On balance Gov. Hochul did quite well in the annual Albany tug of war with the Legislature, winning several important policy reforms, from a school smartphone ban to improving the discovery process in criminal prosecutions to giving greater clarity for when psychiatric professionals can involuntarily commit someone suffering from serious mental illness. The negatives are the calendar, with the April 1 statutory date deadline being blown by a full month, and the inexorable growth in spending.
There’s a lot of money being budgeted; the last budget done under Andrew Cuomo, in 2021, totaled $209 billion. Four years later the tally is $254 billion. That’s an additional $45 billion, a 21% increase. And it could have and should have been done on time, which is an argument we make every year and far too often is not followed.
Now that the haggling is done and as the voting begins on the printed bills, Hochul must order her Division of the Budget to immediately publish the basic budget tables, as the very sharp watchdogs at the nonprofit Citizens Budget Commission have been begging for years. Lawmakers should know what they are voting on, as should the public, which is paying for everything.
As for the policy changes, which are seemingly only done with the budget pressure on, Hochul’s bell-to-bell statewide smartphone ban in school removes any discretion from school administrators, from the NYC chancellor to elected school boards to principals in each school (who are all probably glad of that) as the law is the law. School is for learning and listening to teachers, not being lost in a virtual stew of games and videos and messages. The ban starts in the fall, so kids, get ready.
While the smartphone ban was popular, Hochul had to fight to improve the discovery reforms adopted in 2019, when the first round of bail changes were enacted. The new rules had some bad side effects and now hopefully, those holes have been patched.
On commitment, the law needed to be clearer when doctors have the power to keep someone against their will. The goal isn’t the horrors of Willowbrook or “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest,” but allowing sick individuals to get the care and medicine they need, even when their sickness makes them want to reject the treatment.
Hochul’s gimmick of mailing out $300 rebate checks to individuals and $500 for couples, a wasteful $3 billion vanity project favored by many running for reelection, was trimmed to $2 billion, with checks of $200 and $400. Also, the very problematic mask ban that Hochul sought was dropped in exchange for adding a Class C misdemeanor to convicted felons who wore a mask in the commission of the felony. We opposed the ban, but we guess Hochul can claim this as a face-saving measure, pun intended.
To get the Assembly and state Senate to agree to Hochul’s legislation, they needed something of value to themselves. They already won the biggest pay raise in history, making them the highest compensated state lawmakers among 50 states and they still have lots of outside earnings. So Hochul had to consent to water down the new public campaign finance rules. She had earlier vetoed more egregious encroachments on the program, but had to surrender on this one. The price of progress in Albany.
