Have New York legislators figured out a way to get free money from the federal government? With a budget proposal to win $4 billion in federal dollars to fund Medicaid, the state’s health insurance program for low-income residents, that’s their hope.

Medicaid funding has emerged as one of the most divisive issues in the fight over this year’s budget, due April 1. Seeking to rein in the program’s $30 billion cost to New York, Governor Kathy Hochul proposed over $1 billion in cuts, which would include reducing wages for health aides and payments to nursing homes.

The legislature wants to go in the opposite direction, proposing billions of dollars in additional spending on hospitals, nursing homes, and other investments. The measures come on the heels of an aggressive campaign from the state’s main hospital lobby and largest healthcare workers’ union calling for a multi-billion-dollar boost in Medicaid funding.

Citing a New York Focus report, state Assemblymember Jessica González-Rojas introduced a bill last week that would effectively ban public agencies from referencing a largely debunked medical syndrome long used to justify deaths in police custody.

Authorities have cited the ailment, known as “excited delirium syndrome,” in some of the country’s highest-profile police killings in recent years, including those of George Floyd and Elijah McClain. While the medical establishment has rejected the syndrome as too vague to be scientifically sound, some departments, including the New York City Police Department, still teach cops to look for it. In December, New York Focus revealed that the NYPD trains recruits on broad criteria to spot excited delirium — and subdue supposed sufferers with stun guns and pepper spray.

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.