THe new york

state

budget

A Brief Guide

Budget Bills

• We tend to think of the ​budget as a single ​thing but it’s actually ​made up of 10 ​separate bills and ​stretches over ​thousands of pages.
• There are two types of ​budget bills:
• Appropriations bills
  
• Article VII bills

The Road to the NYS Budget

Executive Budget

• Before February 1st

• Governor submits the Executive Budget to the ​Legislature, along with the related appropriation, ​revenue, and budget bills. The State’s five-year ​Financial Plan, Five-Year Capital Program and ​Financing Plan, and financial information ​supporting the Executive Budget are also ​submitted with the Executive Budget.
• The Execuritve Budget documents are available​ here
  

Budget Hearings

• February

• The state Legislature holds hearings on the ​executive budget. The hearings give ​legislators a chance to question key ​administration officials - generally, the head ​of each state agency will testify — and hear ​from leaders of business, labor and other ​advocacy groups.
  

Legislature Budget Letters

30 Day Amendments

One House Resolutions/Budgets

• Before February 1st

• Based on their separate and joint deliberations, ​the two houses reach agreement on spending ​and revenue recommendations, which are ​reflected in amended versions of the Governor’s ​proposed appropriation bills and related ​legislation, and approved by both houses. These ​amended versions are the One House Budgets.
• These documents are intended to be a ​statement of principles heading into more ​serious discussions, and will never become law.

The Assembly and Senate each releases ​their own response to the Gov’s budget ​so each is from ONE of the houses

Fancy pants legal word. Basically it ​means the official will or opinion of a ​legislative body

The NYS Legislature is made up of two ​“houses”: the Assembly and the Senate.

Conference Committees

• Mid to Late March

• Members of the Legislature meet in public ​conference committees to hash out disparities ​between the “one-house” budgets and the ​executive budget. A general conference committee, ​known at the Capitol as the “Mother Ship,” sets “table ​targets”—determined amounts of money that can ​be allocated by lawmakers for various topics.
• This step in the process was established in 2007 to ​bring transparency to budget development. It has ​not been very successful.
  

Three-Way Negotiations

• Mid-March till Budget Passage

• The business of negotiating the budget and ironing ​out differences between the Executive and One ​House budgets occur behind closed doors between ​the Governor, the Senate Majority Leader, and the ​Speaker of the Assembly and their respective staff ​members.
  
• The leaders of each house update legislators on the ​progress and take the temperature on various ​compromises during closed-door party meetings ​known as conference.
  

Budget Vote

• By April 1st (but can take longer)

• Once the budget deal has been finalized, the actual ​budget bills are printed. The Governor then typically ​issues a “message of necessity” which allows the ​bills to be voted on immediately and bypass the ​normal three-day review period. The result is that ​legislators have mere hours to review thousands of ​pages of budget bills before voting on them.
  
• No budget bill has failed on the floor in decades, ​making the actual vote the most performative, least ​consequential part of the process