Q&A: What keeps Budget Director Blake Washington up at night

Also: A deal to end the strikes at state prisons is unraveling.

State Budget Director Blake Washington (Jim Franco/Times Union)

Good afternoon — it’s Friday, and National Pancake Day.

In today’s CapCon:

• Q&A: We catch up with State Budget Director Blake Washington on how federal funding uncertainty is impacting the state budget, which is due March 31.

• New Bills of Note: Capping the profits of utility companies, keeping utility service on in extreme weather, and auditing the MTA.

• At The Capitol: When to expect one-house budgets and what’s on deck next week.

• Eyes & Ears: A tentative deal to end the ongoing prison strikes has unraveled, the race for New York City mayor, and an update on the state’s prosecutor watchdog panel.

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This section features interviews with top lawmakers, officials, newsmakers and anyone else in New York we think you’d be interested to hear from.

(Lori Van Buren/Times Union)

🗨️ CapCon Q&A: State Budget Director Blake Washington

If you care about state spending and the budget, today’s newsletter is for you. If you hate numbers, you can skip to the next section. ⬇️

If you read yesterday’s CapCon, you know that state Budget Director Blake Washington convened the annual revenue consensus forecast meeting Thursday.

The Division of Budget is supposed to release a joint report with the Legislature by the end of Saturday with the results of that meeting — basically: letting the public know what they’re shooting for in revenue. Here’s last year’s report.

That doesn’t always happen. In 2019, former Gov. Andrew Cuomo and the Legislature simply did not reach a consensus on revenue ahead of budget negotiations.

Here’s where the report will be posted when it’s ready. But first, let’s look at what each party is projecting:

• The Hochul administration expects receipts from all sources, including federal, will be $249.6 billion in the next fiscal year.

• The Assembly is less optimistic, projecting total revenue for the same period at $245.7 billion.

• The Senate is more optimistic, projecting receipts from all funds at $250.1 billion.

Hochul’s budget proposal would ring in at $252 billion in state spending. The Citizens Budget Commission put out this useful report Friday that looks at the rate of state spending over time and into the future. Kudos to Patrick Orecki for the insight.

(Will Waldron/Times Union)

But numbers are boring for a lot of folks — I understand that. So I caught Washington after the meeting to ask him to translate the latest revenue numbers for a CapCon Q&A.

CC: What do you think was the takeaway from the revenue consensus meeting?

BW: The takeaway is that the state’s fiscal health is strong, but there are stormclouds on the horizon out of Washington — a lot of uncertainty, a lot of questions. I think we in the Division of Budget are monitoring Washington on a day-to-day basis and we’re prepared to respond when the time comes.

CC: How hard does that make doing the budget over the next month? It must be difficult to be building something you might just have to break back down.