After weeks of backroom deals and missed deadlines, New York legislators have enacted the largest budget in state history—a taxpayer-dammed behemoth totaling $254 billion.
While Governor Kathy Hochul heralded the plan as a balanced and transformative investment in affordability, safety, and infrastructure, critics argue it represents a bloated and opaque process that prioritizes ideology over fiscal responsibility.
“We’re talking about the money coming from the people of New York. They’re sick and tired of it. I’m sick and tired of it,” Senator Dean Murray said of the spending, which is twice that of Florida, a state with a larger population and no income tax. “It’s why they are leaving in droves, and it’s why I voted no on this budget.”
Murray took exception to increasing taxpayer subsidies for the Metropolitan Transportation Authority by billions and instituting a payroll mobility tax increase on businesses without any cost-savings or reform measures.
“Let’s be clear: just because the budget is done doesn’t mean it’s good,” stated Assemblyman Joe DeStefano. “This plan is packed with costly, unrealistic policies that reflect a government more focused on ideology than the day-to-day realities facing Long Islanders.”
Suffolk District Attorney Ray Tierney sounded off against the legislature’s failure to roll back the damage done by cashless bail and other measures under the 2019 Criminal Justice bills. “Unfortunately, the rhetoric coming out of Albany does not match the reality, as the watered-down changes in this budget will do very little to assist my prosecutors in our daily practice,” Tierney said. “The changes will not alleviate the tremendous burden placed upon prosecutors and crime victims by the discovery statutes, and justice will continue to be adjudicated on clerical technicalities rather than legal merits. Worse still, these minor modifications will serve as an excuse for lawmakers to walk away thinking the problem has been solved.”
The spending deal, agreed to behind closed doors by Hochul and the Democrat leaders of the Senate and Assembly, drew the ire of the Republicans for their $2 billion rebate check scheme. “Only in one-party-rule New York can the politicians get away with over-taxing the people by billions and then give them back paltry $150 rebate checks,” Assemblyman DeStefano said. “Instead of sticking us with $13 billion more in spending, the Democrats should cut taxes and their wasteful, bloated budgets.”
“The final 2025-26 state budget, reaching an unprecedented $254 billion, represents another reckless escalation of spending that does little to improve New York’s fiscal stability or economic condition,” said Will Barclay, the leader of the Assembly Republicans. “This spending plan, the latest in 15 years and $13 billion more than last year, continued Albany’s pattern of closed-door dysfunction and lack of transparency.
Despite growing concerns over affordability and feasibility, the budget continues to funnel billions into expansive green initiatives under the state’s controversial Climate Leadership and Community Protection Act. It also brings spending on immigrant services to $4.3 billion.
“If the Democrats keep this up, New York will continue to face population decline, business flight, and a widening affordability gap,” DeStefano concluded.