Budget or budget? Governor Hochul continues to dawdle on the MTA capital plan

ALBANY – Can’t someone else do it?

Gov. Hochul began the state’s budget process on Tuesday by doing the exact opposite of what one does when crafting a budget, instead shirking any responsibility for finding the $33 billion contained in the state’s capital plan MTA is missing…and raising them a few billion dollars at that.

The governor actually began the day by suggesting that the MTA was working on a revised capital plan to replace the one that state Senate Majority Leader Andrea Stewart-Cousins ​​and Assembly Speaker Carl Heastie voted against on Christmas Eve vetoed them at the last possible moment.

“The MTA is developing an updated capital plan to propose to me and the Legislature, and once we receive it, we will determine the best path to funding it,” the governor said in introducing her fiscal year 2026 budget.

A spokesman for the governor later clarified the remarks, saying that the MTA would resubmit its plan to members of the Capital Program Review Board, a relatively obscure body made up of the governor, the House speaker and the state Senate majority leader final judgment makes any proposed MTA capital plan. Any of the panelists can veto the plan.

The MTA does They must submit another capital plan for CPRB approval, but the agency can legally simply submit the same plan rejected by Heastie and Stewart-Cousins, who did not object to certain parts of the plan but rejected it in its entirety for that reason dismissed $33 billion funding gap.

A confusing day in the north of the state

Assembly and Senate leaders have claimed they want to figure out how to get the money, but have said nothing about scrapping the plan and starting over. When Stewart-Cousins ​​spoke to reporters before Hochul’s budget press conference on Tuesday, it sounded like she was waiting for Hochul to make the first move in the budget process, which is usually dominated by whoever is in the governor’s mansion.

“We’ll see what she actually brings in,” Stewart-Cousins ​​said when asked how the conversation about funding the MTA will begin. “Whoever starts (the conversation), we need to get an answer. Everyone knows that. We’ll figure it out.”

Hochul seems to insist that the answer comes from the Assembly and Senate. Blake Washington, the governor’s budget director, gave additional responsibility for closing the budget gap directly to Heastie and Stewart-Cousins.

“What the governor wanted to say is that obviously we need to work with the Legislature and the MTA to ground the plane under a new plan,” Washington said Tuesday. “(The MTA) are obviously professional people, and they have to adapt to the realities that lie before them. The reality is that the state Legislature vetoed their first plan, so it’s incumbent on the MTA to reach out and reach out to the Legislature and have a say.” “If it’s not that, what will it be? What works?”

So far, Hochul’s main offer for the capital plan has been to reduce the amount of money both the state and city should allocate to it. In September, MTA Chief Financial Officer Kevin Willens said the agency expected the state and city to each contribute $4 billion.

But Hochul’s budget only assumes the state and city will provide $3 billion each, turning a $33 billion funding gap into a $35 billion funding gap with the stroke of a pen. Washington said Hochul was simply repeating the exact same amount of the last plan, which was $17 billion cheaper, and that it would be up to lawmakers to decide on additional state and city aid.

“If you’ve seen the budget requests that I get from state agencies, every state agency requires certain things. Every government agency, every public authority has certain expectations. The legislation. Of course, the legislature will look at it. When it comes to the financial plan, they’ll say, “Well, you know, here it’s $3 billion. Can I add another billion dollars, or do I really need it for something else?” “It’s all part of the negotiations,” Washington said.

Hochul’s attempt to make this situation the Legislature’s problem is in direct contradiction to what she has said in recent months about the capital plan. At her press conference in November, she announced her full support for the next five-year renovation plan.

“I express my support for the capital plan to show my commitment to long-term investments that no one else has had the courage to do, because it is difficult. It’s difficult to do this and it’s so easy to throw a spanner in the works.” “It’s so easy to do this and I’m not willing to do that,” the governor said.

Hochul also voiced her support for a capital plan theory in a Dec. 22 interview with ABC7.

“The governors before me did not have the courage to spend the money necessary to invest in new (train) cars, in the cameras and in accessibility for people with disabilities and mothers with strollers,” she said.

Hochul and her administration’s attempt to use the CPRB veto as a cudgel against state legislators could be seen as smart policy, but advocates pointed out that this predictable and exhausting staring contest only hurts people who actually ride buses and trains.

“This is an abdication by the governor of his responsibilities to millions of downstate transit riders and endangers the engine of the state economy,” Reinvent Albany said in a review of Hochul’s budget. “The governor is playing a dangerous political game with the Legislature to determine who will be the adult in Albany.”