Gov. Kathy Hochul and the Legislature’s leaders saved the worst for last: The final bits of their budget deals include some truly ugly idiocy.
Beyond the budget’s obscene $268.5 billion bottom line is election-year pandering to special interests and ideological extremes, all at the public’s expense.
In a fit of moral preening, the state’s Democratic leaders imposed a package of anti-ICE measures banning immigration-cooperation by local law enforcement and prohibiting local jails from holding lawbreakers on behalf of ICE.
They also banned banning mask-wearing by federal agents (while refusing to do anything about masked rioters).
Add robbery in plain sight: Hochul handed the state’s public-employee unions $557 million in new pension benefits by rolling back prior reforms.
Teachers get to start collecting at age 58; all employees get to contribute less toward their own retirement payouts — and play even more OT pension-padding games.
This unfunded mandate will force school districts and local governments to hike property and other taxes to cover the added hundreds of millions in yearly costs.
And roughly a third of the state legislators voting for it will benefit from the changes.
The budget deal will also extend a special tax on health insurance, driving premiums needlessly higher, and divert $100 million in Medicaid money to subsidize a benefit fund for “low-income” members of health-care union 1199 SEIU.
The insurance tax was originally part of a scam to boost the state’s take from federal funds, but the feds have closed that loophole so now it’s purely about feeding Albany’s appetite.
We expect more poisonous “gifts” to materialize down the road; the rush to pass these bills will once again guarantee that even most legislators won’t know everything they’re passing into law.
Worse yet, with the legislative session set to run to June 17, they’ll have another three weeks to add more misery with non-budget legislation.
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