With assist from Shawn Ness
New from New York
Taking place now:
Gov. Kathy Hochul could think about shorter extenders.
A brand new parks attendance document because of the eclipse.
Some advocates slept within the Conflict Room.
The Hochuls’ revenue in 2023 is out.
DAYS THE BUDGET IS LATE: 12
The state price range is stretching into its third week of tardiness. However there are methods the method can doubtlessly transfer alongside: A stopgap spending invoice that expires after 24 hours that would preserve lawmakers in Albany and negotiating.
There’s no indication Hochul is on the verge of doing so after the present price range extender expires on Monday, and lawmakers have insisted they’ll attain a deal within the coming days.
Nonetheless, the concept has been a minimum of mentioned within the governor’s workplace, an individual conversant in the conversations mentioned.
The 24-hour tactic could be a change from Hochul’s present strategy of sending price range extender payments that preserve the state authorities funded largely timed to assembly state employee payroll every week.
Some lawmakers weren’t thrilled with the prospect — underscoring how a each day deadline might be seen as a provocative escalation within the delicate price range negotiations.
“It’s a public relations tactic that the governor must be above utilizing,” Manhattan Democratic Assemblymember Danny O’Donnell mentioned.
Nonetheless, some Democrats and Republicans imagine such a transfer might assist hasten the method, which has changed into a slog amid an deadlock over housing coverage.
“From my perspective, it’s time to get this price range accomplished,” Hudson Valley Democratic Assemblymember Ken Zebrowski mentioned. “No matter strikes this alongside, advantageous by me.”
Lengthy Island Republican Assemblymember Ed Ra believes sending 24-hour extensions of spending might be an efficient use of the governor’s appreciable energy over the price range course of.
“It’s going to maintain the members [in Albany], and it’s going to maintain the dialogue going and it’s hopefully going to maneuver us to a conclusion,” he mentioned.
And Bronx Assemblymember Kenny Burgos was additionally open to the concept: “If it’s a way which will get us to an agreeable state of affairs, then it’s advantageous by me.”
Governors have leverage over lawmakers within the price range course of.
In 2017, with a price range undone and a deadline about to be missed, then-Gov. Andrew Cuomo despatched the Legislature a short lived spending plan that stored the state authorities funded for 2 months.
The technique was meant to show up the warmth on lawmakers, who usually are not paid till a state price range is finalized. Lawmakers in the end reached a deal days later.
New York’s prime elected officers stay at odds over the small print of a sweeping housing plan, which hit snags this week as dozens of Democrats within the Legislature vowed to vote down any price range that weakens tenant protections authorized in 2019.
The impasse has led to the third blown price range deadline within the final three years.
It was a discordant week on the state Capitol, with the state Senate and Meeting approving the fourth price range extension because the missed April 1 deadline on separate days whereas closed-door conferences between the governor and prime lawmakers have been held.
The state Meeting put the ending touches on the extension measure this afternoon. With Hochul’s signature, the state authorities is funded till Monday.
There was a relaxed ambiance within the Meeting chamber this afternoon as lawmakers have been making ready to approve the extension invoice. Some lawmakers introduced their youngsters to the chamber whereas others talked about their weekend plans.
For now, lawmakers haven’t been instructed definitively whether or not to stay on the town for the weekend. — Nick Reisman and Jason Beeferman
WAR ROOM RALLY: After older adults and disabled New Yorkers spent an extended evening sleeping within the Capitol’s Conflict Room, they gathered exterior Hochul’s workplace at present to protest a price range proposal to enlist a single firm to deal with payroll and different administrative duties for New Yorkers who rent their very own residence care aides.
The New York Caring Majority, a coalition of well being care advocacy teams, declare the proposal to interchange lots of of fiscal intermediaries — most of that are run by licensed residence care businesses — with a single vendor beneath a no-bid contract would restrict care choices and delay funds to aides.
The consolidation is meant to scale back Medicaid spending beneath the consumer-directed private help program, or CDPAP, which has ballooned from $6 billion in state and federal spending in 2021 to $9 billion in 2023.
“We’re calling on Governor Hochul, the Meeting and Senate to work with the incapacity group to develop wise and measured reforms to CDPAP on this 12 months’s price range that concentrate on the actual issues within the system and preserve the integrity of this invaluable program,” Lindsay Miller, govt director of the New York Affiliation for Impartial Residing, mentioned in a press release. — Shawn Ness and Maya Kaufman
THE FIRST FAMILY’S PAY: The Hochul household’s revenue soared to $1.9 million in 2023, because of $1.5 million First Gentleman William Hochul made out of Delaware North.
William left the Buffalo-based hospitality firm in August. However his pay greater than doubled from the 12 months prior — because of “a sequence of bonuses and different compensation” he acquired upon his departure.
Whereas Hochul had been with the agency since 2016 and the governor set limits on her involvement in points that influence its enterprise, his position was broadly scrutinized because the state received concerned with points like funding for a brand new Buffalo Payments stadium. He has been working at Manhattan legislation agency Davis Polk since January.
The governor made $250,000 from the state, a wage that’s set in legislation. — Invoice Mahoney
MORE TIME: Supreme Court docket Justice Sonia Sotomayor this week granted former Lt. Gov. Brian Benjamin’s request for extra time, reserving his proper to attraction his federal bribery case to the very best courtroom within the land.
The Harlem Democrat’s workforce is hoping the courtroom makes use of his case to make clear authorities corruption beneath the legislation, however as Playbook reported Thursday, they need to wait to file till the courtroom guidelines on one other related case. — Jeff Coltin
FORM-GATE LATEST: The mayor hit the airwaves this morning to defend a brand new coverage requiring elected officers to acquire approval from Metropolis Corridor’s intergovernmental affairs workforce earlier than assembly with commissioners or high-level workers at businesses.
“We have to be sure that we’re not being duplicative, and [make] positive that if there are different electeds in that space that need the identical challenge addressed, we deliver everybody collectively,” Adams mentioned on PIX 11.
But the brand new mandate — which applies to members of Congress, the legal professional common and even the governor’s workplace — has been acquired poorly.
Public Advocate Jumaane Williams despatched a letter to the mayor’s workplace at present saying he could be ignoring the brand new process.
“This coverage as designed will stymie important interplay between authorities companions — stopping public service on behalf of New Yorkers with a view to service a seeming want of this administration to exert additional management over all authorities operations,” he wrote.
The shape has additionally prompted a multi-day dustup with members of the Metropolis Council at a time when the mayor wants them to approve a serious administration initiative a number of months down the street.
On Thursday, the mayor launched a sweeping land-use coverage that may improve growth throughout the town — a fancy initiative that may require heaps of political capital to win over Council members forward of a closing vote.
Not solely does irking members with further bureaucratic boundaries sap a few of that capital, however the rollout displays poorly on the administration’s means to navigate the 51-member physique.
The Council speaker — who has instructed her members to disregard the edict — mentioned Thursday she was by no means instructed in regards to the new protocol by the mayor’s workforce. (She realized about it from Playbook’s personal Jeff Coltin.)
This morning, the mayor defined that fake pas by saying the coverage had not really been put in place and was leaked prematurely.
But by the point Adrienne Adams realized of the fiat, a number of members had already been directed to fill out the shape after contacting metropolis businesses.
“It’s definitely not the way in which to get stuff accomplished for folks within the metropolis of New York,” the Council speaker mentioned Thursday. — Joe Anuta
SETTLEMENT STEPS: Implementing the phrases of the right-to-shelter settlement will take time, however the metropolis is making progress in its settlement with homeless advocates, a prime Adams aide instructed reporters at present.
As a part of the stipulation, the so-called ready rooms the place migrants dozed on the ground or sitting up whereas they waited days and weeks in anticipation of their subsequent shelter project have to shut. One has closed, two stay open, Deputy Mayor Anne Williams-Isom mentioned.
And the administration can be engaged on notices for migrants who could not obtain further stays in metropolis shelters until they show “extenuating circumstances” — one other a part of the settlement — in addition to coaching workers and making a useful resource information, she mentioned.
“The system’s not going to show over instantly,” Williams-Isom mentioned. “It’s going to take us a few days, a few weeks to be sure that we get that proper.” — Emily Ngo
TOURISM RECORD ECLIPSED: Almost a million folks visited New York state parks from Saturday to Tuesday — a document for that stretch — and state campgrounds totally booked for the evening of the eclipse.
The state’s transportation division additionally noticed a major improve in car visitors, and electrical automobiles charged up for about twice as many miles as they did the week earlier than.
Hochul was considered one of 45,000 guests to see the eclipse at Niagara Falls State Park, however there was one notable absence within the park: Erie County Government Mark Poloncarz, a self-described astronomy fanatic, fled to the clearer skies of Ashtabula, Ohio for the occasion. — Jason Beeferman
OH, RATS: New York Metropolis’s Division of Well being and Psychological Hygiene is warning of a continued improve in circumstances of leptospirosis, a bacterial an infection primarily related to rat urine, based on an advisory despatched at present to well being care suppliers.
Six circumstances have been reported thus far this 12 months, and 24 folks have been identified with the illness in 2023 — greater than the whole variety of circumstances reported to the Well being Division in any prior 12 months.
The town noticed a mean of simply three circumstances yearly between 2001 and 2020. The quantity has since continued to development upwards, with most domestically acquired circumstances reported in hotter and wetter months when the micro organism that trigger the an infection can extra simply survive.
Signs could embody fever, headache, vomiting, diarrhea and jaundice, the division’s advisory states. If not handled, the illness can result in kidney failure, meningitis and liver injury. There have been six deaths among the many 98 domestically acquired circumstances of leptospirosis reported within the metropolis from 2001 to 2023. — Maya Kaufman
DECEPTIVE ADS: Lawyer Basic Tish James introduced that her workplace secured over $1 million in penalties and refunds from Northwell Well being, the state’s largest healthcare supplier.
The corporate misled New Yorkers by billing residents for emergency room visits when all that they had acquired was Covid-19 take a look at kits, she mentioned.
“Throughout a time of nice stress on the top of the pandemic, Northwell Well being prompted extra fear and frustration for New Yorkers who have been despatched emergency room payments for merely taking a Covid-19 take a look at,” James mentioned in a press release.
Northwell owes greater than $400,000 in refunds to about 2,000 sufferers, in addition to $650,000 in penalties to the state.
“Northwell has cooperated absolutely with the Workplace of the New York State Lawyer Basic all through this investigation and voluntarily entered an settlement to settle the matter with out admitting to any wrongdoing,” based on a press release from Barbara Osborn, Northwell’s vp of public relations.
The assertion additionally mentioned that they voluntarily refunded sufferers who went to the testing websites and made out-of-pocket funds, totaling practically $82,000.
The investigation was launched after James’ workplace acquired complaints that that they had acquired emergency room payments after getting a Covid take a look at. The investigation discovered that three separate places posted indicators in March of 2020 and 2021 for testing websites. — Shawn Ness
— Metropolis colleges are urging superintendents to battle for mayoral management. (POLITICO Professional)
— A homeless man stole a FDNY fireboat, however he didn’t know the way to begin the engine. As an alternative he merely floated down the Hudson River. (Each day Information)
— Michael Cohen talked about Donald Trump’s hush cash case forward of the trial beginning Monday. (POLITICO)
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