Good afternoon — It’s Tuesday and LCA Show Day.
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In today’s CapCon:
If you were hoping for lawmakers to start voting on the state budget this week, I have bad news from state Senate Majority Leader Andrea Stewart-Cousins.
Frustration over late additions to state budget talks has prompted a new bill that would prevent lawmakers from losing their paychecks past the deadline.
Here’s a look inside the finances of the three candidates challenging state Comptroller Thomas P. DiNapoli this year.
Bills that would ban AI chatbots in children’s toys and require the state to review the impact of health insurance coverage mandates are on the move.
Protections under New York’s Human Rights Law don’t extend to out-of-state employees. A bill gaining momentum would change that.
Full committee agenda at the state Capitol for Wednesday, May 20.
Names in today’s CapCon: Andrea Stewart-Cousins, Thomas P. DiNapoli, Kathy Hochul, Dana Levenberg, Zohran Mamdani, Raj Goyle, Drew Warshaw, Joseph Hernandez, David Weprin, Jamaal Bailey, Rebecca Kassay, Julia Salazar, Donald J. Trump, Mike Lawler
Today’s Capitol Confidential is sponsored by the Coalition for Ticket Fairness
The “Ticketmaster Protection Act” is the wrong answer.
While the courts are trying to break up Ticketmaster’s illegal monopoly, Albany would undo that work with a bill that saves their monopoly.
News on the state budget, including proposals, negotiations and results.
State Senate Majority Leader Andrea Stewart-Cousins (Alexander MacDougall/Times Union)
💰 State budget vote not expected to start until next Tuesday
Lawmakers don’t plan to begin voting on the remaining nine bills that make up the state budget until after Memorial Day, sources within the state Legislature said Tuesday.
It’s not impossible that we begin to see bills introduced later this week but, at this point, it doesn’t seem likely that we’ll see anything in print before lawmakers are set to leave the state Capitol on Thursday.
State Senate Majority Leader Andrea Stewart-Cousins was asked by reporters at the state Capitol if they plan to begin voting next Tuesday.
“That’s the hope,” she said. “I’m wanting to tell you that we are at the ‘end of the middle,’ which means next week should be ‘the beginning of the end.’”
The “beginning of the end,” translated from her language, is when lawmakers begin to vote on budget bills.
Democrats in the state Assembly were called into conference Tuesday to finalize some of the spending side of the state budget, including funding for immigrant legal services, sources said. But spending, overall, is not finalized.
(Lori Van Buren/Times Union)
💵 Hochul’s budget battles prompt new lawmaker pay proposal
Paychecks have been withheld from members of the state Legislature since the state budget was due on April 1.
That’s required by state law. It’s supposed to be an incentive for lawmakers to reach a deal on the state budget before that deadline. The same rule doesn’t apply to the governor, who is paid regardless of when the budget is passed.
While New York’s state Legislature is the highest-paid set of state lawmakers in the country, with salaries of $142,000, some members are starting to feel the effects of nearly two months without pay.
As any lawmaker will tell you, this year’s state budget — and those of the last four years — have been held up by deep disagreements over policy that have taken weeks to resolve.
Some of those policy discussions haven’t emerged until late in the process, near the April 1 deadline, resulting in stalled negotiations over spending until those issues are wrapped up. Late-minute fiscal proposals have also stalled talks.
Lawmakers have grown increasingly frustrated with that pattern from Gov. Kathy Hochul, especially this year.
Hochul has two chances to formally propose her executive budget. The first is in January, when she first unveils her spending plan. But she’s also allowed to amend her executive budget within 30 days of its introduction.
That doesn’t mean she can’t informally propose additions to state budget talks, like how she pitched changes to the state’s mandates to reduce carbon emissions under the Climate Act in late March, a month after her 30-day amendment deadline.
One lawmaker is now seeking to ensure that if late additions made by the governor hold up the state budget, members of the state Legislature don’t have to sacrifice their paycheck.
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