ALBANY, N.Y. (AP) — New York state lawmakers are on the verge of passing a $237 billion budget that includes sweeping plans to build housing, shutter unlicensed cannabis storefronts and help manage the city's migrant crisis.
The raft of proposals is expected to pass through the Legislature late Friday and into the weekend, almost three weeks after the budget was due.
The governor and leaders of the state Senate and Assembly weighed countless political and business demands during their negotiations behind doors. They also contended with a cyberattack that temporarily shut down the statehouse's bill-drafting office just as legislation started to flow.
The housing agreement, the budgetary crown jewel for Democratic Gov. Kathy Hochul, was the most contentious issue of the spending plan.
The goal is to tackle one of the state's most pressing problems: a housing crisis in New York City, where supply is ever shrinking and prices are astronomical. To do so, Hochul turned to a familiar idea: a tax break for developers who agree to include below-market-rate apartments in new buildings.
New York first offered a tax incentive for developers to build in the 1970s, when the city was in dire financial shape, then more recently required buildings to offer some discounted apartments in order to qualify for the program, known as 421-a.
The incentive has always been controversial. Critics bash it as a giveaway for developers, who in turn respond that the cost of building in the city makes doing so unprofitable. Opponents also point out that it costs the city a lot of money: about $1.8 billion in one of its final fiscal years.
As for its effectiveness, a report from the Furman Center, a housing and urban policy research group at New York University, found 68% percent of the more than 117,000 housing units built between 2010 and 2020 benefited from the program.
State lawmakers let the 421-a tax break expire in 2022, with lawmakers in the state Legislature thwarting an effort from Hochul to adjust the program.
This year, the plan was to resurrect the tax incentive but also weave in the interests of labor unions fighting for wage standards and progressives who have long wanted stronger protections for tenants against unreasonable rent increases and evictions.
The end product is something called 485-x. And though the formal budget language has not yet been released, officials have said it includes a tax break for developers if they rent a percentage of their apartments for below market rate, a wage deal for construction workers and a package of protections for tenants.
The state will also offer tax incentives to turn vacant office space into apartments and will set aside a pot of money to build apartments on state-owned land, as part of the larger strategy to jump-start the housing supply.
“This is a great deal for New Yorkers,” Hochul said in an interview this week on Spectrum News NY1.
Hochul has presented the agreement as a big legislative victory on a pressing problem, especially after her prior plans to drive construction in the state have failed in the statehouse. It also marked an important moment of compromise with progressive Democrats at a critical time for her party.
In a few months, New York is set to be a congressional battleground where races in New York City's suburban districts could decide which party controls the House. Hochul, who has taken a more prominent role in her party’s messaging strategy, has appeared eager to carry Democratic political wins into the campaign season, and has already begun to tout her budget wins in public.
The governor also pushed to legislate other headline-grabbing issues, including how to handle the large number of international migrants who have overwhelmed New York City’s homeless shelters. Others include retail theft concerns that have resulted in cumbersome security measures at many stores, and unlicensed cannabis storefronts that have become ubiquitous in the city.
Over the objections of progressives, Hochul pushed through a measure to enhance criminal penalties for assaulting retail workers, though at the bargaining table she agreed to make the crime a Class E felony rather than the more stringent felony classification she had first proposed.
The budget also includes $40 million to establish law enforcement teams dedicated to organized retail theft and a $5 million tax credit for small businesses to install security measures.
On the bootleg marijuana shops, the budget is set to have a measure allowing local law enforcement to more easily shut down unlicensed stores. The move is intended to solve bureaucratic problems that have embarrassingly stymied government efforts to close thousands of bootleg retailers, which operate in glitzy storefronts on seemingly every street corner in New York City.
The state will also spend $2.4 billion to provide migrants shelter services, legal aid and health care, among other things, another proposal from the governor's office.
The budget, composed of several dense pieces of legislation, has been slowly introduced in incremental steps this week and is expected to be finalized in a set of votes late Friday night and into the weekend.
FILE - The New York state Capitol is seen in Albany, N.Y., Tuesday, June 20, 2023. New York state lawmakers are on the verge of passing a $237 billion budget, Friday, April 19, 2024, that includes sweeping plans to build housing, shutter unlicensed cannabis storefronts and help manage the city's migrant crisis. (AP Photo/Hans Pennink, File)
WASHINGTON (AP) — President Joe Biden on Thursday defended the right to protest but insisted that “order must prevail” as college campuses across the country face unrest over the war in Gaza.
“Dissent is essential for democracy," he said at the White House. "But dissent must never lead to disorder.”
Tensions have been building for days as demonstrators refuse to remove campus encampments and administrators turn to police to clear them by force, leading to clashes that have seized attention from politicians and the media.
Biden said he did not support calls to send in the National Guard. He also said that the protests have not prompted him to reconsider his approach to the war. The Democratic president has occasionally criticized Israel's conduct but continued to supply it with weapons.
His remarks, occurring shortly before he left the White House for a trip to North Carolina, came after days of silence about the protests. Republicans have tried to turn the scenes of unrest into a campaign cudgel, and Biden said he rejected efforts to use the situation to “score political points.”
“This isn’t a moment for politics," he said. "It’s a moment for clarity.”
Biden's last previous public comment on the protests came more than a week ago, when he condemned “antisemitic protests” and “those who don’t understand what’s going on with the Palestinians.”
The White House, which has been peppered with questions by reporters, had gone only slightly further than the president. On Wednesday, press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said Biden is “monitoring the situation closely," and she said some demonstrations had stepped over a line that separated free speech from unlawful behavior.
“Forcibly taking over a building," such as what happened at Columbia University in New York, "is not peaceful," she said. "It’s just not.”
Biden has never been much for protesting. His career in elected office began as a county official when he was only 28 years old, and he’s always espoused the political importance of compromise over zealousness.
As college campuses convulsed with anger over the Vietnam War in 1968, Biden was in law school at Syracuse University.
“I’m not big on flak jackets and tie-dyed shirts,” he said years later. “You know, that’s not me.″
Despite the White House's criticism and Biden's refusal to heed protesters' demands to cut off U.S. support for Israel, Republicans blame Democrats for the disorder and have used it as a backdrop for press conferences.
“We need the president of the United States to speak to the issue and say this is wrong," House Speaker Mike Johnson, a Louisiana Republican, said on Tuesday. "What’s happening on college campuses right now is wrong.”
Johnson visited Columbia with other members of his caucus last week. House Republicans sparred with protesters while speaking to the media at George Washington University in Washington, D.C., on Wednesday.
Former President Donald Trump, his party's presumptive nominee, also criticized Biden in an interview with Sean Hannity on Fox News.
“Biden has to do something,” he said. “Biden is supposed to be the voice of our country, and it’s certainly not much of a voice. It’s a voice that nobody’s heard.”
He repeated his criticisms on Wednesday during a campaign event in Waukesha, Wisconsin.
“The radical extremists and far-left agitators are terrorizing college campuses, as you possibly noticed," Trump said. “And Biden’s nowhere to be found. He hasn’t said anything."
Kate Berner, who served as deputy communications director for Biden’s campaign in 2020, said Republicans already tried the same tactic four years ago during protests over George Floyd’s murder by a police officer.
“People rejected that,” she said. “They saw that it was just fearmongering. They saw that it wasn’t based in reality.”
Apart from condemning antisemitism, the White House has been reluctant to directly engage on the issue.
Jean-Pierre repeatedly deflected questions during a briefing on Monday.
Asked whether protesters should be disciplined by their schools, she said “universities and colleges make their own decisions” and "we’re not going to weigh in from here.”
Pressed on whether police should be called in, she said “that's up to the colleges and universities.”
When quizzed about administrators rescheduling graduation ceremonies, she said “that is a decision that they have to decide" and “that is on them.”
Biden will make his own visit to a college campus on May 19 when he's scheduled to deliver the commencement address at Morehouse University in Atlanta.
Associated Press writer Adriana Gomez Licon in Miami and AP writer Colleen Long and White House Correspondent Zeke Miller in Washington contributed to this report.
President Joe Biden departs after delivering remarks about student protests over the war in Gaza, from the Roosevelt Room of the White House, Thursday, May 2, 2024, in Washington. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci)
President Joe Biden departs after delivering remarks about student protests over the war in Gaza, from the Roosevelt Room of the White House, Thursday, May 2, 2024, in Washington. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci)
President Joe Biden delivers remarks about student protests over the war in Gaza, from the Roosevelt Room of the White House, Thursday, May 2, 2024, in Washington. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci)
President Joe Biden delivers remarks about student protests over the war in Gaza, from the Roosevelt Room of the White House, Thursday, May 2, 2024, in Washington. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci)
NYPD officers from the Strategic Response Group form a wall of protection around Deputy Commissioner of Legal Matters Michael Gerber and Deputy Commissioner of Operations Kay Daughtry, not in the picture, during a press conference regarding the ongoing pro-Palestinians protest encampment at Columbia University in New York on Monday, April 22, 2024. (AP Photo/Stefan Jeremiah)
UCLA professor Nick Shapiro speaks at a news conference on the UCLA campus, after nighttime clashes between Pro-Israel and Pro-Palestinian groups, Wednesday, May 1, 2024, in Los Angeles. (AP Photo/Jae C. Hong)
A pro Palestinians sign is shown on the UCLA campus, the morning after clashes between Pro-Israel and Pro-Palestinian groups, Wednesday, May 1, 2024, in Los Angeles. (AP Photo/Jae C. Hong)
Pro-Palestine student activists face off with New York Police Department officers during a raid on Columbia University's campus at the request of Columbia University President Minouche Shafik on Tuesday evening, April 30, 2024 in New York. NYPD officers, including those from the police department's Strategic Response Group, arrested approximately 100 people as they dismantled encampments and removed individuals occupying Hamilton Hall. (Seyma Bayram via AP)
President Joe Biden attends the White House Correspondents' Association Dinner at the Washington Hilton, Saturday, April 27, 2024, in Washington. (AP Photo/Manuel Balce Ceneta)
