement after Hochul’s speech. REBNY President James Whelan said the package would help drive construction, but added that the new tax break 485-x “will produce less rental housing than its predecessor, 421-a.”
“What’s more, the minor changes to the rules governing rent regulated units will fail to reverse the declining quality of that housing stock,” Whelan said. “And while there were several modifications to the original legislation, good cause eviction will still create significant new risks for owners, developers and funders.”
Whelan said the package “must be reassessed in the coming years” to steady the rental market.
The budget deal also includes policies to help localities shut down illegal cannabis stores that have boomed across the city, undercutting the state’s legal marketplace, Hochul said, without providing detail about whether it was the same policy that Mayor Eric Adams has been promoting. Lawmakers also agreed to sign onto Hochul’s request to increase criminal penalties for assaults on retail workers and spend $40 million on anti-shoplifting programs.
No taxes will be raised in this year’s budget, Hochul said proudly, having rebuffed requests from the state Senate and Assembly to raise rates for high-income earners.
The deal contains good news for Mayor Adams, whose administration had pushed hard for housing action. An extension of mayoral control of city schools had appeared dead in budget talks but has reportedly been revived at the last minute, although Hochul said the issue was still being decided; and the $2.4 billion in migrant aid matches what Hochul had sought throughout budget talks — although Adams had expressed a desire for even more help.
“We called on Albany to step up for the City of New York and you did just that,” Adams said in a video message his office released Monday.
The added spending compared to Hochul’s January executive budget was made possible by increasingly strong tax revenues, she said Monday.
“It allows us to continue investing in programs that New Yorkers depend upon,” she said.
Nick Garber , 2024-04-15 23:53:31
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