Full Episode: Final Days of State Budget Talks, Assembly Ways & Means Ranker Ed Ra

Full transcript of Final Days of Budget Talks, Assembly Ways & Means Ranker Ed Ra

Dan Clark: There's now about a week until the New York state budget is due on March 31st, and top lawmakers as well as Governor Hochul still seem confident they'll strike a deal in the next seven days. But they're still divided on some pretty big issues like public safety. Hochul held a rare Capitol press conference this week to push her preferred public safety proposals, including a change to bail reform.

Right now, if someone is charged with a bail eligible offense, judges have to decide if they'll be held on bail or released. The current law says that whatever the judge decides must be based on the, “least restrictive means”. So, some judges, according to Hochul, have taken that to mean that bail should not be set and that the person charged should be released before their trial.

Governor Hochul says that's led to confusion in the courts for some of these bail eligible cases. So, she wants to drop the least restrictive means language so it's clear that judges can set bail in those cases. 

Progressives in the legislature disagree, saying that would lead to more people in jail who have not been convicted of a crime. That's a pretty big disagreement to resolve in the next week. 

Governor Hochul said this week she'd be willing to delay the budget to get what she wants.

Kathy Hochul: If history is an indicator, I think people know that I feel very strongly about certain issues, particularly protecting New Yorkers, that's what I'm supposed to do. So, I feel confident we'll be able to achieve an on-time budget, but if we don't, it'll be because there are continuing discussions about matters that I consider extremely important.

DC: On the same day, criminal justice advocates rallied at the Capitol against Hochul plan. They want the bail while left alone and say that instead the state should put more funding into pretrial services, diversion programs, and other jail alternatives. They also want new tenant protections and health care funding in the budget. We heard from State Senator Jessica Ramos.

Jessica Ramos: Why do we want all those things? Because that is public safety. Because if you want public safety, if you're honest about wanting public safety, then you'll declare war on poverty.

DC: Governor Hochul is getting some extra support this year. The Times Union and the New York Times reported this week that former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg has quietly funneled $5 million into a media campaign supporting Hochul’s agenda. 

That's not sitting well with progressives who want high income earners in New York like Bloomberg to pay more in taxes to the state. The idea would be to use that money to provide more services and relief to low and middle-income New Yorkers. State Senator Jabari Brisport said this.

Jabari Brisport: It is so disgusting to say I don’t want to pay my taxes. I'd rather just throw away millions of dollars to try and force a budget that hikes fares on working class New Yorkers, that raises tuition at SUNY and CUNY, that allows rents to keep spiraling up, that doesn't address spiraling healthcare costs. It is disgusting, it is deceitful, and it is selfish and greedy.

DC: Let's get into it with this week's panel. 

ROUNDTABLE

Dan Clark: On this week’s panel, Anna Gronewold from Politico and Josh Solomon from the Times Union. Thank you both for being here. 

I want to start with this Bloomberg news. Josh, you had a story this week kind of revealing this American Opportunity thing. It's a PAC (Political Action Committee)? What is it? What's going on here? Bloomberg is spending $5 million to fund this direct mail campaign that is influencing the budget.

Do we know why?

Josh Solomon: Before I say I revealed it, Anna had it in first. I revealed a little more detail, Nick Fandos of the New York Times revealed the Bloomberg bit.

So, it's reported that Bloomberg is giving $5 million to someone to have a TV campaign, mailers, the whole deal, to support Hochul’s budget. It's like top line items from it without getting into any of what the opposition is. 

What you see on the mailer is a D.C. address and it says, Paid for by American Opportunity. What's American Opportunity? They are somewhat associated with the Democratic Governors Association out of D.C. It appears that they are running the campaign. They will not tell you that.

DC: They share a lot of the same staff

JS: They have the staff, the addresses, the phone number, the bank. There's at least one TV ad that the FCC information says Democratic Governors Association.

DC: So, they're just gaslighting everybody.

JS: You could say that.

DC: I will say that, yeah.

JS: So, they're all connected, and it appears that they're running the campaign. It’s the same ad buys, they're using the same ad company that they did for Hochul during the campaign season.

DC: Interesting. 

Anna, you have covered multiple budgets. What kind of impact can something like this have on this kind of process, if at all?

Anna Gronewold: I think it's unclear. I don't know that this has been done very regularly to try to get voters to influence their lawmakers, to influence the budget negotiations, which are still kind of I wouldn't say early because the budget's due in about a week, but there's still there's still a lot in flux there.

Maybe this sounds a little bit too cynical, but it's hard to get people to even come out to vote. I can't imagine that explaining to them that there's some ideas being thrown around in Albany, you need to call your lawmakers about these specific proposals, that even us in the press have difficulty deciphering sometimes.

DC: Right. We were just talking about before this the least restrictive means thing with bail, and it's just so difficult for me to even explain it to our audience for television because it's such a complicated topic.

AG: And it's such an interesting perception. Why does Kathy Hochul need this right now? 

I think there are a lot of hypotheses, but it seems like she could be looking into kind of a tough battle, and I don't know if this is the perception she wants to put out there, that I need Mike Bloomberg's money to help me with my budget negotiation.

DC: What do you think that says about the dynamic between the legislature and the governor? Is this kind of like a divide or are we just talking about more of the progressive members versus Hochul? Are the moderate’s kind of on her side a little bit?

AG: I think we sometimes like to blow up the ideas that no one's getting along at anything or everyone's really mad at each other all the time. I think there are a lot of things that everyone can and will sit down and agree on, but there is an idea that there's a little bit of tension in the legislature, not only from Kathy Hochul proposals, not quite as far left as some groups would want, but after this whole debacle earlier this year with her Chief Judge pick.

DC: Right. That has been quite the news story for the past couple of months. I'm interested to see if that divide becomes more of a public real thing. You know, you had with Andrew Cuomo, whenever anybody went up against him, he hit right back, regardless of how light the blow was, anything like that, that they could never take a punch. With her office, I don't really see them that way. 

She has said that she wants to be a more collaborative governor. I don't know if that means that she wants to collaborate with progressives, but I don't know if she's going to go on the attack against them necessarily. 

One issue that is kind of defining this whole conversation is this bail reform debate that we were talking about. Josh, you've covered this a lot.

The governor is seeking this change that she kind of things as a big change, the progressives think of a big change, that is removing the least restrictive means. Do you see that as a big division in these final days of the state budget? We saw that last year with bail reform, is it the same this year?

JS: I think I said on the show recently that I wasn't sure how big of a deal it would be. Obviously, I was wrong. It's emerging to be a big deal. She held a red room this week, she brought out four moderate state senators earlier in the day, four progressive state senators, and could including Brad Hoylman-Sigal who was a floor above railing against her. You could see the numbers game. How many senators does she have in her support? It's curious. 

But the issue on bail, she says she's concerned about judge’s discretion and wanting to kind of make sure that whatever we said, the law is, that's going to be what it's going to be, and you can't necessarily every time there's a news story for the next 12 months and you're saying, well, that person could have been held, but they weren't held pretrial, it's not going to be the state's fault. 

That's kind of where it is. It's not shifting the blame, but it's saying this is completely on you judges.

DC: This issue is really ingrained in politics, I think at this point, especially because Republicans have done a very, very effective job of trying to connect the rise in crime to bail reform. There's no evidence that says those two things are connected. 

On the flip side, I think Democrats have had a lot of trouble trying to shine a positive light, on bail reform. You see criminal justice groups talking about how it's benefited people who don't lose their jobs because they don't get incarcerated before their trial, they get to stay with their families before trial, and of course, they haven't been convicted yet. 

It's just one of those issues that I don't know is ever going to go away. So, I'm interested to see. This change which would modify one line of the law, I wonder if we have a bigger change next year or if it kind of fizzles out after this. 

We've only a few minutes left and I don’t want to spend it just talking about bail, so I'm going to go to both of you. 

Over the next week, what are you watching? What are these issues that the legislature and the governor seem to need to come together that we have to keep track of the next couple of days?

AG: Well the big one, I think, especially according to the governor, is this housing plan that she's put out. She does want it to be a kind of legacy issue over the next decade. She says she wants to build 800,000 new units of housing. Those numbers are flexible, according to who you speak with, but the legislature says you can't really force these municipalities to build in this specific way. How about we just incentivize them to and we give them some reasons to do it our way? 

And Hochul I think, wants to go a little bit stronger. It's become a big fight, and there's so many different opinions on the best way to get this housing built. I think everyone agrees on the overlying premise, but it's very, very complicated, and it could take a lot longer than a week to figure out a good housing plan for the state for the next decade.

DC: I wonder if because the housing thing, allowing local zoning to be overrated, I think that's a big sticking point, I'm wondering if that does go through for whatever reason, if Hochul is able to convince the legislature, if there's just a lawsuit and it gets struck down. I feel like we talk about these issues sometimes, and then six months later, it's like that always for nothing.

Josh what are you watching over the next couple of days?

JS: I do think that the suburbs housing part of it may just be a bargaining chip of the of Senate Democrats or the legislature saying, well, you're going to have to earn that back.

DC: Yeah.

JS: We generally agree with you, but we're going to work out the details and you're going to have to earn that back. I think that what's interesting on the housing front is what the Assembly and Senate chairs are in favor of good-cause eviction, the top progressive priority, the mental health chairs, are in favor of an 8.5% COLA, cost of living adjustment for workers. Those are some of the more expensive pieces or bigger ideas in the budget that the legislature wants and Hochul hasn't put into her budget. 

So that could be an interesting piece because it's not just fringe members of the party that want it, it's the chairs of these committees.

DC: Right, exactly. 

You know, the budget is such a complicated, wonky thing, I wish we could talk about every issue that's involved, but I want to kind of open an open ended question to Anna on the way out or Josh, you can answer, too.

This is Governor Hochul’s second budget, last year we saw a lot of things blow up in the last two weeks. Does it look like it's a smoother ride this year? 

AG: You know, I'm not sure. I think last year, not only was it kind of a shorter timeline after she came into office and she had to get her budget through, but everyone’s still trying to figure out each other’s operating styles. So, I think this year they’re understanding a little bit more and people do seem to be talking more, but like we've already discussed, the dynamics are pretty fraught and everyone's still trying to decide how much they can needle each other and whether or not that will be effective.

So, I don't have a clear idea yet whether this seems better. We didn't know until nine days later last year, but I do think that people probably understand at a base level how to talk to each other a little bit more. So, we'll see if that helps.

DC: I hope so. 

Josh, we’re all out of time, I'm sorry. 

Thank you both for being here. Anna Gronewold from Politico, Josh Solomon from the TU, thank you both. 

ED RA INTERVIEW

Dan Clark: If you were with us last week, you'll know that Assembly Speaker Carl Heastie joined us to chat about what Democrats in his chamber want to see in the budget. So this week, we wanted to bring you another perspective, this time from the other side of the aisle. 

Assembly Member Ed Ra is the highest-ranking Republican on the Assembly Ways and Means Committee, the main committee involved in the budget. We spoke this week about this year's state budget, what Republicans want, and more. 

Assembly Member Ra, thank you so much for being here, I appreciate it.

Ed Ra: Thanks Dan.

Dan Clark: Of course. 

Let's start with housing. You're from Long Island, you represent a district on Long Island where the governor's housing proposal has left a lot of people upset. Just to recap for our audience, she wants to build 800,000 new homes over the next decade, but the catch is one part of her proposal would allow developers to override local zoning laws to get it done if that locality is lagging behind its housing goals. Tell me what you're hearing on Long Island about that.

ER: Yeah, so just the concept of overriding local zoning is causing a lot of opposition, but really on top of that, it's been the transit-oriented development piece of it that also mandates a half mile radius around every Long Island Railroad Station be rezoned to allow for 50 units per acre. So, to put that into context, I believe we have something like 50 stations in Nassau County.

I have 16 in or adjacent to my district alone, and it's a level of density that really you're not going to find anywhere in Nassau County currently. So, it brings up a lot of concerns about water, roads, sewers and all of the services that that our residents count on.

DC: I don't want to misrepresent your position, it's not that you don't want more housing necessarily, you just don't think that this is the way to get it done.

ER: Yeah, correct. I think that trying to diversify our housing stock is important. A lot of villages have done some innovative things, whether it's in their downtowns, but have found ways to make it fit within their communities. So that's one of the really most difficult things about the transit-oriented development piece is there are train stations that, you know, maybe there is opportunity for housing there and there's other ones that are surrounded on all sides, that entire half mile is going to be currently single family homes, and there's really no space there to put a large building.

DC: So, the Democrats actually came out with their one-house budgets last week and actually pushed back on that zoning override, part of the governor's proposal, saying that they instead want to offer incentives for new housing. So rather than kind of require it, rather than having it be a mandate, they want to incentivize that. What do you think of that?

Is that a better way to do it, or do you see a better way to grow housing in places like Long Island?

ER: I think that's a better way to do it. You know, it's more of a carrot rather than a stick approach, but I think one of the most important pieces of it of it would be having real infrastructure dollars behind it. You know, the governor's proposal has $250 million statewide for infrastructure. That's going to be a drop in the bucket. It's going to take a lot more than that to make, frankly, this type of housing viable in a lot of places that don't have sewers. You know, how do you build a multi-level apartment building without sewers? What impact does that have on the environment locally? 

So, I think the infrastructure dollars would go a long way towards maybe allowing some municipalities to be a little more innovative.

DC: Speaking of infrastructure, there's also a proposal in this year's state budget which the governor and Democrats in the legislature are kind of agreed on, kind of not agreed on, it's the gas ban in new construction. I know that's been an issue in areas of the state like North Country and Cattaraugus County in particular, where you have these rural areas that are concerned that if you cut off gas, then if there's an emergency, they might not be able to, you know, cook food and heat their homes.

Do you have those same concerns down in Long Island as well? I would assume that's something that would probably not sit well with local leaders there, too.

ER: Yeah, I do. When we talk about moving towards getting more green, I think too often we do it with tunnel vision without making sure it's really a feasible thing. Natural gas, I think, has become a really important part of moving away from much less clean sources of energy over the years.

I still to this day have constituents always looking to make those conversions. So, banning it for new construction, I think, is going to… you know, when you go back to the housing bill, if you're if there are less viable ways of heating these buildings and allowing the residents to cook and all that other stuff, it makes that even more to have development.

DC: Republicans have also pushed back on this budget, saying that both the governor's budget and what Democrats proposed in their one-house budget last week didn't include enough on this big issue in New York right now of cost of living. 

It's no secret to anybody who doesn't have enough money to put food on the table, that you really can't afford to live here a lot of the time anymore. What do you think is the solution there, if you were to put a proposal into the budget this year?

ER: Well, we came out with a proposal last year, you know, that included the gas taxes, but also basically included a sales tax moratorium on kind of those everyday items that people need, personal care items, things like that that people are buying on a regular basis to help just with the inflation because as you know, when the cost of things goes up, the state almost is getting a windfall because the sales tax as a percentage. So if something doubles in price, the state's making that much more on the sales tax on that particular item. 

So, I think a proposal like that could really help people until some of these costs start to come back down on those everyday essential items.

DC: Right. I mean, even outside of inflation, the cost of living in New York has been going up for a number of years. We've seen in the past decade a lot of people move out of the state and some people will say it's the cost of living. Other people will joke and say it's the weather, but when it comes down to it, we don't know what each individual person is doing necessarily.

We talk about the state budget as this spending and fiscal document and we like to put money into it and kind of take policy out of it, but you do have two months of session left after the budget. Is there anything that maybe the legislature could do on cost of living and affordability outside of the budget, you think, or do you think that's a conversation best left in the spending plan?

ER: I think there are things we could do outside of the budget, but anything that's going to be some type of tax break, or sales tax moratorium, or anything of that nature is going to have dollars associated with it. So that is best left within the budget. But outside the budget, we can talk perhaps about things like mandates that drive local property taxes up.

We've done some decent mandate relief over the years with regard to Medicaid, but, for example, we have in this budget this potential share of Medicaid dollars on to our counties that could cause huge tax increases to our property-taxpayers. So, not just trying to move forward, we're trying to make it cheaper, but fighting against proposals like that, that would have a negative impact as well.

DC: Before we run out of time, I want to turn to the governor's crime proposals and how the Democrats in the legislature have kind of responded to it, and it's a little wonky. So, I'm hoping that our viewers have read up on this. The governor is proposing to take out the words least restrictive means on bail eligible offenses when somebody heads to court for their pretrial decision from the judge.

I know it's sort of wonky, but the governor says it will allow judges to hold more people in jail before their trial based on some factors that they could look at. I know that your conference says that that is a good start. What else would you like to see? Are we still at the point where you'd like to see just a full repeal and start over, or do you think maybe this is something that you do it in this budget, the least restrictive means part and maybe follow up on it later?

ER: I think the least restrictive mean part, the thing to remember is it has to be a bailout eligible offense. So, you're still dealing with that situation that it's either on the list or not. We always have these cases where something happens and then they say, oh, this wasn't bail eligible. So, I think the real key to it would be actually doing the dangerousness standard.

I think at the end of the day, it's going to be a small number of people that are coming in and out of court on a regular basis. So, the judge can just evaluate that defendant, their history, and if they are posing a threat to public safety, keep them in jail as opposed to having their hands tied like they do now.

DC: All right, Assembly Ways and Means Ranker Ed Ra, thank you so much for joining us this week. I appreciate it.

ER: Thank you Dan.

DC: A reminder that the state budget is due on the 31st. 

HEALTHCARE & MENTAL HEALTH VO-SOT’s

DC: Thousands of health care workers came to Albany this week to push for more funding for the state's health care industry. They want higher reimbursement rates under Medicaid, more funding for safety net hospitals, higher wages for home care workers, and a higher statewide minimum wage.

Those are all ideas that Governor Hochul and the legislature more or less agree on, just not in the same ways. So, we don't know where they’ll land in the final state budget. 

The legislature is pushing for more health care funding than what Hochul proposed in January. Senate Majority Leader Andrea Stewart-Cousins.

Andrea Stewart-Cousins: We are fighting every day for you because we know you are fighting for us. I represent the Senate Democratic majority. We have your back.

DC: More on that as it happens. 

Staying in health care now, as we told you, Governor Kathy Hochul is proposing a new strategy this year on mental health care in New York that includes an investment of $1 billion over multiple years for things like mental health housing, support programs, new insurance coverage, and more, but mental health care workers who receive state funding and the chair of the Senate Mental Health Committee say Hochul is plan falls short. 

They want an 8.5% increase in state funding and an additional $500 million on top of that this year. They say that money would pay for higher costs from inflation and help keep and attract more workers in an industry with high turnover, partly because of the low pay Senate Mental Health Chair Samra Brouk.

Samra Brouk: Right now, across the state, we have a workforce crisis, but especially when it comes to mental health care. I've talked to facilities that have 40% vacancy rates for the for their employees. What that means is that when any of us need help, there's nobody there if they're unable to recruit and retain their staff.

So, an 8.5% COLA (cost of living adjustment) again, is the floor.

DC: Hochul has proposed a 2.5% increase, which workers say is too low. More on that as the budget comes together.

Catch this week's show on your local PBS station, or watch on YouTube, Facebook, or using the free PBS app anytime after Friday.

On This Week's Edition of New York NOW:

• The deadline for the New York State Budget is just days away, on March 31. We'll tell you where things stand.
• Anna Gronewold from POLITICO and Josh Solomon from the Times Union join us with a preview of what to expect in the final days of state budget talks.
• Assm. Ed Ra, the highest-ranking Republican on the Assembly Ways & Means Committee, joins us with his take on the budget.