As budget talks continue, Hochul calls for single-ticket primaries grouping governor, lieutenant governor nominees

Yahoo

09-04-2025

Apr. 8—ALBANY — Budget negotiations seem to have ground to a halt in the state Capitol, and Gov. Kathleen C. Hochul has added a new ask into her negotiations to change how candidates for lieutenant governor are picked.
At a press conference Tuesday, Senate Majority Leader Andrea A. Stewart-Cousins, D-Yonkers, said negotiations were at a standstill.
"We are at the very beginning of the end, with what I would label as a pause," she said.
While negotiations continue, Stewart-Cousins said on Tuesday that the governor's office had added in a new ask for the final package, another issue unrelated to spending that could benefit her politically. Reports first published by Politico New York, and confirmed by some close to the budget discussions, detailed how Hochul is asking for a change to how the state's lieutenant governor is picked.
Hochul wants to set up a system where the governor and lieutenant jobs are picked as a single ticket by voters in the primary elections. The current system has the governor and lieutenant run separately for their parties line in the general, but generally the governor and lieutenant governor run as a ticket, asking voters to pick both names on their ballots.
That leaves the possibility that voters make their picks from separate tickets, putting two non-aligned people in the leadership seat of the state's executive branch.
For Hochul, that could pose a problem next year. After her first pick for lieutenant governor, Brian Benjamin, faced corruption charges that were later dropped, Hochul has had only marginally better luck with current Lt. Gov. Antonio Delgado, who has announced he won't run for the job again next year. With an open seat on the table, Hochul seems to be looking for the power to make sure her pick for the job stays with her through the campaign.
This new request is adding to the list of issues to be settled in budget talks, Stewart-Cousins said.
"It's one of those additional policy items that showed up and we briefly spoke about it," she said. "There's mixed feelings about it, but again it's something we will consider. Does it belong in the budget? Probably not, but here it is."
The majority leader said that discussions on discovery, where the governor wants to lessen the burden on district attorney offices in when and how they're supposed to turn over evidence for a case to the defense counsel, and lessen the penalty for missing certain deadlines, are continuing and close to completion as well.
Lawmakers in the Senate and Assembly have expressed concern that changes to the discovery reforms of 2019 could hurt people defending themselves from criminal charges, and some have pledged to hold their votes from a budget bill that includes significant rollbacks of those reforms.
Stewart-Cousins said her conference is pushing for a plan that would make some changes while still preserving the rights of the accused, and to give more judicial discretion when deadlines are missed and cases are up for dismissal because of it.
"We've got some really smart people working on language that says that," she said.
Speaker of the Assembly Carl E. Heastie, D-Bronx, told reporters later Tuesday that his team had sent the governor and Senate legislative language that would make some discovery changes.
The governor had asked to change the qualification of what must be turned over from prosecutors to defense counsel from "related" to the crime to "relevant" to the crime, lowering the scope of what must be turned over, and Heastie said he had put forward a plan that would address that ask.
He also said that his plan included a time limit for when defense lawyers can file a complaint over issues related to discovery in a criminal case, and was using a case decided by the state Court of Appeals in 2023, which found that the prosecution has to show the court a concerted effort to gather and share evidence before they can file the document that declares the discovery process has been completed appropriately.
"To show that we're willing to compromise, we've even said we're willing to consider prejudice and we're willing to consider the judge having the ability to determine the proportionality of a sanction," Heastie said.
He said it was now up to the DAs, who have been talking with Hochul about what they will and will not accept, to accept what the legislature put forward.
As talks continue, Stewart-Cousins said the legislature is preparing to cancel their scheduled two-week break that starts after the end of session Wednesday, and return to Albany next week to continue negotiations and extension bills. The extender that's currently funding the government expires midday Wednesday.