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
How Does the Inflation Rebate Stack Up?
The proposed “inflation rebate” will not offset NY’s cost-of-living squeeze
Fact Sheet: The 2026 Executive Budget’s Fiscal Outlook
The executive budget makes significant upward revisions to its expected revenue for both the current and upcoming fiscal years (fiscal years 2025 and 2026, respectively), raising anticipated tax receipts by $4.6 billion and $4.1 billion from the levels projected in the fiscal year 2025 enacted budget financial plan. Strong personal income tax receipts drive higher-than-anticipated revenue.
Statement on Fiscal Year 2026 Executive Budget
Governor Hochul today released her executive budget for fiscal year 2026, which reflects an overdue recognition of the State’s strong fiscal position and capacity for making new public investments in order to ease cost of living pressures for working New Yorkers.
What to Expect in the Budget: Housing Policy
The fiscal year 2026 budget cycle is upon us and “affordability” is taking center stage. The mandate to address the rapidly rising cost-of-living in New York has never been more urgent, with consumer prices up about 20 percent since 2020. The cost of housing, in particular, has skyrocketed in the years since the Covid-19 pandemic, with home prices up over 50 percent—making housing costs the number one priority for addressing affordability in New York.