'Depends on how you spin it'
It took an extra week, but New York Gov. Kathy Hochul got the subsidies for the Buffalo Bills and tweaks to the state bail law that she pushed for in the $220 billion state budget agreement announced Thursday.
The final spending plan grew $4 billion from the Democratic governor’s initial proposal, and includes new outlays for child care, an expansion of the earned income tax credit and a suspension of 16-cents-per-gallon of gasoline taxes. It has record funding for school aid and health care. There’s also more than $1 billion for property tax rebate checks that I’m sure will magically arrive in the weeks before the November election. But most of the headlines coming out of the budget centered on non-fiscal matters, including the controversial 2019 bail law.
As I reported in The Wall Street Journal, judges also will now be able to detain a defendant before trial for more hate crimes and crimes related to gun possession. For bail-eligible offenses, judges must still pick “the least restrictive alternative” to ensure a defendant’s return to court, but they can consider an expanded number of factors including criminal history and whether the alleged charge “caused serious harm to an individual or group.”
Lawmakers also agreed to award up to three licenses for casinos in New York City, Long Island and the lower Hudson Valley. Companies will be required to pay at least $500 million for a downstate license, but already several major casino operators have expressed interest.
“There is an appetite,” State Sen. Joe Addabbo, a Democrat from Queens, told me.
Las Vegas Sands Corp. is considering possible New York area locations for a casino and has held conversations with Mets owner Steven Cohen about a casino next to Citi Field, I reported Friday with Katherine Sayre.
New York City Mayor Eric Adams confirmed a report by The City’s Katie Honan that he met with Cohen earlier this year, but declined to specify what they discussed. The Democratic mayor didn’t weigh in on the idea of a casino near the Mets’ ballpark.
“We’re looking at all the proposals,” Adams said. “We want the best for New York City. We want the economic development.”
Perhaps the budget provision that will impact me most was the re-authorization of cocktails-to-go. The permission will last for three years but, as Ginger Adams Otis and I report, comes with one catch: customers will need to buy “substantial food” along with their drinks. No one has defined that. The last guy (who’s from Queens, not Buffalo) said at one point that chicken wings didn’t fit that bill, but as Erin Durkin pointed out, “he ain’t the governor anymore.”
Hochul said she will be hitting the road this week to tout the budget after remaining out of sight for the final stretch of negotiations. Her opponents have also picked at the spending plan, and it will likely be a cornerstone of the primary and general election campaigns.
“Depends on how you spin it, right?” State Sen. Diane Savino — a retiring Staten Island Democrat who is entering a golden age of quotability — told the New York Times. “If we lead with, ‘We’re giving you relief at the pump, addressing public safety, record investment in child care and middle-class tax cuts,’ then good plan … I was joking with someone yesterday that if we’re not careful, the story is going to be, ‘Bail fail, Buffalo boondoggle and booze to-go.”
THE QUESTION: Where was the first legal casino in modern (after 1950, say) New York? Hint: It’s still operating.
Know the answer? Drop me a line at jimmy.vielkind@gmail.com. Or just write with thoughts, feedback or to say hi.
THE LAST ANSWER: Medicaid is the largest spending area of the New York state budget, followed by school aid.