New York state budget negotiations will drag on in Albany this week as lawmakers remain optimistic despite signs that there is little agreement on major issues such as housing.
Gov. Kathy Hochul is seeking to pass a major legislative package aimed at developing more housing in the Empire State, but the measure looks increasingly questionable as questions swirl over the details — and officials overstep the mark. April 1 budget deadline.
Last week, several building trade groups issued a statement saying parallel negotiations with New York’s powerful Real Estate Board had effectively stalled. Labor and REBNY are negotiating labor standards, including a base wage for workers, as part of renewing and replacing an expired tax incentive structure to encourage developers to expand affordable housing.
“Both sides must compromise, and we have offered significant concessions, as have housing advocates. All REBNY has given us is leftovers,” the joint statement read in part.
REBNY responded with a statement calling for continued negotiations.
Collective bargaining is essential to a housing deal, because the ultimate benefit of a tax incentive to developers depends on how much they ultimately have to pay workers under that deal.
For now, Albany remains on the sidelines.
“It would be premature, as far as I’m concerned,” said Senate Majority Leader Andrea Stewart-Cousins (D-Westchester), rejecting the idea of intervening to negotiate a deal with REBNY and the trades of the building.
“I won’t overreact to that,” she continued. “I think we’re all going to keep our heads down and try to bring everyone to the table to come up with something that will benefit our great desires of building and supporting housing.”
But even Stewart-Cousins’ top budget aide, state Senate Finance Committee Chairwoman Liz Krueger (D-Manhattan), said as recently as Thursday that it was time for Albany to step up .
“Yes, I actually think that if this is a government program, the government should be at the table,” Krueger told reporters in a Capitol hallway Thursday, alongside his fellow Manhattan senator, Brian Kavanagh (Manhattan Democrat).
Kavanagh, who chairs the state Senate’s housing committee, seems more willing to let REBNY and the trades talk among themselves.
“We are going to spend a lot of public resources and in return we expect public goods, one of them being affordability and the other being good jobs, but the scope of this agreement must be defined between the unions.”, Kavanagh said.
Assembly Speaker Carl Heastie (D-Bronx) said he wants a wage deal to be reached before signing a housing deal.
Collective bargaining is just one complex, and perhaps not even the most controversial, aspect of a litany of issues that need to be ironed out before reaching a substantive agreement.
One of the fiercest debates will likely come down to whether tenant protections are included in the final deal. Housing activists invaded the Capitol to pressure lawmakers not to back down on their prized proposal: eviction for good cause. The plan is fiercely opposed by landlords large and small, who say it would unfairly impose restrictions on renewing leases and increasing rents.
“Vague assurances from state leaders about tenant protections won’t be enough: Good-cause evictions need to be voted into the budget – and they need to be robust and statewide wrote Cea Weaver, director of the Housing Justice Coalition for All, in a statement last week. .
Aside from housing, negotiators remain at odds with Hochul’s proposals to change funding formulas for elementary and secondary schools and curb uncontrolled spending in some Medicaid programs.
Meanwhile, several other pervasive issues remain under debate at the Capitol, including measures to combat retail theft and illegal pot shops, an attempt to overhaul the state’s wrongful death laws and efforts by environmental activists to curb the expansion of natural gas infrastructure.
Albany passed emergency budget extensions last week to allow state government to continue operating through Thursday.
The missed deadline surprised no one in Albany, but the question now arises of how long negotiators are willing to let negotiations drag on without a deal.
Most of last year’s budget was delayed until May 2, necessitating six budget extensions.
New York Post
