Governor Kathy Hochul Reaches Historic $237 Billion Budget Agreement in New York State – Key Priorities Revealed

NEW YORK – Governor Kathy Hochul announced Monday an agreement in principle with legislative leaders on priorities in New York State’s fiscal year 2025 budget.

This means state leaders agreed to a $237 billion state budget outline that includes among its priorities fighting the housing shortage, crime, mental health and not generating income tax increases . The agreement comes two weeks after the April 1 budget deadline, after intense debates among Democratic lawmakers in Albany over proposed changes to Medicaid funding, education and criminal justice initiatives.

“I promised to fight the right fights for New Yorkers, offer common sense solutions, and tackle tough issues that others might ignore, and that’s exactly what we did, ” Governor Hochul said. “We’re fulfilling a common sense agenda: fighting crime, fixing our mental health system and building more housing so people can finally live in New York.”

Key points of the budget

• Get a historic deal to address New York’s housing crisis by creating a new 485x tax incentive for affordable housing; extension of the 421a incentive for projects already planned; help convert unused office space into affordable housing; eliminate outdated density limits in New York City; unlocking the capacity of units that have been vacant since 2019; establishing a new law to protect tenants from price gouging.
• Create a state tax incentive for multi-family housing; provide $650 million in discretionary funds available only to communities in need of housing; to encourage communities that want more accessory dwelling units; Invest $500 million to develop up to 15,000 new housing units on state-owned land; and protect owners from theft.
• Crack down on retail theft by increasing penalties for criminals who attack retailers; $40.2 million to fight theft; and a $3,000 tax credit for business owners to invest in safety equipment.
• Shut down illegal cannabis stores by licensing the Office of Cannabis Management (OCM) to lock down businesses for a whole year; allow local governments to enact laws to enforce lockout orders; establish fines for landlords who knowingly rent to dealers who sell cannabis without a licence.
• Fight the rise of hate by expanding the number of crimes that can be prosecuted as hate crimes and investing $35 million in the Securing Communities Against Hate grant that protects houses of worship, religious schools and other at-risk sites.
• Improve public safety through targeted investments in communities, including $347 million to continue New York’s efforts to reduce and prevent gun violence and $35.7 million to prevent and prosecute domestic violence crimes.
• Invest $7.1 million to reduce recidivism and improving worker re-entry by providing more supervision to parolees, expanding transitional housing opportunities, expanding college programming to all state prisons, and providing transportation to visitors to and from state correctional facilities.
• Make our streets safer with new efforts to combat toll evasion on our highways and fare evasion on our subways.
• Make maximum investments in mental health, including $19 million for mental health services for school-age children, $55 million to establish 200 new psychiatric beds in state facilities; and calling for better mental health care in hospitals.
• Invest $31 million to expand mental health services for first responders and for people struggling with mental illness and involved in the criminal justice system.
• Protect mothers and babies by becoming the first state in the country to offer paid leave to pregnant women; require employers to give nursing mothers time to express themselves; addressing the proliferation of surgical procedures in situations where they are not needed; and increasing access to care for postpartum depression.
• Save $200 million in Medicaid savings through tax intermediaries and cracking down on CDPAP fraud; invest $7.5 billion in the health care system over the next three years through changes to New York’s Section 1115 Medicaid demonstration program to support a broad array of actions to improve health equity, reduce health disparities and access to primary and behavioral health care around the world. of the state.
• $150 million investment to promote NY SWIMS and build pools across the state, help New Yorkers learn to swim and stay safe in and around the water.
• Support New York students through maximum funding for P-12 schools; invest $35.9 billion in total school aid, including $24.9 billion in Foundation Aid; reducing the inflation factor in the Foundation Aid formula to adjust the amount of funding for the 2024-25 school year and commissioning a Rockefeller Institute study to examine the Foundation Aid formula to prepare for changes next year; to ensure that each school district uses the best teaching practices based on the Science of Reading to improve reading ability among New York’s children.
• Advance the Consumer Protection and Affordability agenda to reduce costs and keep money in New Yorkers’ pockets by eliminating insulin cost-sharing for thousands of New Yorkers; strengthen protection against unfair trade practices; achieve the largest increase in paid medical leave and disability benefits in more than three decades; and help New Yorkers fight medical debt.
• Empire AI, a leading national consortium to create and launch a next-generation artificial intelligence computing center in Buffalo will be used by New York colleges and universities to place New York at the forefront of artificial intelligence and its advancement. AI for the public good.
• Provide critical financial support to mass transit systems across the stateincludes $7.9 billion in operating support for the MTA, $333 million for upstate transit systems and $551 million for non-MTA downstate systems, a 5.4 percent increase in funding.
• Lead infrastructure programs at the national level by adding $2.6 billion for the third year of $32.9 billion in DOT’s five-year Capital Plan, funding projects that reconnect communities across the state and $100 million for local programs through the CHIPS program.
• Make maximum environmental investments with $500 million for drinking water, $400 million for the Environmental Defense Fund and $47 million to support the Governor’s goal of planting 25 million trees by 2033.