Governor, legislative leaders "on the same planet", but budget on track to be late again

Albany — Governor Hochul is proposing to extend the budget deadline, saying she'll be delivering an extender bill to the legislature in the coming days. The budget is due by April 2nd, with the Fiscal Year beginning April 1st.

Earlier in the day on Wednesday, NY Senate Majority Leader Andrea Stewart-Cousins told reporters her chamber would be voting on an extender on April 2nd. The Governor has proposed to extend the deadline until April 4th. Stewart-Cousins did add that they would be voting to pass a debt service bill this week.

Last year's budget was a month late, with the Governor saying she held up final passage to get bail changes through, of which she did, eliminating "least restrictive means" language in order to broaden judicial discretion.

Housing was another issue the Governor and legislative leaders could not compromise on, so much so no housing or tenant protections deal was struck, leading the Governor to take executive action on housing a few weeks later.

Housing is once again a sticking point, as the Governor has said in the past that housing and tenant protections should be two different conversations. Assembly Speaker Carl Heastie and Stewart-Cousins say the opposite.

"A housing deal, as we've always indicated, must be holistic and must include tenant protections and align with the principals of good cause [eviction]," Stewart-Cousins told reporters on Wednesday.

As concepts like 421-a are debated regarding New York City, there are also proposals to address housing stock Upstate.

Republican State Senator Jake Ashby set forth a housing proposal of his own on Wednesday, focusing on Upstate New York. His proposal would allow municipal officials to opt-in to a program to allow vacant properties to be "shovel-ready" for housing. If designated, they would then be able to receive double their state aid for infrastructure.

"If we look at the Governor's and the Majority's proposals in recent years, they haven't been doing this. They've been more restrictive and they haven't been successful in getting things across the finish line," Ashby says. "Many times we talk with developers and we talk with municipalities and we hear about red tape, the problems of being able to cut through the red tape. This would do exactly that, and provide aid for infrastructure."

Ashby has included the ability for residents to become eligible for a STAR tax rebate in the year their municipality is certified in this program.

Proposals like this have the support of groups like the Capital Region Realtors Association, who say the more incentives to grow housing stock, the better.

"In the history of the New York State Association of Realtors, it's the lowest inventory we've ever recorded," Susan Sommers of the Capital Region Realtors Association says. "We have to incentivize new construction as well, things that will actually help people. Properties that don't require a lot of stairs, building ranches, building townhomes, building multi-families."