Your Guide to the 2025 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 17, 2025
Carl Heastie, Andrea Stewart-Cousins, and Kathy Hochul stand in front of a large pile of papers.
Albany’s biggest battle of the year started in earnest last week, when the state Assembly and Senate released their counters to Governor Kathy Hochul’s budget proposal. | Photos: NY Senate, Office of Governor Kathy Hochul, NY State Assembly | Illustration: Leor Stylar

Albany’s biggest battle of the year started in earnest last week, when the state Assembly and Senate released their counters to Governor Kathy Hochul’s budget proposal. At stake: how the state will spend more than $250 billion, determining everything from funding for schools to oversight of prisons, the taxes paid by millionaires to the wages paid to caregivers.

New York’s budget negotiations have been called the least transparent in the nation. When she took office, Hochul vowed to end the era of decision-making by “three men in a room” — yet the process remains as opaque as ever, and the governor told reporters last week that she “will not be negotiating outside the room where I meet the leaders” of the legislature.

As a result, it’s difficult for ordinary New Yorkers and Albany insiders alike to understand what’s really at play. That’s where New York Focus comes in. We spent the last week poring over the governor’s, state Senate’s, and state Assembly’s budget proposals. In the chart below, you can see where each party stands on the highest-stakes issues. Below that, you can find written descriptions using the drop-down menus.

Reeling from plunging turnout for the Democratic Party in last year’s elections, New York’s leaders vowed to give voters more reason to believe that the one-party state government can deliver for them. “The days of incrementalism are over,” said a top Senate leader. “I’d like to see more dedication to solving problems holistically than just like, ‘Well, let’s do 10 percent of it now and see if we can do more next year.’ That kind of stuff is what people don’t like about government.”

Do this year’s budget proposals meet that bar? You be the judge.

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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.

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

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Also filed in Budget

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