Reinvent Albany Statement on Approved FY 2027 NYS Budget

The state budget is inherently far less transparent than the “regular” legislative process. Budget bills are not publicly amended, there are no bill sponsors, and the Governor, legislative leaders, and their senior staff are typically the only people in Albany who know what’s going on. 

As the Governor crams more important policy proposals into the budget, the public and their elected Senators and Assemblymembers have less of a say in what finally gets voted on. This is undemocratic and results in poor decision-making in which key decisions, like major revisions to the State’s Climate Leadership and Community Protection Act (CLCPA), are decided on behind closed doors.

Minimum Expectations for a Transparent New York Budget Process

1. Honor the State Constitution’s 3-day transparency period, from bills printed to a vote.
2. Provide simple financial tables showing spending and revenue assumptions. 
3. Create a nonpartisan legislative budget office the public can trust.
4. Count billions of reimbursable tax credits as on-budget expenditures. This is not free money.

How the Budget Affected Reinvent Albany’s Priorities

Open Government
Thumbs Down:

• Open Meetings Law video conferencing provisions extended for two more years, with no public accessibility improvements, such as a hybrid meeting requirement per A3615 (Simone) / S1027 (May), as supported by 40+ groups.
  

Strong Democracy
Thumbs Up:

• $145.2 million in funding for state and local elections.
• $100 million for public matching funds and $16.1 million for administration of public campaign finance.
• New mayors given authority to disband “zombie” charter revision commissions. Reinvent Albany strongly supported S8934 (Liu) / A10471 (Septimo), which ensures new mayors do not have to deal with lame-duck charter revision commissions created by their predecessors.

Ethics
Thumbs Up:

• $9.1 million for the Commission on Ethics and Lobbying in Government (COELIG), as supported by watchdog groups, up from $8.9 in the executive budget.
• Procurement lobbying law extended for two years without raising reporting thresholds.
• $9.3 million for the Commission on Judicial Conduct, as requested by the Commission.

Thumbs Down:

• No changes to streamline financial disclosure statements, as proposed by the Governor and supported by COELIG.
• New fees for lobbyist registrations and late trainings go to the general fund, not COELIG to improve its lobbying and financial disclosure filing systems, as requested by watchdog groups.

Corporate Subsidies
Thumbs Down:

• New York state and local governments are spending roughly $10 billion on economic development, including subsidizing corporations and very wealthy investors in the name of job creation and economic development. This spending is highly politicized, wasteful, vulnerable to corruption, and overwhelmingly debunked by economists and fiscal experts not being paid by subsidized industries. 
• No end to the Opportunity Zone tax break, a Trump handout to the wealthy that will cost the state and NYC up to $420 million annually from 2029.
• No action on out of control Industrial Development Agencies: $77 million in state and local sales tax abatements for one full-time job? No problem. 
• No action on hundreds of millions in state subsidies to data centers. 
• No passage of the Stop Climate Polluter Handouts Act, which would end hundreds of millions in annual New York State subsidies to fossil fuels.

Accountable Government
Spending, Budgeting, and Procurement
Thumbs Up:

• Authorities Budget Office (ABO) funded at $4.08 million.

Thumbs Down:

• Once again, we had to spend too much energy defending the Comptroller’s pre-audit authority—a key anti-corruption tool. 
• Emergency withholding power was granted to the Governor’s Division of the Budget by the Legislature, continuing the authorization from prior years. If the budget goes out of balance by more than $2 billion, DOB can withhold spending of its choosing if the Legislature can’t decide on its own cuts.
• Billions in secretive lump-sum spending programs are little more than slush funds for the Governor and Legislature and much worse than the much criticized – but far more transparent – member items they replaced. Prime examples are the Governor’s $2 billion “Special Emergency Appropriation” that has been included in the budget for several years now, and the $1 billion transfer from the General Fund to the Health Care Transformation Fund remain in the final budget, which are opposed by watchdogs.

MTA and Transportation Policy Proposals
Thumbs Up:

• Subway Co-Response Outreach Team funded with $25 million. Reinvent Albany, PCAC, and RPA requested the program be made permanent, and this line item is a step toward that goal.
• Extension of corporate taxes that fund the MTA operating budget. 

OK:

• One-year extension of tax increment financing (TIF) provisions, rather than 10 years as originally proposed. We have repeatedly called for a hearing on potential real-life scenarios in NY and TIF elsewhere before the program is extended.
  

Governance and Home Rule
Thumbs Down:

• School governance authority not given to NYC. Mayoral control was extended for only two years, so the State Legislature and Governor will again be able to use the authorization as a bargaining chip.

Click here to view Reinvent Albany FY 2026-2027 Adopted, Executive, Legislative Budget Compare Chart.