Gov. Kathy Hochul will lay out her agenda for this year’s legislative session Tuesday, but Albany’s influence machines are already setting the goalposts.
Planet Albany is buzzing ahead of the governor’s State of the State address Tuesday as lobbyists, activists and lawmakers have returned to haunt the capitol’s halls and and back rooms — with many already defining the parameters of what may get done before pols flee their duties to return to the 2024 campaign trail.
Legislative leaders are shying away from addressing specifics of major pieces of legislation focusing on topics such as housing, the migrant crisis, mayoral control of New York City Schools.
“She hasn’t said anything yet,” Assembly Speaker Carl Heastie said Monday. “So I’m not going to, like I always say, I’m not going to speculate on speculation.”
“Everything at this point is on the table,” state Senate President Andrea Stewart-Cousins told reporters.
Activists however haven’t been as tepid to begin setting the goalposts for their demands.
The Greater New York Hospital Association and powerful health care workers union, 1199 SEIU, rallied Monday for their renewed calls to pump money into Medicaid and secure additional funding for hospitals.
Last year, the hospital and labor alliance was able to leverage its power to get Albany to fork over $1.4 billion in funding on top of increased Medicaid reimbursement rates.
“We need the hospitals to get paid for the cost of care, it seems simple to me,” association President Ken Raske said at the rally.
The activists carried fake umbrellas, calling on the governor and legislature to tap into the state’s rainy day funds to cover the new spending. In last year’s budget, Hochul pushed for the reserve fund to be expanded to roughly $19 billion by the end of the 2023 fiscal year.
“We’re not looking at raising taxes at all,” Raske told the Post. “We are looking that there is available revenue from existing sources in order to accommodate our plan.”
Hochul has promised she won’t raise income taxes on New Yorkers this year — in contrast to some liberal Democrats who are renewing their perennial calls to tax high income earners.
“Governor Hochul wants to grow our population and our economy; she is unlikely to consider increased taxes as the way to accomplish that,” Kathyrn Wilde, CEO of NYC Partnership told the Post, expecting positive news for business out of the speech.
New York Mayor Eric Adams will be among the dignitaries making the trek to Albany for Hochul’s speech. On the top of his mind is likely to be any hint of the extension of his control over New York City schools, which is set to expire at the end of June.
“We want to continue mayoral control of schools, I mean, look at our success,” Adams boasted to reporters Monday.
The New York United Teachers, the state’s powerful teachers union, is amongst those trying to wrestle away Adams’ mayoral control — arguing he’s failed to lower class sizes as had been stipulated by a law passed by the state legislature last year.
Another highly-anticipated part of Hochul’s speech that Albany types will be watching closely is housing.
The governor said she will try to strike a housing deal again this year after she and the legislature failed to strike an agreement as the state budget was held up for weeks last year.
“I need more supply,” Hochul told reporters last month. “It’s not sustainable people will leave our state to go to other states with the same tax rate and the same weather because they can find housing.”
Last year, Hochul proposed requiring communities with subway stops or rail stations to allow construction of residential buildings nearby, on top of quotas for new housing construction for New York City suburbs.
Lefty housing activists are already declaring dead-on-arrival the same watered-down version of their tenant protection and rent regulation proposal framed as Good Cause Eviction — drawing into question how possible it is for the two sides to find an agreement.
Hochul has spent much of the last week doing a slow rollout of the proposals she intends to include in Tuesday’s speech.
They include an elimination of co-pays for insulin on some insurance plans, an overhaul on elementary reading instruction, funding for swimming pools and programs, initiatives to support maternal health and an advisory panel for artificial intelligence.