If budgets are indeed "moral documents," the governor and the state legislature are in trouble.
"Governor Kathy Hochul highlights major budget win on Affordability Agenda, May 28, 2026 (Mike Groll / Office of Governor Kathy Hochul)
Read the full article on Hellgate
9:33 AM EDT on May 29, 2026
If budgets are "moral documents," what does it mean that the New York State budget, passed in the wee hours of Thursday morning, leaves 450,000 New Yorkers without health insurance coverage and severely delays the state's response to the climate crisis?
Despite the $268.5 billion state budget being two months late, Governor Kathy Hochul should be happy, because this is basically the document she wanted, including changes to state laws that may lower car insurance premiums, a buffer zone bill that makes it a crime to protest too closely to religious institutions, and $1 billion in "energy credit" rebates that will go out as $150 or $200 checks to more than 8 million New Yorkers.
Hochul also didn't have to take the political risk of passing significant new taxes on the rich, or more robust immigration protections—partly because she neutralized her left flank by signing fat checks to Mayor Zohran Mamdani, allowing him to keep his campaign promise of universal childcare alive, and buying his silence on the more odious choices like the climate law evisceration and kicking hundreds of thousands of people off of their Essential Plans in four weeks. (The Mamdani administration has not responded to our request for comment on the budget.)
State lawmakers, who in theory supported many of the more progressive positions, but in practice seemed worn down by the unusually drawn-out and secretive budget process, and who hadn't taken a paycheck since April 1, voted to get on with it. (After the vote, they lined up for their backpay checks.)
"If you own a car and you need to insure the car, then Albany did something for you this year," Michael Kinnucan, the health policy director at the left-leaning Fiscal Policy Institute, told Hell Gate. "But if you own a body and you need to insure a human body, then you're really out of luck."
New York's Essential Plan provides 1.7 million New Yorkers with free or low-cost health insurance, but federal budget cuts meant that without state intervention, plan eligibility would be tightened, and some 450,000 would lose coverage at the end of June, including tens of thousands of immigrants.
Kinnucan called the lack of anything in the budget to help these people "a stunning policy decision," and added that it was especially galling given that the governor and state lawmakers found cash for other, less existential initiatives.
"There's a lot of money spent on, you know, complete nonsense, like the utility rebate thing," Kinnucan said. "This is not an austerity budget. It's just a budget that doesn't prioritize maintaining healthcare coverage."
He added, "We're talking about working class New Yorkers who make the state run, and if they're not healthy that impacts everyone."
In an emailed statement to Hell Gate, a spokesperson for the governor pointed the finger at Congressional Republicans. "New York's Republican members of Congress own these health care cuts after voting to rip healthcare away from millions of working families," they said. "While no state can backfill these devastating cuts, the governor took decisive action to protect coverage for as many New Yorkers as possible—over 1.3 million people that would've otherwise lost coverage due to Republicans' cruel decision."
But the governor can't blame the GOP for the rollbacks to the 2019 landmark Climate Leadership and Community Protection Act (though keep reading, she will try)—Hochul demanded those herself.
The road to how we got here is long and extremely complicated (New York Focus did a good job of pulling together a detailed blow-by-blow earlier this year). But the main theme is that Hochul has thrown up roadblocks to enacting the state's climate regulations at almost every turn—whether it's backing away from implementing a carbon tax system that would have ultimately lowered the cost of fossil fuels while transitioning to renewables, to refusing to implement the benchmarks that were required in 2024 by the CLCPA to meet the law's aggressive targets (those targets: cut New York's emissions to 40 percent below 1990 levels by 2030 and then to 85 percent below 1990 levels by 2050). And this year, Hochul insisted that the state legislature needed to both push back the 2024 deadline to 2030 while also diluting the emissions standards themselves, a move that Liz Moran, the New York policy advocate for Earthjustice, likened to "grade inflation" and "cheating on the test."
"The governor chose to do this. She manufactured a crisis around our climate law in an election year, while New Yorkers are suffering from extremely high energy bills," Moran told Hell Gate.
Earthjustice was one of the groups that sued Hochul for failing to implement the CLCPA, and won a ruling that was going to force the administration to actually follow through—until this week's state budget essentially rendered the case moot.
Hochul got the legislature to give her the watered-down emissions standards, and an extension to come up with the benchmarks by 2028.
"The governor has weakened what is ultimately a really important tool to shift the state away from dirty and expensive fossil fuels and towards affordable clean energy solutions," Moran said. "These changes amount to keeping New Yorkers on gas longer." (State lawmakers did throw a $1 billion bone to the "Sustainable Future Program," but Moran said it's nowhere near enough to balance the scale of slashing the CLCPA.)
In a statement to Hell Gate, Ken Lovett, Hochul's senior communications advisor on energy and environment, once again attempted to blame the federal government for the governor's kneecapping of state environmental policy.
"Governor Hochul has made clear her top priority is keeping the lights on and costs down for all New Yorkers. While reckless policies coming out of Washington D.C. continue to bring unprecedented challenges, the commonsense reforms Governor Hochul fought for in this year's budget protect New York's status as a climate leader, while prioritizing affordability for New Yorkers. Governor Hochul remains committed to building on the state's robust record of climate and clean energy successes."
Lovett also passed along a list of three people who were willing to put their names on statements endorsing the governor's climate rollbacks: the head of a housing builders' lobbying organization that is funded by utility companies; the president and CEO of the Business Council of New York; and former lieutenant governor under Andrew Cuomo, Robert Duffy, who now leads the Greater Rochester Chamber of Commerce.
There are fewer than five whole days on the legislative calendar (which is perhaps not an accident) but Moran urged New Yorkers who are concerned about the climate crisis to tell their state representatives to pass a set of bills that aren't budget-related, including a moratorium on new data centers, and a bill that would force the owners of large distribution warehouses (i.e. Amazon) to measure and reduce truck emissions.