New York Governor Kathy Hochul announced a conceptual budget agreement, six days past the date the budget was due. The total budget for FY 2023 is currently estimated at around $220 billion, based on a preliminary assessment of the negotiated changes to the Executive proposal. This Hochul’s first budget as governor and only one before the election in November.
The budget is set to include:
- Tax relief for middle-class New Yorkers and small businesses
- Suspending fuel taxes to tackle the high cost of gasoline which has surged in recent months because of the war in Ukraine
- Helping to support small businesses most affected by the COVID-19 pandemic, like restaurants, by authorizing the sale of to-go alcoholic beverages
- Billions of dollars to rebuild the health care workforce, support home care workers, and build the health care system of the future
- An investment in education to strengthen higher education institutions and support teachers and school employees
- Increasing funding for and access to child care
- An investment in pandemic recovery funding
- A comprehensive affordable housing plan.
- A record-level five-year transportation infrastructure investment plan
- An investment in clean energy infrastructure, climate resiliency and preservation
- Improving ethics oversight and restoring trust in state government by replacing JCOPE with a new Commission on Ethics and Lobbying in Government
- Moving forward toward a safer, more just New York by cracking down on the trafficking of illegal guns, stopping the cycle of repeat offenders, protecting the victims of domestic violence and hate crimes, and investing in mental health infrastructure.
Two of the more controversial measures in the budget were the hundreds of millions of dollars allocated to the Buffalo Bills for them to build a new football stadium and changes to the cash bail and how quickly evidence is made available during discovery.
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