Hochul’s state-budget game-playing is getting ever – Latest News
Gov. Kathy Hochul’s passive-aggressive efforts to get her manner in state price range negotiations simply blew up in her face — a grim warning of how (in)efficient she is perhaps if she wins one other time period this November.
For the third straight 12 months, Hochul introduced an “agreement in principle” on core points earlier than her negotiating companions thought the deal was performed, and this time one of them known as her on it.
We not often agree with Assembly Speaker Carl Heastie, however he had each proper to talk out and announce the shortage of even a handshake settlement, forcing Hochul’s staff to cancel its deliberate Red Room show with the Assembly and state Senate leaders.
“There’s no budget deal. There’s no deal,” the Bronx Democrat instructed Albany reporters.
In the previous, Heastie and Senate chief Andrea Stewart-Cousins let the gov get away together with her headline-grabbing bulletins, which led the media to report she’d gotten her manner when she hadn’t — an impression that lingered even when the ultimate deal didn’t go her manner.
So kudos to Heaste for eventually protesting, “Some of these things are still incomplete.”
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In explicit, he sees “many unresolved things on the financial side of the budget” — and the price range is purported to be all concerning the financial aspect, not the coverage points the place Hochul’s desirous to declare victory.
The unresolved points embrace the state’s $124 billion Medicaid spending plan, which in practically half the $260-plus billion price range, and a growing half of it as a result of so many particular pursuits feed off it.
Which is why it faces a federal probe looking for out fraud, waste and abuse.
Sadly, when the deal is ultimate, it’s sure to incorporate doubtful surprises, like $1 billion for “energy rebates” which are plainly simply one other Albany effort at election-year bribery at taxpayer expense.
Hochul recurrently poses as essentially the most reasonable, smart participant in Albany, however she’s plainly simply as cynical as the remainder of them.
