FPI’s Fiscal Year 2026 Enacted Budget Update
Note: This presentation does not include content on Education or Childcare policy. Those topics will be covered in an upcoming briefing. https://youtu.be/2scMCCBEVD8
Statement on Governor Hochul’s Announcement of a Budget Agreement
Budget agreement includes serious fiscal missteps that will undermine the State’s ability to weather federal funding cuts
Federal Policy Briefings
Thursday Briefing, April 17 https://youtu.be/AOGhN5R9myw
What to Look for in New York City’s Executive Budget
The Adopted Budget should anticipate realistic revenue and spending on core services while maintaining a flexible reserve to prepare for fiscal uncertainty. The budget response put forward by the City Council takes important steps toward these goals.
Budget Negotiations have Finally Started
Final budget must omit tax cuts, shore up funding for essential services – transit, childcare, housing – and fix unemployment insurance
State Ends Year with $6 Billion over Projections
New York State’s fiscal year 2025 ended on March 31 with good news for the State’s coffers: Total receipts for the year came in $6.0 billion higher than forecast as of January 2025, and a full $12.3 billion higher than forecast at the beginning of the fiscal year in May 2024. As we enter the final stage of budget negotiations, this additional revenue will allow the State to prepare for federal funding cuts by investing in the MTA, childcare, NYCHA, and other critical services and infrastructure.
Ensuring Adequate Funding for Childcare
New York State has enacted substantial expansions to its childcare subsidy program in recent years, supporting more families than ever. Yet the State risks undermining these gains by underfunding the program in fiscal year 2026, forcing New York City and other localities across the state to deny service to eligible families beginning as early as April 2025, putting them on a waitlist.
Preventing a NYCHA Budget Crisis
The New York City Housing Authority (NYCHA) houses over 500,000 New Yorkers and receives a majority of its funding from the federal government, leaving it especially at risk of impending federal budget cuts. New York State must be prepared to fill gaps in both the operating funding and capital funding for NYCHA.
The Urgent Need to Raise Unemployment Benefits
Unemployment insurance stabilizes the state economy during economic downturns, but New York’s UI system has been insolvent for decades and UI benefits are inadequate to keep workers out of poverty.
How to Fund the MTA
Lawmakers must look to progressive revenue sources for MTA funding
Fixing Unemployment Insurance
Download the Memo Download the Report The Fiscal Policy Institute today released two publications on how to fix New York State's insolvent unemployment insurance system: a memo recommending tax changes, and a short report detailing the UI system’s chronic underfunding and low benefit level. Unemployment insurance (UI), which provides temporary income to laid-off workers, is one of the State’s most important economic stabilization policies. Unemployment can both throw workers into poverty and exacerbate recessions by [...]
Annual Briefing on the Executive Budget
FPI released its annual report on the Executive Budget for Fiscal Year 2026
Medicaid Enrollment: Getting the Facts Straight
Stories of a New York Medicaid enrollment crisis are difficult to square with other data. Census data shows that 47.0 percent of New Yorkers were covered by employer-sponsored insurance in 2023; that’s slightly below the national average of 48.6 percent, but certainly not a crisis
Strange Accounting: Understanding the Growth in New York’s Medicaid Spending
The Executive Budget projects total state-share Medicaid growth of 17.1 percent, or $6.4 billion – an extraordinary rate of growth. Department of Health Medicaid spending alone is projected to rise by $4.3 billion or 13.7 percent. Yet enrollment has declined sharply over the past 18 months and is projected to remain virtually flat this year. What explains this dramatic divergence between spending and enrollment?
FPI’s First Look at the Executive Budget
Video of FPI's first look at the fiscal year 2026 executive budget