Your Guide to the 2024 State Budget Fight

We read the governor’s, Senate’s, and Assembly’s budget proposals — so you don’t have to.

New York Focus   ·   March 15, 2024
New York Governor Kathy Hochul at a podium next to her budget director, Blake Washington, with a binder, both superimposed over a photo of two stacks of paper files.
Governor Kathy Hochul and Budget Director Blake Washington highlighted Hochul's budget proposals on January 16, 2024. | Photo: Mike Groll / Office of Governor Kathy Hochul | Illustration: Maia Hibbett

Is New York about to slash school budgets? Cut Medicaid spending? Close prisons? The next few weeks will determine this and much more.

Between now and April 1, New York’s lawmakers will negotiate how to spend the state’s billions. They may or may not hit their April Fool’s Day budget deadline. Along with allocating state funding, they have to sort out a host of contentious policy issues, from health care workers’ wages to tenants’ rights. A key question, of course, is how much it will cost to run the state: Governor Kathy Hochul proposed total spending of $233 billion, while the Assembly and Senate want to go up to $246 billion.

They do agree on some things: providing billions to manage the influx of asylum seekers, for example, and overhauling the way kids learn to read. But in many areas, they differ sharply, like on what defines a hate crime and how much to spend on clean water projects. The answers depend on how the looming negotiations go.

This process is notoriously murky. Not only are discussions largely secret, but it can be hard to figure out where the various parties’ priorities lie. There isn’t any government body that prepares a comparison of the different proposals.

That’s where we come in. The New York Focus team has been analyzing the governor, state Senate, and state Assembly’s spending and policy proposals since they came out, and now we’re presenting our findings to our readers as budget season kicks into high gear. Use the table and drop-down arrows below to see where there’s agreement, where there’s conflict, and what’s on the table for New York’s fiscal future.

At New York Focus, our central mission is to help readers better understand how New York really works. If you think this article succeeded, please consider supporting our mission and making more stories like this one possible.

New York is an incongruous state. We’re home to fabulous wealth — if the state were a country, it would have the tenth largest economy in the world — but also the highest rate of wealth inequality. We’re among the most diverse – but also the most segregated. We passed the nation’s most ambitious climate law — but haven’t been meeting its deadlines and continue to subsidize industries hastening the climate crisis.

As New York’s only statewide nonprofit news publication, our journalism exists to help you make sense of these contradictions. Our work scrutinizes how power works in the state, unpacks who’s really calling the shots, and reveals how obscure decisions shape ordinary New Yorkers’ lives.

In the last two decades, the number of local news outlets in New York have been nearly slashed in half, allowing elected officials and powerful individuals to increasingly operate in the dark — with the average New Yorker none the wiser.

We’re on a mission to change that. Our work has already shown what can happen when those with power know that someone is watching, with stories that have prompted policy changes and spurred legislation. We have ambitious plans for the rest of the year and beyond, including tackling new beats and more hard-hitting stories — but we need your help to make them a reality.

If you’re able, please consider supporting our journalism with a one-time gift or a monthly gift. We can't do this work without you.

Thank you,

Akash Mehta
Editor-in-Chief
Also filed in New York State

New York’s plan to put a price on carbon could arrive in 2025. Here’s how it would work.

Updates about an increase in emissions, violence within New York’s prison system, and a breakup of two nonprofits over cannabis in NYC.

One hundred and twenty-four laws that almost were.

Also filed in Budget

New York Focus education reporter Bianca Fortis reflects on the most important education stories in New York this year, and what to keep an eye on next year.

Chris Bragg, New York Focus’s Albany bureau chief, reflects on how even the most familiar topics brought new twists to his coverage in 2024.

The state is due to unveil a “cap and invest” program — its biggest effort yet to fund climate initiatives. But fears about hiking prices may limit its scope.