Gov. Kathy Hochul makes a budget announcement. Mike Groll/Office of Governor Ka Gov. Kathy Hochul’s passive-aggressive efforts to get her way in state budget negotiations just blew up in her face — a grim warning of how (in)effective she might be if she wins another term this November.
For the third straight year, Hochul announced an “agreement in principle” on core issues before her negotiating partners thought the deal was done, and this time one of them called her on it.
We rarely agree with Assembly Speaker Carl Heastie, but he had every right to speak out and announce the lack of even a handshake agreement, forcing Hochul’s team to cancel its planned Red Room show with the Assembly and state Senate leaders.
“There’s no budget deal. There’s no deal,” the Bronx Democrat told Albany reporters.
In the past, Heastie and Senate leader Andrea Stewart-Cousins let the gov get away with her headline-grabbing announcements, which led the media to report she’d gotten her way when she hadn’t — an impression that lingered even when the final deal didn’t go her way.
So kudos to Heaste for at last protesting, “Some of these things are still incomplete.”
In particular, he sees “many unresolved things on the financial side of the budget” — and the budget is supposed to be all about the financial side, not the policy issues where Hochul’s eager to declare victory.
The unresolved issues include the state’s $124 billion Medicaid spending plan, which in nearly half the $260-plus billion budget, and a growing part of it because so many special interests feed off it.
Which is why it faces a federal probe seeking out fraud, waste and abuse.
Sadly, when the deal is final, it’s sure to include dubious surprises, like $1 billion for “energy rebates” that are plainly just another Albany effort at election-year bribery at taxpayer expense.
Hochul regularly poses as the most moderate, sensible player in Albany, but she’s plainly just as cynical as the rest of them.
