Despite blowup between Hochul, state leaders, work on the budget grinds on

ALBANY — Sure, there was a very public "blowup" between Gov. Kathy Hochul and state legislative leaders Thursday, with the latter taking the unusual step of contradicting the governor on whether a state budget deal had been finalized.

But even while they dickered in dueling press conferences, work to finish the budget grinds on behind the scenes.

Top lawmakers said Friday progress to an actual final budget continued with the hope of budget bills being printed in the next few days and voting commencing by the State Assembly and Senate.

Or at least by next week.

"There is a lot of progress but we’re not at a deal yet because there are still fiscal questions and concerns," said Assemb. Michaelle Solages (D-Elmont). "But I do see an ending to this and an ending sooner than later.

"We’ve identified topics and we’ve identified end points," said the chairwoman of the Black, Puerto Rican, Hispanic & Asian Legislative Caucus. "We are at the end of the process."

Hochul on Thursday declared she and lawmakers had reached a "general" agreement on her top policy priorities for the year. The topics ranged from pushing back against federal immigration roundups to dialing back New York’s climate plan to taxing second homes in New York City.

"This budget is the culmination of an ambitious agenda I laid out in January," Hochul said at a State Capitol news conference.

That prompted a rebuke, just minutes later, from legislators — particularly one from one of the most powerful, Assembly Speaker Carl Heastie. They agree generally on the goals with the governor but nothing is finished, he said.

"We’ve signed off on nothing major," said Heastie (D-Bronx). "I just think it was very premature for the governor to make this announcement."

Around the state Capitol, there has been a saying that lawmakers need to have "three blowups before a budget deal," capturing the yearly up and down negotiations. Just because this one was public doesn’t mean talks screech to a halt, legislators said.

"This wasn’t a policy blowup, but a process blowup," Deputy Senate Majority Leader Michael Gianaris (D-Astoria) said Friday. "Even if there are hard feelings, I doubt anyone is going to decide to hold up the budget out of spite. The bigger point is we are genuinely not done."

That said, he acknowledged the governor’s "characterization that we were done rubbed a lot of people the wrong way."

Even so, top-level staff in the Senate and Assembly continued meetings Friday with the governor’s top staff, a source said. The goal is to try finalize the actual pieces of legislation that must be voted on — allotting spending on schools, roads, the environment, health programs and much more that goes into a state budget — in the coming days.

It’s not the first time Hochul, a Democrat, announced either a framework or a conceptual deal on the budget only for the actual work to take longer. Last year, she declared a deal on April 29, though the passage of budget bills wasn’t completed till May 8. The budget is supposed to be adopted by April 1, the start of New York’s fiscal year.

Her predecessor, Andrew M. Cuomo, often used the same tactic of announcing something like a framework while actually continuing to work on the substance of a budget.

"It’s an effort by a governor to force legislators to close down negotiations," said Blair Horner, a longtime Albany observer and executive director of the New York Public Interest Research Group.

More and more, since Cuomo’s tenure began in 2011, governors control the pace of negotiations and often hold out to get lawmakers to back their policy agenda as part of the budget.

Horner noted that under a budget "reform" enacted in 1998, paychecks for state legislators are withheld from April 1 until a budget is passed. But not so for the governor — which adds to the executive’s leverage.

"So when a governor holds the budget hostage and legislators don’t get paid, but a governor does," he said, "you’re really pouring salt in the wounds."

By Yancey Roy

yancey.roy@newsday.com@yanceyroy