BUDGET TALKS STUCK: GOV. KATHY HOCHUL DEMANDS LEGISLATURE WEAKEN KALIEF'S LAW
'SUMMERS ARE NICE HERE TOO,' GOVERNOR SAYS. 'I DON'T MAKE VACATIONS'
Apr. 3, 2025
It's that time of the year again, when lawmakers in Albany play "let's make a deal."
This year, Gov. Kathy Hochul, fresh off firing 2,000 striking state Correction Officers, cursing out the head of the guards' union in the process, is once again flexing her muscles.
"Summers are nice here too," was the governor's answer when asked how long it was going to take for her to get a budget deal with the legislature done during a news conference on Thursday. "I don't know how long this is gonna take."
The State Constitution requires the budget be done by Apr. 1.
Gov. Hochul considers this provision of the state constitution a mere suggestion, explaining she wasn't "hung up on the deadline."
Hochul's splashiest demand was for the legislature to approve a "bell-to-bell" ban on mobile phone use by students that would last the entire school day.
She also demanded the legislature relieve prosecutors of some of the discovery demands and strict time limits that 2020 Kalief's Law imposed on them. Prosecutors claim they're losing cases because of technicalities—blown deadlines—which are sometimes the fault of police who fail to hand it over in time.
Gov. Hochul also wants the legislature to make it easier for police to force homeless New Yorkers into treatment—and off the subway. And she wants a ban on face masks to further criminalize pro-Palestinian protests.
With the exception of the "bell-to-bell" ban on mobile phones in schools, the legislature—controlled by a supermajority of Progressive lawmakers—has not yet caved to the governor's demands.
The governor said she was prepared to wait the legislature out.
"I'm not going anywhere," she said. "I don't make vacations. So I'll be here to see this through."
Negotiations are held between the governor, President Pro Tempore and Majority Leader of the state Senate Andrea Stewart-Cousins and Speaker of the Assembly Carl E. Heastie along with their respective staffs in a room at the State Capital. Once the three agree, Stewart-Cousins and Heastie have to get their respective conferences to agree as well.
In an impromptu news conference in the halls of the State Capital Thursday afternoon, Heastie said a deal to ban mobile phones in schools was "about done."
Negotiations, the Speaker added, were now focused on Gov. Hochul's three remaining demands.
"99.9% of the oxygen is on these three issues," he said.
During her Thursday news conference, Gov. Hochul said there was "a path to get it done in a couple of days," but Speaker Heastie didn't see it.
"Spinning our wheels a little bit on discovery," he revealed. "Discovery is probably the biggest log jam."
"The governor, the Assembly, the Senate and the five DAs from the City are trying to push the car forward," he explained, "but we seem to be spinning our wheels."
When it came to the governor's demand to make it easier to forcibly treat the mentally ill, Speaker Heastie said it was something they "conceptually all agree to.” Reducing it to legal language everyone could agree on was the sticking point.
"How do you put that in a language in a practical setting? I think that's kind of where we are now," he said.
When it came to Gov. Hochul's demand for a ban on face masks, one state senator told The New York Post, “It’s dead unless she forces it."
Notably absent from Gov. Hochul's agenda is a demand to amend New York's HALT law. The law limited the amount of time prisoners could be punished with solitary confinement to 15 days, although they could be segregated in restricted confinement for months.
Striking COs blamed the HALT law for their strike, saying it made an already-risky job intolerably risky because it led to an increase in assaults on both staff and other prisoners.
Relatedly, also absent from the governor's agenda was a response to the fallout from her firing of the 2,000 guards—which made a pre-existing shortage of guards even worse. Combined, both Speaker Heastie and Gov. Hochul said New York was short about 4,000 guards.
A coalition of prisoners' rights advocates have proposed an "Action Plan" to deal with the shortage by reducing the number of people incarcerated in New York's prisons.
The plan proposes enacting two already-pending bills, Elder Parole (S.454/A.514) and Fair and Timely Parole (S.159/A.127), that together could release about 1/4 of the State's prison population and save $522,000,000 annually, according to a report by Columbia University.
The Standing Assembly Committee on Correction approved both bills on Wednesday.
Gov. Hochul bragged about what she said was her record of success in strong-arming the legislature to agree to her demands in previous budget negotiations.
"The results have been very favorable to my positions," she said. "I am very successful in overtime."
But the legislature's Progressive supermajority dealt her a stunning defeat when it rejected her nomination of a former prosecutor to be New York's highest judge in 2023.
Lawmakers are set to resume negotiations on Monday.