State budget: 5 unanswered questions as the April 1 deadline looms

And Eyes & Ears has what you need to catch up on the week.

Good afternoon — it’s Friday and Memory Day.

In today’s CapCon:

• Here’s how state budget negotiations work as we enter the last full week before the April 1 deadline.

• Ahead of that, here are five unanswered questions that Hochul and lawmakers will have to answer before they strike a deal.

• New Bills of Note: Changing prison disciplinary standards (Salazar), expanding college in prisons (Dilan) and creating a New York DOGE (Ortt).

• Eyes & Ears: What you might have missed from the week. Catch up here.

Names in today’s CapCon: Gov. Kathy Hochul, Assembly Speaker Carl E. Heastie, Senate Majority Leader Andrea Stewart-Cousins, Sen. Julia Salazar, Senate Minority Leader Rob Ortt, Assemblyman Erik Dilan

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The state budget is due April 1. We’re keeping you updated on negotiations around the spending plan in the meantime.

(Lori Van Buren/Times Union)

🗣️ Are we in the final days of state budget talks? Maybe.

There is very little chance that Gov. Kathy Hochul and Democrats in the state Legislature will come to an agreement on the state budget next week.

The spending plan is due April 1, which is the following Tuesday. And if there’s one thing we know about Albany, it’s that Hochul and lawmakers like to use every second they have leading up to a deadline. Why stop when you don’t have to?

But we’re now getting to the meat and potatoes of state budget talks. It’s crunch time.

Hochul met with legislative leaders this week to start the first round of post-Mothership budget talks. I’d love to tell you that an agreement is near but, at this point, we don’t know what the timeline looks like.

It’s probably useful for you to know how state budget negotiations work. It’s not complicated but I find that a lot of people don’t know how the sausage gets made.

The beginning: First, it’s important to know that the majority of the budget isn’t negotiated between Hochul and the legislative leaders. That’s done through staff, who leave the bigger, policy-related questions to lawmakers and the governor.