05/29/2026
Tom O'Mara states the NYS budget is not affordable and doesn't care about New Yorkers.
🆘 The final 2026-2027 New York State budget being enacted by Governor Kathy Hochul and the Legislature’s Democrat majorities is out of touch with the affordability crisis crushing New York’s state and local taxpayers, and their families and communities and local economies.
🆘 I’m critical of the final plan for its continued focus on spending that is out of control, for its reliance on a broken budget adoption process, and for its failure to move New York in a stronger, more responsible direction economically, fiscally, and on public policy priorities in fundamentally key areas including energy, health care, and public safety and security.
🆘 Governor Hochul and the Legislature’s majorities are increasing spending by at least $14 billion over last year and will adopt a $268-billion-plus fiscal plan. It means the new budget will result in state spending under all-Democrat control since 2018 increasing by 55%, or nearly $100 billion. It also means that New York State will face multi-billion budget deficits for years to come.
🆘 New York State taxpayers today and long into the future already face trying to afford, live, and work under a bloated, wasteful, and unaffordable state government. New York is already one of the highest taxed, heavily mandated, overregulated, and least affordable states in America. This budget makes it worse.
🆘 This budget acts like New York taxpayers and families shouldn’t have a care in the world in the face of the worst affordability crisis they have ever faced. It’s a budget built on bailouts and giveaways to special interests and favored constituencies that everyday taxpayers will never be able to afford. It ignores the ratepayers who can’t afford their unrelenting utility bills and instead tries to buy off the wrath of these ratepayers by giving them back pennies in so-called ”energy rebates” after the state has already collected billions from these same ratepayers through surcharges on their monthly utility bills for years on end. It’s offensive to ratepayers. They shouldn’t stand for it, and I don’t believe they will.
🆘 For the past seven years under one-party, all-Democrat control, New York’s taxpayers, families, and job creators have been sending the message that this state is on the wrong track and that they can no longer afford to live, work, raise a family, or start a small business here. And for the past seven years, as the affordability crisis has increasingly worsened for most New Yorkers, Albany Democrats have said, ”We don’t care.”
🆘 Full statement here: https://www.nysenate.gov/newsroom/press-releases/2026/thomas-f-omara/omara-state-budget-out-touch-affordability-crisis
