At long last, Albany finally pulled itself up by the bootstraps and passed our state budget for the 2024-2025 fiscal year, and only three weeks late.
It’s unfortunate that that’s actually on the shorter side of budget delays in New York over the years, but at least we’re here, right?
A big priority was housing, namely the “Good Cause Eviction” legislation that many Republicans felt would harm the middle-class and only add fuel to the housing crisis fire. Instead, legislation that made it into the budget has far more exceptions and is generally seen as difficult to enforce. The policy allows tenants to challenge rent increase that are above 5% plus inflation or 10% outright, whichever is lower, except, however, in cases where the landlord owns fewer than ten apartments, in owner-occupied buildings with as many as ten units, in buildings certified for occupancy after January 2009, in apartments that are condos and co-ops, and exorbitantly expensive properties.
However, the law only immediately applies to New York City, while the rest of the state will have to opt in.
The other issue is that tenants, and even the State, will continue to have trouble determining exactly how many buildings landlords own, as Governor Kathy Hochul (D) removed the 2023 proposal to make the LLC database a public record. Landlords will often hide behind anonymous LLCs. Tenants can take landlords to court over it, but it’s still a mired, bureaucratic process.
Regarding affordable housing, developers are faced with slightly higher affordability requirements in order to take advantage of certain tax exemptions.
Thankfully, the HEAT Act died in the Assembly. The bill would have removed the legal requirement that utility companies provide natural gas to customers who want it who live within a certain distance from a gas main. Smithtown’s own Senator Mario Mattera (R-St. James) railed against the bill as making fossil fuels much less affordable in a move he and others viewed as the State forcing residents off natural gas.
Another “win” in the budget is that State and local authorities now have the power to shut down illegal marijuana shops and fine landlords up to $50,000 if they fail to evict the bodegas.
Perhaps the biggest issue of the budget holdup was the State aid for school funding. Already a lightning rod for near-unanimous discontent, the issue was made more pervasive as the budget delays rolled into April when school districts are supposed to be crafting their budgets. With no idea as to how much State aid they might receive, many districts were forced to, or at least flirt with the idea, of laying off faculty and cutting programs until and unless State aid was reintroduced to their districts, and by how much.
Assemblyman Ed Flood (R-Port Jefferson Station), who represents the Fourth Assembly District, saw his school districts find some relief after much anticipation. Port Jefferson was originally slated to lose more than 28% of its State aid. It now will see a near-2% increase.
However, some school districts, like South Country, represented by Senator Dean Murray (R-East Patchogue), got “killed” in the Senator’s words. You’d think that an underserved community of interest would receive more State aid, but instead, Albany decided to put more of the State aid in the bigger cities across the state. South Country School Districts will now have a chance to pass a budget of $143 million for the fiscal year, an increase of 1.5% over the current budget. Increases in school district budgets directly correlate to increases in property taxes.
Despite this, Albany still forged ahead with its plan to allocate more than $2 billion to bailing New York City and State out of the self-inflicted migrant crisis.
Think about it: an underserved community in Suffolk will now have to make the tough decision of higher property taxes or less school programs and educators, because the State can’t help itself in bending over backwards to invite the entire world here, all on taxpayer dimes. Think of all the dimes that could go into communities of interest across the state. New York has always been a compassionate state, but there’s a limit to just how generous we can be. How can we keep the ship afloat if we take in more passengers while we’re currently sinking?
“It’s truly disheartening to see so much money being put towards prioritizing migrants and nothing being put towards disempowering violent criminals. This wasteful spending on initiatives that have not demonstrated a clear return on investment for the constituents we serve is unacceptable and incomprehensible,” said Assemblyman Joe DeStefano (R-Medford) in a statement.
The Messenger also discussed the matter with Assemblyman Doug Smith (R-Holbrook). The budget is typically divided into ten sections that are voted on individually. Smith said he usually votes for a few sections, but he voted against all of them this year, as he said it’s “more spending and freebies for migrants and criminals.” He also said that most Long Island schools received a 0% increase in
State aid.
Assemblyman Keith Brown (R-Northport) said in a statement that he was relieved to see the illicit sale of marijuana, clean water funding, and private insurance measures were addressed. However, he said the process lacks transparency and that the manufactured migrant crisis is a “slap in the face to the taxpayers of New York.”
We couldn’t agree more with our elected officials and we thank them for not backing down on the issues they know are important to our communities. It’s a shame that the GOP has such little power in Albany. We think creating budgets would be a much more transparent and cooperative process if Republicans had more power, or even controlled the Senate, in Albany.
Meanwhile, the City that is receiving the lion’s share of the monetary provisions is nearly at DEFCON 5 in terms of instability. As the city reels with safety and affordability issues, Jewish students and professors are being barred from universities over the rising tensions in the Middle East, all while entitled college pseudointellectuals who chant “Death to America” also demand that their college education is entirely subsidized by the federal government.
It’s hard to find too many “wins” in the budget this year, but we’ll take what we can get. We can call Governor Hochul a winner, since this year’s process was ostensibly smoother than last year and she had the Legislature on her side on many provisions. We don’t revel in calling the Governor a winner here, but we like to call a spade a spade here at The Messenger.
Siena College, however, has found that her approval rating is lowest since she took office in 2021, and the Manhattan Institute found that only 16% of NYC voters would consider re-electing Mayor Eric Adams (D).
Two winners now, but later? This is a developing story.
