April 4, 2022
Governor Kathy Hochul Squanders Historic Budget on Behalf of Billionaires & Big Corporations in Failure of a FY2023 Budget
Despite her promises of a New Era for New York, her steamrolling of the FY2023 budget is the same old Cuomo-era style pay-to-play politics—and it shows that New Yorkers can’t trust her to deliver for working families.
ALBANY, NY—After repeated setbacks in the New York State budget process at the hands of Governor Kathy Hochul and Lt. Governor Brian Benjamin, a final budget deal has now been released. In response to its shameful provisions, which include hundreds of millions of public dollars toward the Hochul/Buffalo Bills deal and shortchanging New Yorkers on critical programs like truly universal childcare, the Invest in Our New York (IONY) coalition released the following statement:
“Throughout this budget process, the Invest in Our New York campaign has been demanding a fair and just budget that works for all of us, not just the wealthy few. Unfortunately, it is clear that Governor Kathy Hochul and Lt. Governor Brian Benjamin’s efforts to kill an agenda that delivers for working families have succeeded. By Gov. Hochul’s own admission, New York State will enjoy a historic multi-billion dollar surplus. But instead of using that surplus to invest in New York families, Gov. Hochul and Lt. Gov. Benjamin waited until the eleventh hour to drop a bomb on the budget process—all in service of a stadium subsidy that Gov. Hochul’s husband may stand to benefit from, billions of dollars in tax giveaways for developers and out-of-state corporate profiteers, and politically-motivated fearmongering against Black and Brown communities.
Governor Hochul derailed what was meant to be a historic budget—and Majority Leader Stewart-Cousins and Speaker Heastie were not able to hold the line for New Yorkers. Despite ample opportunity to discuss proposals out in the open, Governor Hochul waited until the cover of night to tank programs like the Housing Access Voucher Program and the proposal to provide healthcare coverage for all New Yorkers, regardless of immigration status. The budget failed to deliver meaningful investments to adequately address New York’s childcare crisis, which means parents will remain on long waiting lists for years to access childcare subsidies. It does not adequately invest in affordable housing, climate crisis mitigation, Fair Pay for Home Care, or in the excluded workers who kept New York running during the pandemic. And, most cynically, it rolls back important civil rights legislation—the bail reform measures that were passed in 2019—as a poison pill in the budget.
For months, the Invest in Our New York (IONY) coalition has pushed the Hochul/Benjamin administration to make good on their promise of a New Era for New York. Now, it is clear that their promises of transparency and progress were nothing more than platitudes. They have worked quietly to cut backdoor deals and divvy up our taxpayer dollars for their own benefit, even keeping Albany lawmakers in the dark from their budget plans.
“If any of this sounds familiar, it’s because this is the exact kind of Cuomo-era politics Gov. Hochul promised to end. It is now blatantly obvious that New York families can’t trust the current administration any more than they could trust the last one—and the Invest in Our New York Campaign will continue to hold this administration to account as we fight for a fairer, more just state.”