New York Assembly Speaker Carl Heastie talks with reporters about issues with 2026 state budget at the state Capitol Monday, April 28, 2025, in Albany, N.Y. Hans Pennink for NY Post A state budget late by a few days, even a few weeks, may be no big deal — but the current standoff in Albany, the fifth straight of Gov. Kathy Hochul’s tenure, is a glaring sign of New York’s political dysfunction.
Assembly Speaker Carl Heastie and others complain that the big problem is Hochul’s insistence on making “policy” issues part of the negotiations, as she is this year with her drive to push back some Climate Act deadlines and for reforms to cut auto-insurance costs.
Yet that’s a result of the Legislature’s refusal to consider even no-brainer changes to state laws unless the gov holds a gun to lawmakers’ heads: Hochul in years past likely couldn’t have won even meager fixes to the no-bail law and other misbegotten “criminal-justice reforms” without this leverage.
Anyway, Heastie is one of the “three men in a room” (now two-thirds women!) who decide everything in Albany; if he wants purity, he should also start demanding a completely serious process — including a release of the final bills in time for every legislator (and experts across the spectrum) to read them before any voting begins.
On the other hand, it’s sad that Hochul (like Gov. Andrew Cuomo before her, despite his record of meeting the April 1 budget deadline and his supposed toughness) prefers backroom dealing to pursue her agenda, rather than a proper knock-down fight.
That leaves her signing on to absolutely terrible stuff — like the coming multibillion-dollar pension-sweetener giveaway — merely to win temporary measures like the Climate Act fiddles.
The only silver lining here is that the standoff will leave the Legislature bare weeks to wreak more havoc on the public before the session ends on June 4.
Albany’s been a nasty nest of special-interest favor trading for decades now; it’s why state government keeps growing and why New York is in such long-term decline.
None of the state’s so-called leaders are willing to challenge that disgraceful status quo; after all, they all prosper under it even if the rest of us suffer.
