As rain poured off the state Capitol’s cornices and into the courtyard below, the dreary, quiet scene reflected the feeling of exhaustion that many involved with negotiating New York’s $254 billion state budget feel a day after the long slog finally came to a conclusion. In the end, it was 38 days late — the latest since 2010.

Thursday evening, both houses of the state Legislature wrapped up voting on a final package, which many describe as bloated with policy for which Gov. Kathy Hochul insisted on, holding up the budget for more than five weeks in order to see enacted her way. Hochul has consistently worn it as a badge of honor.

“That completes the budget process,” Deputy Senate Majority Leader Mike Gianaris said to applause in the Senate chamber as the final vote was cast. “Golf applause,” he called it.

Hours later on Friday morning, Hochul signed the end product into law at a middle school in Johnson City. 

“It says the Senate, the Assembly,” she explained to the students. “Now what is it looking for? The governor’s signature,” before signing it to her own round of applause.

It came after weeks of squabbles over policy, as progressive lawmakers kicked against Hochul’s proposed changes to the state’s discovery laws, intended to cut down on cases being dismissed on technicalities, as well as her proposal to create a new criminal charge for wearing a face mask in the commission of a crime.

Days after the April 1 deadline passed, Hochul made it clear in a news conference that lawmakers and reporters had better make themselves comfortable as she dug in.

“Summers are nice here, too,” she said.

In a memorable back and forth, days later when asked about Hochul suggesting that lawmakers were eager to get the budget passed in order to get out of Albany for a holiday vacation, Gianaris shot back:

“The later the budget is, the more the governor gets blamed. If she wants to go through that route that other governors have gone through, she can figure it out herself.”

Assembly Speaker Carl Heastie at one point even dangled a bill to ensure the state Legislature doesn’t have paychecks withheld for a late budget if the governor injects policy into the conversation. Lawmakers began having pay withheld for a late spending plan in the late 1990s in a failed attempt to stem an embarrassing and chronic bout of late budgets that had been ongoing since 1985.

The Assembly avoids putting policy in their budget proposals, and when reporters ask the Assembly’s take on policy included by the governor and state Senate, Heastie often snaps back, “no policy in the budget.” 

"Oftentimes the policy things that are put into the budget by the governor usually dominate,” Heastie said on March 17. “The numbers, to be honest, they are what they are.”

Hochul was unmoved by the criticism.

“I’m not signing a budget that does not have common sense public safety and affordability measures that I introduced back in January,” she told reporters as April withered away.

All of this took place to the constant backbeat of discussions around the potential impact of federal cuts, and criticism of the governor and Legislature for taking limited action, preferring to pass the budget with little change, and potentially return later in the year for a special session. 

Powerful Senate Finance Committee Chair Liz Krueger seldom spoke of the budget without warning of potential fiscal doom inflicted by the Trump administration, and did not hide her irritation with the delay in being able to address changes taking place in Washington through action at the state level.

“The real world is burning, and I’m not interested in games here,” she said when asked about the governor’s inability to put pencils down during the second week of April. “We should just get the budget done and then it’s going to fall apart any second anyway because the Fed’s keep cutting the money.”

But finally, the Capitol halls were quiet Friday afternoon as lawmakers headed home for a long weekend to digest a state spending plan that Assemblymember Alex Borres described as a win for affordability

“Including the first housing access voucher program, a program that I hope to see expanded in future years, we’ve seen some refund checks go out to help people with affordability this year, I’m particularly proud of the universal school meals,” he said, referring to the state’s funding of free school meals for all New Yorkers. 

The budget included a scaled back inflation rebate check program, slashed thanks to a child care voucher crisis and the cost of the three-week prison strike, a middle-class tax cut and an expanded child tax credit. The housing vouchers, while not as much as advocates had hoped for, were considered a major win in that they even made it into the final package at all.

Hochul spent the day Friday continuing her victory lap, which started a week before negotiations actually ended, angering lawmakers. In Johnson City, she celebrated her win on a bell-to-bell cellphone ban in schools.

“I’m excited to lead the way, a lot of adversity, people wanted to water it down,” she said. “I said this is about our kid’s future, and I’m not giving up.”

Gianaris gave a lukewarm assessment of the final product. 

“We always like to do better, but it’s not entirely up to me,” he said. “The governor has the largest say given the nature of our state constitution, the governor has extreme power over the budget process but I think we did the best we could.”

Some, including initially supportive Republicans, have expressed disappointment that they feel Hochul’s changes to the state’s discovery laws were ultimately moderated by the Legislature. They say they feel the same about the mask legislation, which created a criminal charge that can only be applied to another underlying charge, rather than a standalone.

State Sen. Anthony Palumbo told Spectrum News 1 he was optimistic about the governor’s initial discovery proposal, but said it was eroded by the Legislature to not address what he described as the most crucial change: decoupling discovery from speedy trial.

He predicted that, as a result, we could be stuck with further attempts to reform discovery in future budgets, and likely future holdups. 

“This was a missed opportunity. I think this may most likely end up the same as bail reform where we’re on our fifth iteration of the bail reform statute, that it was way overdone,” he said.

While leaving the Senate chamber Thursday, State Sen. John Liu disagreed.

“Maybe we went too far in one direction in 2019, we pulled it back somewhat and so I think we landed in a fair place,” he said.

Hochul herself expressed satisfaction with what ultimately made it into the budget on Wednesday. 

“Over the last few months, I have been laser focused on passing a State Budget that prioritizes the safety and well-being of all New Yorkers. By making essential changes to our discovery laws, we’re doing exactly that: standing up for victims, protecting the rights of survivors and revoking get out of jail free cards because of minor technicalities,” she said in a release. “I am committed to continue doing everything in my power to keep New Yorkers safe, and today we take a step towards rebalancing the scales of Justice and standing up for victims.”

Meanwhile, Democratic state Sen. Jabari Brisport voted against part of the budget: the state’s revenue bill, saying it didn’t do enough for affordability.

“For yet another year under Gov. Hochul there were no new taxes on the rich, so we were unable to do important things like making sure child care workers are paid adequately, funding better SNAP benefits, increased housing assistance,” Brisport said.

Republicans also lashed out at the final price tag, especially as they say Democrats continue to sound the alarm over impending federal cuts and the potential special session to address them. 

“If we think there is a possibility we’re going to have to come back to try to reduce spending, why don’t we do it right now,” said Assemblymember Robert Smullen.

They also found significant fault with money set aside for legal defense for some officials, largely being associated with Attorney General Letitia James as the Department of Justice zeroes in.

“Now the taxpayers of New York state are going to be on the hook for that,” he said.

In response, Gianaris said he’s open to taking a second look at overall policy when it comes to legal defense, but insisted that this change was meant to complement services already provided for trial. 

“For purposes of what the law is now, saying that costs of investigations should be covered just as the cost of actual trials is covered seemed fair to me,” he told Spectrum News 1.

While Hochul got much of the blame for injecting policy into the conversation, the Legislature was ultimately successful in tweaking the state’s campaign finance rules as well as convincing Hochul to pay of the state’s unemployment insurance debt in the closing stretch of negotiations.

More than $7 billion to pay off the debt will be transferred from the state’s reserves. It is state policy to not include transfers in the budget total, even if it is money going out the door.

As first reported by Politico: someone, though it’s unclear who, was also ultimately successful in banning 14- and 15-year-olds from being newspaper carriers in the budget, which had a lone exception to a law preventing them from working. 

The budget also included a long-awaited tweaking of the Foundation Aid formula, swapping outdated poverty metrics and adding additional funding for English language earners, a bump for the regional cost index in Westchester County and a built-in annual 2% increase for districts.

Lawmakers will return to Albany on Monday to kickstart the remainder of the legislative session with five weeks remaining to act on actual legislation.