It was a legislative session which drained the patience of even some of Albany’s seasoned participants and observers in a six-month grind that came to a close this week.

“It’s been a long session,” Senate Minority Leader Rob Ortt said in his closing remarks as the Senate wrapped up last week. “I’ve been here 11 years and I feel like that’s just today.”

As members jetted off to their districts upon the completion of the Assembly’s session, three days tacked on due to the late state budget, ongoing are postmortem discussions over what was accomplished, and what is still left to do.

In an interview with Spectrum News 1, Deputy Senate Majority Leader Mike Gianaris argued that the Legislature lived up to the promise made in January, in conjunction with Gov. Kathy Hochul, to address the affordability crisis. That focus has largely been seen as a response to Democrats’ bruising November 2024 election results.

“Making it easier to afford child care, or providing more meals for kids when they go to school so it’s not something that has to come out of the pockets of the parents,” he said. “We’ve taken a number of steps in areas that will impact people like utility, costs which has been a sore point for so many, so I think while it may take some time for these things to be seen in the monthly bills people get, it will ultimately show that state government at least heard them loud and clear and did what we did to help.”

Then there is the question of what could have been done better: Gianaris pointed to the limits on what Democrats in the legislative majorities can do in their efforts to counter the Trump administration in Washington.

“We can only do so much, but we owe it to the people we represent to do everything we can, and I think we’re going to continue to focus on it,” he said.

Movement on all fronts was also stifled by the latest state budget in 15 years. 

Hochul has consistently touted the budget’s measures including a middle class tax cut, expanded child tax credit, an albeit scaled back inflation rebate check program, the free school meals initiative Gianaris mentioned, changes to the state’s Discovery Laws and involuntary commitment standards with an eye on public safety, and the paying off of the state’s unemployment insurance debt as major victories as lawmakers have expressed frustration over Hochul’s domination of the process through the state’s executive-heavy budget system.

Led by a memorable floor speech in which state Sen. James Skoufis accused the governor of acting like a ‘monarch’ for holding up the budget over policy proposals which her spokesperson tabled a ’juvenile stunt,’ lawmakers appeared willing to consider some sort of action to rein in the governor's power.

While nothing came to fruition this session, Gianaris said to stay tuned.

“We’re continuing to look at what is the best way to make changes to that process may be and I’m sure we’ll get somewhere with that shortly,” he said. “If we do something it has to be done intelligently with a strategy behind it and we want to succeed and so that’s what we’re all thinking about as we move forward. There’s no question that we have one of the most disproportionate balances of power as it relates to the budget process in the country.”

As Assembly Speaker Carl Heastie has also stressed, Gianaris told Spectrum News 1 that a constitutional amendment as has been proposed is challenging because there would be funded opposition that lawmakers would be pushing against. A similar effort failed two decades ago.

Throughout the back and forth, Hochul’s office has pointed to the fact that lawmakers have supported, benefited from, and even pushed for many of the policies that made the final package while also pointing to the previous constitutional amendment flop.

All of this, of course to the backbeat of opposition from Republicans in the minority. State Sen. George Borrello objected to the idea that the affordability box was checked.

“There were a lot of missed opportunities, first and foremost the public safety factor, very little was done there, missed opportunities when it comes to affordability,” he said. 

Ortt agreed.

“They talk about affordability and yet they passed a budget that was $11 billion more year over year,” he said at a recent news conference. “Our budget is $60 billion more than Florida’s budget even though Florida has way more people, soon Florida will have more New Yorkers. They have done everything they can to make this state less affordable.”

All of it, good or bad, came in the form of 856 bills clearing both houses and primed for a decision from Gov. Hochul. 1,743 were passed by the Senate, and 995 by the Assembly. All three figures represent a jump from last year and the Senate passed the most since 2016.

Looking over those numbers, Blair Horner, senior policy advisor for good government group NYPIRG, pointed to a clear pattern developing.

“We’ve been keeping track of what happens during the legislative session at the 30,000 foot level now for over 20 years, there is a trend that shows up in the Assembly side that the Assembly is doing far less bills than the state Senate,” he said. “That effectively means half of the bills that the Senate passed were not passed by the Assembly, I don’t know why that is.”

He said the pattern is consistent month after month throughout the session.

“There could be reasonable explanations as to why individuals’ bills might not pass muster in one house compared to another, but hundreds is a lot,” he said.

Assemblymember Deborah Glick knows the challenge of navigating a tough bill through the Assembly all too well. She carried the hotly debated Packaging Reduction and Recycling Infrastructure Act, which passed in the Senate but didn’t make it to the floor in the Assembly in the final hours. 

“We have more than twice as many members as the Senate, so there are many more conversations, many more conversations and many more personalities,” she said.

But, she offered that there are things the Assembly could do to get more legislation moving, primarily more face to face time to work out issues. The packaging bill was ultimately torpedoed by last-minute doubts among Democrats likely fueled by relentless industry opposition that culminated with AFL-CIO and other unions coming out against the bill last weekend. Glick called on colleagues to be more straightforward about their concerns to avoid a similar scenario in the future.

“I do think the amount of time we spend in conference talking to each other is not as much as we used to,” she said. “I think social media has made people perhaps reluctant to be honest in conference. That’s not helpful, and I think we as a body need to spend more time in honest conversation and so we really do need to look at how much time we spend in conference.”

Gianaris pointed to a victory of his own targeting monopolies in the Senate that has yet to materialize in the lower chamber.

“I continue to be proud that the Senate passed something that would revolutionize the way we look at antitrust laws in the state. It’s been a century since we were able to set that up in the first place and the economy has changed drastically. As everybody knows, these big companies are increasingly dominant. This would give ammunition to the regulators to go after them in a way that’s never been done before,” he said. “We’re making progress in the Assembly, slowly but surely, and I’m hoping — that would be something that would be incredibly impactful if and when it gets done.”