Gov. Kathy Hochul (D-NY) unveiled her $254 billion state budget, including a number of controversial proposals mostly unrelated to finance.
Hochul sparred with her left flank for a month over several criminal justice, child welfare, and public safety measures. Among them: the ability of police to remove people in psychiatric crisis from public spaces, a ban on cellphones in schools, restrictions on wearing masks, and discovery requirements regulating how prosecutors hand over evidence to defendants in the pretrial phase.
Portraying herself as a centrist, Hochul tapped into her desired image as a resistor of President Donald Trump.
“Despite the chaos and uncertainty that’s just constantly evident in Washington, we still delivered for the people of New York. We still got it done,” Hochul said at a press conference from the Capitol Monday night. “We refused to be drawn into the toxic, divisive politics of the moment.”
Hochul conceded that the budget may have to be updated later in the year, however, in response to federal budget cuts.
“There’s a possibility that we’ll have to come back later this year and update our budget in response to federal actions,” she said.
One of the most controversial proposals from Hochul was a ban on wearing masks in public, a move that coincided with the climax of pro-Palestinian protests last year. Left-wing lawmakers were harshly critical of the move, connecting it with the Trump administration’s crackdown on the protests.
“ In the context of the Trump administration, [concerns over] things like proposals to … put limits on people’s ability for masks in public definitely grow,” Democratic state Sen. Liz Krueger said earlier this month. “I hear from a huge chunk of people in my district — they just want to wear masks for health and safety reasons, and they don’t understand how someone will know what the difference is between them and someone who’s hypothetically wearing a mask to rob a bank.”
KATHY HOCHUL ENDANGERS BUDGET NEGOTIATIONS WITH ANTI-MASK PUSH
After a month of negotiations, Hochul largely abandoned her original plan, compromising on an extra charge for criminals who commit a crime while wearing a mask.
The budget is also notable for being the most expensive in New York’s history, with rising prison, healthcare, child care, and education spending propelling it to $100 billion more than it was just a decade ago. The final budget framework is $2 billion more than Hochul outlined in January.