New Parks Commissioner, Restaurant Grades, Citi Bike's Financial Difficulties

New York Gov. Kathy Hochul on Thursday announced a framework deal on a $268 billion state budget that includes money to help New York City and other municipalities close their deficits, adds limits on local police cooperating with federal immigration enforcers and creates new rebate checks to help defray the cost of utility bills.

The emerging agreement with legislative leaders will also roll back the state’s climate change mandates, reshape the state’s auto-insurance laws and eliminate an income tax on tips. Hochul hopes the insurance reforms will drive down rates, a priority for the Democratic governor as she runs for reelection on a pledge of making the state more affordable.

Among dozens of other measures, the wide-ranging deal includes a boost in retirement benefits for state and local employees. Labor unions have been seeking the pensions sweetener for years, but fiscal conservatives warn it could drive up local property taxes.

Despite the 5.5% increase in spending from the prior year, the Democratic governor said the budget would make New York more affordable for its citizens.

“ We're delivering on affordability, on safety, on childcare, on the environment, and on housing,” Hochul said Thursday at the state Capitol. “This budget is the culmination of an ambitious agenda I laid out in January.”

The “general agreement,” as Hochul put it, covers the major pillars of the budget and broke what’s been a weekslong stalemate over a final spending plan, which was due April 1.

Final details need to be ironed out before the terms are written into legislation and put to a vote. Should lawmakers approve the bills as expected, it will be the latest New York state budget since 2010, when negotiations dragged into the summer. Hochul has presided over five state budgets since taking office in 2021, all of which have been tardy.

Legislative leaders did not appear with Hochul at her announcement Thursday, but had signaled in recent days that they were getting closer to reaching a deal.

Money for municipalities

Under the deal, the state will make billions of dollars available to New York City and tens of millions of dollars available to other cities to help them deal with ongoing financial struggles.

In New York City, that means $1.5 billion in additional aid, $1.2 billion for a child care expansion and a tax on pricey unoccupied second homes that state officials expect to bring in $500 million a year for the city.

New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani, a democratic socialist and unlikely ally of the moderate governor, had sought steeper income and corporate tax hikes to fund even more programs. Hochul pared back that ambition, backing the so-called pied-a-terre tax instead.

But the final details of how the tax will be implemented still haven’t been hammered out, despite Hochul’s announcement Thursday. State and city finance officials have struggled to come up with a reliable method for determining which second homes have an actual market value of $5 million or more, the threshold for qualifying for the tax.

The governor’s hometown of Buffalo is slated to receive at least $40 million while the cities of Albany, Rochester and Syracuse are also in line for additional funding, though final details have not yet been released.

Limiting immigration cooperation

Under the budget, state and local police agencies would be prohibited by law from contacting federal immigration authorities about people they encounter during non-criminal enforcement, like traffic stops. Places with stricter sanctuary policies, including New York City, would continue to restrict a broader subset of coordination.

The deal also bans formal 287(g) cooperation agreements with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement and bars county jails from renting space to the agency. Lawmakers agreed to versions of Hochul’s proposals to expand sanctuary locations, including schools and hospitals, where civil immigration enforcement is barred.

The immigration-related measures drew a threat earlier this week from Tom Homan, President Donald Trump’s border czar. He threatened to send additional immigration enforcers to New York if state policymakers followed through with legislation to limit cooperation with ICE.

Utility rebates, climate change and more

Hochul first introduced her budget proposal in January, painting several of her priorities as a way to reduce costs for New Yorkers — or at least stem their growth.

As part of the budget agreement, she was able to convince legislative leaders to get on board with changes to the state’s auto-insurance laws that will limit payouts to people found mostly responsible for a wreck. But she had to agree to tighter rules for insurance companies, who will have to seek prior state approval before implementing any rate hikes and face stricter limits on the profits they can take in — both of which were priorities for lawmakers.

The insurance changes mark a major win for Uber, the ride-hailing app that spent more than $9 million on an advertising campaign urging lawmakers to get on board. The changes were opposed by the New York State Trial Lawyers association, who argued that they would take legal rights away from crash victims.

Lawmakers, meanwhile, got Hochul on board with rebate checks for New York residents dealing with soaring gas and electric costs.

First proposed by the Assembly and embraced by the Senate, Hochul came around to the idea of sending $1 billion in checks to utility-paying households, depending on income.

Hochul and lawmakers are also set to eliminate a lengthy environmental review for some housing projects in New York in hopes of getting apartments and condos built more quickly, a move backed by Mamdani.

On climate change, Hochul insisted on scaling back a 2019 mandate that requires the state to cut its carbon emissions 40% by 2030, a goal the state was on track to miss. A separate mandate of cutting emissions 85% by 2050 will remain in place.

The move put Hochul at odds with environmental groups angered by her about-face on the climate mandates, which the governor had previously touted. But Hochul’s administration had warned that complying with the 2030 mandate had the potential to hike utility rates and gasoline prices, which ran afoul of her affordability agenda in her reelection campaign.

“New York has led and will continue to lead on clean energy and climate. But reality is harsh. We can not meet the current timelines without driving energy costs higher. The facts bear that out, and I cannot let that happen,” Hochul said.

Next steps

Hochul’s office and legislative staff members will now work to write the deal into a series of nine bills that lawmakers will put to a vote over the course of multiple days.

Even before the deal was struck, legislative leaders expressed confidence that voting would take place next week.

”We're nearing the beginning of the end,” Stewart-Cousins said Tuesday. “I really do believe that.”

Good Thursday morning in New York City, where the mayor's "freeze the rent" agenda is up for its first big test.

Here's what else is happening:

• Former Mayor Rudy Giuliani, who has struggled with finances in recent years, is seeking free medical care for his pneumonia via a federal program for people exposed to toxins on 9/11.
• Depending on the problem you're dealing with, your congressional representative's office really can help!
• A year after an Upper West Side chihuahua was attacked by another dog and nearly died, City Councilmember Gale Brewer has introduced a package of bills aimed at preventing those sorts of incidents.
• A Greenwich Village community board is considering whether to install permanent gates around Washington Square Park.
• New Jersey-based Cento Fine Foods is fighting a lawsuit accusing the company of fraudulently marketing San Marzano tomatoes.
• I agree that paperbacks are preferred but even Library of America-sized hardcovers are fine, the real issue is that novels don't need to be the size of a coffee table book.
• Clavicular has been charged with shooting at alligators in a protected part of Florida.
• And finally, classic toy:

Police have identified the man who was stabbed and killed near Times Square this week as they continue to look for the person responsible.

NYPD officials said 39-year-old Leonides Baez was killed in the late-night attack outside a building on West 43rd Street near Broadway, a busy area filled with theaters, restaurants and other attractions.

Officers found him around 11:30 p.m. Monday with stab wounds to his torso and back as well as a slash wound to his face, according to police.

First responders took him to Bellevue Hospital, where he was pronounced dead.

Police said Baez got into an argument with someone before the stabbing, but they’re still investigating what sparked the altercation.

Officials said they’re also still looking for at least one suspect who was wearing all-black clothing and fled the scene eastbound.

Baez’s last known address was in Worcester, Massachusetts, according to the NYPD.

Department data shows there were two other homicides so far this year through May 3 in the Midtown South Precinct, which includes the bustling hubs of Times Square, Grand Central Terminal, Penn Station, Madison Square Garden, Koreatown and Manhattan Mall Plaza. There were no homicides recorded in the precinct during the same timeframe last year.

All other major crime categories in Midtown South are down or at roughly the same level compared to the same period in 2025, the data shows.

Citywide, homicides are down more than 28% compared to this time last year, while felony assaults are down just over 1%, according to officials. Police said this week that the city had its fewest killings on record for the first four months of the year, breaking the previous record set in 2018.

This story is based on preliminary information from police and may be updated.