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Welcome to budget time in Albany.

It’s just days before New York’s April 1st budget deadline, which apparently Gov. Kathy Hochul and state legislators won’t meet. Again.

Yancey Roy reports in NEWSDAY that lawmakers are trying to hammer a deal on a roughly $260 billion budget, and it’s not dollars and cents holding them up so much as key policy differences.

Democratic Governor Hochul and the Democrat-controlled Legislature don’t appear terribly far apart on how much New York should spend on the 2026-27 fiscal year, which begins this coming Wednesday.

Here are some of the issues being debated:

Hochul proposes easing or suspending some environmental reviews when a project involves housing, child care or clean energy. She says the red tape of the state’s Environmental Review Quality Act (SEQRA) can add two years to a building completion. Builders and some unions like it. But it’s opposed by environmental groups and progressive Dems — and Republicans in the Legislature who say the way Hochul would cut red tape would override local zoning control. The governor says she wants to slow down the state’s target goals for transitioning off fossil fuels (a 70% reduction by 2030) because it is a key part of her "affordability" agenda.

The NYS Senate and Assembly has proposed raising tax rates on annual incomes of $5 million or more, while Hochul has been steadfast in opposing any income tax hikes.

Legislators will want to bump up Hochul’s $37 billion earmark for school aid, as they always do. They’ll also want to be more generous on child care (especially workers’ pay), prekindergarten and higher education. One area of financial turbulence is whether to boost state pension benefits for people hired in the last 15 years.

And Governor Hochul wants to ban counties from signing formal cooperation agreements with the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency. She wants to prohibit local police from transferring custody of people to ICE without a judicial warrant.

But immigration activists and progressive Dems are pushing for more. They favor the "New Yorkers For All" bill, which, among other things, would ban ICE agents from entering nonpublic areas of government-run locations like schools or motor vehicles agencies, ban local and state agencies from sharing information with ICE and prohibit local police from asking a person’s immigration status.

***

Thousands of people gathered Saturday at anti-Trump "No Kings" demonstrations across Long Island. The 16 rallies were among more than 3,000 protests scheduled nationwide, where participants decried what they called overreach of executive power, as well as ramped-up immigration enforcement and the emergence of a new Middle East conflict. Joseph Ostapiuk and Tara Smith report in NEWSDAY that Show Up Long Island, Engage Long Island, Long Island Network for Change and other grassroots groups organized Long Island's rallies.

Neither Nassau nor Suffolk County police departments reported any incidents or arrests at the protests.

Beth Young reports in EAST END BEACON that nearly 500 people gathered in Greenport’s Mitchell Park and then marched through the village in Saturday’s No Kings protest. A crew of singers (many involved with the North Fork Community Theatre’s current production of “1776”) led the crowd in folk songs. Prior to the march, a half a dozen or more speakers including New York State Assemblyman Tommy John Schiavoni spoke to the crowd.

Denise Civiletti reports on Riverheadlocal.com that demonstrators gathered in downtown Riverhead Saturday afternoon for their “No Kings” rally. The “No Kings 3″ event in Riverhead followed a march from Riverhead High School to Town Hall, where nearly 200 people gathered to express support for OLA of Eastern Long Island’s proposed legislation regarding public safety in the face of ICE activities.

And more than 1,000 protesters packed Lake Street in Patchogue this past Saturday. They were occasionally heckled by passersby, some of whom held Trump flags. NO KINGS demonstrators marched past Republican congressman Andrew Garbarino’s office, chanting, "Garbarino, do your job." Garbarino is chair of the House Committee on Homeland Security.

Suffolk County Republican Committee chairman Jesse Garcia dismissed the demonstrations as "failed PR stunts" by Democrats that do little to influence political issues.

Alleging the protesters were paid, Garcia told Newsday the demonstrators merely "hoot and holler, make noise, disrupt intersections with identifying problems but with no real solutions."

Some demonstrators pushed back against claims that they were paid. Debbie Hooper, 73, of Greenport, joked that she hadn't yet received a paycheck.

"We do it for the love of our country," Hooper said

***

On the north fork this evening, Southold and Greenport officials will give updates about current affordable housing projects in Mattituck and Laurel at the Mattituck-Laurel Civic Association’s monthly meeting at 6:30 p.m. at Veterans Beach in Mattituck.

Meanwhile, New York Gov. Kathy Hochul is proposing to exempt a majority of new housing from state environmental reviews, arguing that sufficient safeguards are in place at the local level. Grace Ashford reports in THE NY TIMES that building in New York is infamously complicated, expensive and burdensome, in part because of a maze of required reviews and permits.

Now Gov. Hochul is pushing the state to adopt a different approach: getting out of the way.

In her budget proposal, Ms. Hochul has called for changing the 50 year old State Environmental Quality Review Act (known as SEQRA) to expedite new housing projects and major infrastructure, saying that substantive reviews are already being done at the local level.

The plan threatens to put the governor, a Democrat, on a collision course with environmentalists, particularly as she seeks to convince state lawmakers to use the state budget to weaken and delay the state’s ambitious climate goals. But as Ms. Hochul enters the final stages of budget negotiations, she has won the support from mayors and leaders in Rochester, Buffalo, Syracuse, Albany, Yonkers and New York City.

Governor Hochul, who is running for re-election this year, is aware of how she failed in 2023 to compel local governments to build housing. The governor’s current plan is deferential to local governments — in fact, it places nearly all of the authority for approving or denying a development in their hands by, for example, allowing local rulings on water and air quality to be final.

For communities that are eager to build, this change would allow them to do so. But it would do little to create new housing in places where communities are resistant, regardless of the need.

Gov. Hochul and NYS legislators unlikely to meet budget deadline