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What do free buses, cash bail, the minimum wage, charter schools, illicit marijuana stores and CUNY tuition have in common?
They’re all tied to a single piece of budget legislation that New York state lawmakers will put to an up-or-down vote later today.
Gov. Kathy Hochul and legislative leaders finally locked down the last bits of bill language for the $229 billion state budget late Monday, a full month after it was due. Lawmakers introduced a bill at around 8 p.m. that took many of the budget’s most contentious measures — including further changes to the state’s bail laws and a small expansion of charter schools — and put them in a single, 174-page budget bill.
The practice has long been commonplace in Albany, much to the chagrin of government transparency advocates. It even has a name within the walls of the state Capitol: the Big Ugly.
This year’s Big Ugly has dozens of measures that otherwise have little to do with each other, including:
Over the last year, beyond traditional healthcare and federal procurement matters, the government has pursued federal False Claims Act (FCA) investigations and enforcement across high-risk areas, i...