Thirty-eight days after the April 1 deadline, the New York Legislature approved a state budget, over a week after Gov. Kathy Hochul declared victory in accomplishing her policy goals and insisting on holding up the process to see them through. 

In a slight consolation for those who have grown weary as the budget lapsed into the latest in 15 years, the second day of votes and debates ended hours earlier than anticipated with the Assembly unexpectedly concluding first – just before 9:30 p.m. as applause echoed through the Capitol’s stone hallways. The Senate followed minutes later. 

Nine out of 10 bills were passed on Wednesday and Thursday to approve a state budget with a $254 billion top line. As budget officials say is customary, the top line number does not include an additional approximately $7 billion to pay off the state’s unemployment insurance debt. 

Hochul, for her part, has celebrated what she describes as victories on enacting discovery reforms that satisfied the five New York City DA’s who were inseparable from her throughout the early stages of negotiations; changes to the state’s involuntary commitment standards; a bell-to-bell cellphone ban in schools; and a scaled back inflation rebate check program, child tax credit and middle class tax cut. 

This year’s budget battle was notable for a gradual ramping up of tensions between Hochul and the state Legislature over her insistence on holding up the budget process to see her policy proposals enacted. The battle over changes to the state’s discovery laws, or how evidence is shared with the defense, was the cornerstone of that push, but involuntary commitment, a push for policy surrounding the wearing of face masks in the commission of a crime and the cellphone ban in schools also contributed to the logjam. Battles over those initiatives largely overshadowed Hochul’s other focus in unveiling her agenda in January: affordability. 

The legislature complicated things themselves, with changes to campaign finance rules and the push to pay of the state’s unemployment debt adding to the delay in the final stretch and earning them scorn.

The barbs between Hochul and the legislature ramped up after the governor announced a conceptual agreement last Monday with what would prove to be a week of negotiations still to go, followed by a media tour branded "We Got it Done," which angered lawmakers and good-government groups alike. Tensions boiled over on Wednesday in a dramatic spat between fellow Democrat State Sen. James Skoufis and Hochul as Skoufis called Hochul "incompetent" and implied she was behaving like a "monarch" who needed to be reigned in by the legislature in the remaining days of the legislative session.

Hochul’s spokesperson called him a "camera-hungry clown." 

Republicans have slammed the outcome of changes they initially viewed as a positive, such as Hochul’s discovery reforms and efforts around creating a mask policy, as watered down in the final package as progressive Democrats breathed something of a sigh of relief over compromises on those issues. 

From here, the state Legislature now has a significantly abbreviated period of time to actually pass other legislation with the 2025 session scheduled to end on June 12, although adding extra days has been floated.