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State Approves $268 Billion Budget How They Voted Auto insurance Childcare Education Environmental Immigration enforcement Public safety Utilities

Includes rebate checks, retiree changes Teachers in the Beacon, Haldane and Garrison school districts, waiters at Highlands eateries and millions who filed tax returns in 2024 are among the winners in a newly enacted $268 billion state budget that also seeks to reduce both auto insurance rates and utility costs. After several contentious issues delayed passage of the budget for nearly two months past the April 1 start of the fiscal year, Gov. Kathy Hochul and state legislators finalized a 2026-27 spending plan on May 28. One of the provisions is a round of rebate checks that will be issued this fall in response to rising electricity and gas rates. An estimated 8.2 million residents who filed taxes in 2024 and made up to $300,000 will receive checks ranging from $100 for individuals to $200 for joint filers. Another utility-related initiative in the budget will freeze electricity and gas rates at existing levels if the Public Service Commission denies a utility's request to increase prices. Jonathan Jacobson, who introduced the proposal in the Assembly, said it amends state law that allowed a utility to automatically receive its full request if the PSC rejects its proposed new rates without proposing an alternative. "For too long, utilities have held customers hostage to their demands," said Jacobson, a Democrat whose district includes Beacon. "Now, if the PSC determines that the rate increase should be zero, it will be zero." Waiters, bartenders, food deliverers and other workers who rely on tips will not have to pay income taxes in 2026 on gratuities up to $25,000, in line with federal law. Hochul and state lawmakers also agreed to revise the Tier 6 retirement bracket, which applies to state and local public employees whose service began on or after April 1, 2012. The state budget is a series of bills passed by the Senate and Assembly and enacted by the governor. Here is how Sen. Rob Rolison, a Republican whose district includes the Highlands, and Assembly members Jonathan Jacobson, a Democrat whose district includes Beacon, and Dana Levenberg, a Democrat whose district includes Philipstown, voted on the budget bills on May 26 and 27. State Operations (S9000D) Senate 43-19: Rolison yes | Assembly 102-40: Jacobson yes; Levenberg yes Legislature and Judiciary (S9001A) Senate 45-17: Rolison yes | Assembly 98-44: Jacobson yes; Levenberg yes Debt Service Fund (S9002A) Senate 48-10: Rolison yes | Assembly 109-34: Jacobson yes; Levenberg yes Aid to Localities (S9003D) Senate 44-18: Rolison yes | Assembly 112-30: Jacobson yes; Levenberg yes Capital Projects Budget (S9004D) Senate 45-17: Rolison yes | Assembly 111-31: Jacobson yes; Levenberg yes Public Protection and General Government (S9005C) Senate 39-22: Rolison no | Assembly 93-47: Jacobson yes; Levenberg yes Education, Labor, Housing, Family Assistance (S9006C) Senate 58-3: Rolison yes | Assembly 119-25: Jacobson yes; Levenberg yes Health and Mental Hygiene (S9007C) Senate 42-20: Rolison yes* | Assembly 102-41: Jacobson yes; Levenberg yes Transportation, Economic Development, Environmental (S9008C) Senate 53-10: Rolison yes | Assembly 110-33: Jacobson yes; Levenberg yes Miscellaneous Legislation (S9009C) Senate 38-24: Rolison yes* | Assembly 91-52: Jacobson yes; Levenberg yes *Rolison was the only Republican to vote yes on this bill. Teachers and teaching assistants in that bracket will be able to retire five years earlier, at 58. The changes also raise the amount of overtime firefighters and police officers can use in calculating their salaries for pension purposes from 15 percent of annual wages to 25 percent. For members of the state Employee Retirement System, the overtime ceiling rises from $22,000 to $30,000 and will increase another 3 percent each year, and the portion of their salaries deducted for retirement will be reduced. While labor unions celebrated the changes, the lower individual contributions to pensions will "result in new pension costs for local government...

What's in the 2026 State Budget Fiscal Education Social Services Child Care Housing Criminal Justice Climate and Environment Immigration New York City Car Insurance

A searchable database of the most consequential decisions This story originally appeared in New York Focus, a nonprofit news publication investigating power in New York. Sign up for its newsletter here. It's two months late, but it's finally here: New York state's $269 billion budget. The big story of this year's budget was the face-off between Governor Kathy Hochul and New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani, who made "tax the rich" a rallying cry of his campaign. Even as she stumped for Mamdani last fall, Hochul was adamant that she would not raise taxes on the wealthy. In the end, they split the baby. Mamdani didn't get what he most wanted: a tax hike on New York's top earners. But he did get billions of dollars from the state to plug a hole in the city's budget, new funding for child care, and a tax on luxury second homes in New York City, giving him something to burnish his socialist cred. Hochul and Mamdani also had to contend with major federal cuts and threats from President Donald Trump about more pain to come. The governor and mayor have managed to stay on good terms. As the budget neared completion, Mamdani said in a statement that they had "partnered through every step of the process." The budget contains hundreds of new programs and laws. Some of the most important: limits on police collaboration with ICE, a significant weakening of the state's landmark climate law, and removal of a major barrier to new housing statewide. We've pored over thousands of pages of budget documents to make this guide, which will tell you about several dozen of the most important decisions lawmakers made this budget cycle. In the chart below, you can see where each party stood and what made it into the final deal. Below that, you can find written descriptions using the drop-down menus. Happy reading! Total spend: The total sum the state expects to spend over the next year is $269 billion. That's more than what the governor ($260 billion) and Assembly ($266 billion) proposed spending, and nearly what the Senate proposed ($270 billion). Tax the rich? The budget does not hike personal income taxes or corporate taxes, despite a push by New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani and both legislative chambers. It does extend a pandemic-era corporate tax hike by three years — maintaining the current 7.25 percent rate through 2029. Rainy day fund: While an exact figure for how much money is in the state's rainy day fund isn't public yet, Budget Division spokesperson Tim Ruffinen said it's about $15 billion, roughly the same as when the budget process started. Public pensions: The state's major public sector unions won significant boosts to their workers' pension plans. Public school teachers will now be able to retire at 58 with full pensions. Many public employees will have their pension payments boosted, and their required contributions to the state pension fund lowered. The Department of Budget has estimated that this change will cost $557 million per year. Most of that cost is expected to fall on local governments and school districts, which generally had opposed the change. Foundation Aid: Lawmakers were successful in their push to revise the state's complicated school funding formula to better address the needs of vulnerable student populations. While Governor Kathy Hochul's executive proposal left the Foundation Aid formula unchanged, the final budget adds a new weight for students who are homeless or in foster care and increases funding for English language learners. Districts will also receive a funding boost of at least 2 percent over last year, bringing the total Foundation Aid allocation to $27.4 billion. CUNY funding: Funding for the City University of New York system will stay roughly the same as last year, at $6.7 billion, including over $650 million to support capital projects and infrastructure improvements. Hochul's budget would have allocated $6.4 billion to the system, while the Senate proposed $8.3 billion and the Assembly $15.1 bill...

Big Visions, Limited Resources

Beacon considers five years of capital outlays The Beacon City Council will continue its review on Monday (June 1) of the city's five-year capital plan. Spending for 2027 purchases and projects must be approved before July 31. The city updates its five-year schedule annually; expenditures for the following year are approved, and estimates are calculated for future projects. A public hearing on the 2027 plan will be held on June 15. Next year's plan includes nearly $10 million in capital work and equipment purchases, although not all of it will be the city's responsibility. The most expensive project will be a $3.6 million rehabilitation of Beekman Street funded by grants. The street leading toward the Metro-North station will be repaved; sidewalks will be repaired and installed where there are gaps; and a bike lane will be added on the uphill side of the road. The next-highest expenditure is $1.9 million to construct a water-storage tank at the Mount Beacon Reservoir. The council approved $1.6 million for the project last year; the additional funding for 2027 will complete the work. The city plans to spend $500,000 in each of the next five years to mill and pave streets and install curb ramps to comply with the Americans with Disabilities Act. Similarly, $400,000 is allotted in each of the next three years for improvements to the southwest corner of Memorial Park that tentatively will add pickleball courts, updated lighting and a second public restroom. In 2028, $3.3 million is budgeted for upgrades to the wastewater treatment plant, although Deputy City Administrator Ben Swanson and Finance Director Susan Tucker stressed during the council's May 18 meeting that prices can change. A ladder truck for the Fire Department, authorized as a $1.7 million expenditure in 2025, is now more than $1.9 million, Tucker noted. Two proposed expenditures drew a lot of attention: $5.4 million in 2028 for a 3.3-mile rail trail from the waterfront to the Town of Fishkill and, in 2031, $5.3 million to create a community center. Many residents have advocated for a community center for years, but the idea has never moved from the final year of the rolling five-year plan, a pattern that irked Council Member Lastar Gorton. "Why is that not a priority when this is what the community has been continuously asking for?" Gorton said, calling the rail trail a project for tourists. Mayor Lee Kyriacou disagreed, saying the trail "has nothing to do with tourism" but will be a recreational asset for residents. Gorton argued that "many, many, many, many" community members have called for a community center, including the Beacon Community Collective, a nonprofit that says it is fundraising for such a facility. The organization says its mission is to help establish something in the spirit of the Martin Luther King Cultural Center, which operated on South Avenue from 1969 to 2011, and the Beacon Community Resource Center, which was located for decades in what is now the Recreation Department building on West Center Street. Kyriacou noted that recreation funding has grown from $304,000 in 2014 to $1.15 million this year, allowing the department to run its after-school program, Camp at the Camp and partnerships with Green Teen Beacon, among other initiatives. The programmatic funds, combined with $15 million in capital improvements to public parks over five years, are "far more important than any building," he said. Kyriacou said he is pitching funders on the rail trail and hopes the project "will be largely funded by other people's money." Conversely, funding for a community center would come from borrowing or taxes, he said. The city must "make choices as to what's most important and in what order we should be doing things," he said. "But most important to who?" Gorton asked. Council Member Carolyn Bennett Glauda added, "Seeing the community center all the way at the end really feels like we kicked it down the curb." The $5.3 million estimate for the project is...

Meet E. Jean

Philipstown filmmaker profiles Trump accuser Ivy Meeropol, who lives in Philipstown, directed her first documentary, Heir to an Execution, about her grandparents, Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, who were executed in 1953 as Communist spies. In the 22 years since, Meeropol has made films about Red-baiting lawyer Roy Cohn, the Indian Point nuclear power plant and a surge of seals and great white sharks on Cape Cod. Her latest film, Ask E. Jean, tells the story of E. Jean Carroll, a women's magazine advice columnist, writer and New York City personality who, in 2019, accused President Donald Trump of sexually assaulting her 25 years earlier in a Bergdorf Goodman dressing room. She appeared that year on the cover of New York magazine in the dress she said she had been wearing. She sued Trump for defamation and battery, and in 2023 was awarded $83.3 million in damages. The following year, after the former president denied the allegations and called Carroll a "wack job" whom he did not know, a jury awarded her another $5 million. Trump has appealed the $5 million judgment to the U.S. Supreme Court. On Wednesday (May 27), CNN reported that the Justice Department has launched a criminal investigation into whether Carroll committed perjury. Meeropol grew up with the legacy of her grandparents, whose federal espionage trials were a defining moment of the Cold War, sparking anti-Communist hysteria and a global debate over civil liberties. The world was similarly divided by competing political visions when Meeropol spent time with Carroll and her lawyer, Robbie Kaplan, during their preparations for the 2023 lawsuit. "I feel that I have been a witness to history — like I had a front row seat to incredible events," Meeropol says. Both her grandparents' and Carroll's stories drew her in "because of who I am, because I grew up with being fully aware and always curious about what was going on behind the news — stories that are not censored but just not fully told. "I always want to humanize the people involved in these epic stories, because they end up being owned by the public or judged in a certain way, and it's limited," she says. "With my grandparents' case, it was that they're totally evil, or they were these pure, perfect martyrs who people revered. There was something else in there that was the truth." She says that Carroll was vilified in the press, "with Trump leading the charge, to make her out to be a Democratic operative, a wack job, a kook, a weirdo who would 'go up in the dressing room with a man.' It was important to me that we get to hear her story and see what she went through. It still amazes me that a lot of people don't even know that he was found liable for sexual abuse and defamation by two juries. They just don't know." The problem was, Carroll wasn't interested in participating in a film. But a friend recognized Meeropol's name; Carroll liked her films. Even then, there was reluctance. "Numerous times along the way, she said, 'Oh, people don't need to hear … They won't want to hear this story.' Yeah, they do. They will!" Carroll was crowned Miss Indiana University in 1963 and Miss Cheerleader USA in 1964. "She was the cheerleader, a beauty queen, a sorority sister and then a television talent," Meeropol says. "Her contradictions were so interesting to me. She was telling women, 'You don't need to be married. Go to college!' but at the same time accommodating men's horrible behavior and making excuses for it, and saying that women should be tougher." Meeropol believes that young women, including her 17-year-old daughter, need to learn about E. Jean's life. "For young people, especially young women, to see this and have empathy and understanding for what she went through and then be inspired by where she is now is important." The film made its New York City debut on May 22 at the IFC Center. "For the audience seeing this together in a theater, it is electric," Meeropol says. "Watching it together is important, because t...

Nellie at The Chapel

Eclectic jazz performer coming to Cold Spring Modest but accomplished actor and musician Nellie McKay is reticent when asked to discuss her work and style. She's more animated on political passions, like feminism and animal rights, and more talkative onstage. McKay (pronounced "McKye"), who will perform a sold-out show on June 6 at the Chapel Restoration in Cold Spring for its Jazz at the Chapel series, is comfortable enough there to reveal many personal details, like the story about why she mispronounced her guitarist's name after a 2011 appearance at NPR's Tiny Desk: "I was stoned when I met him." Three years ago, while a guest on a radio show in North Carolina, her face brightened when she heard that Sierra Nevada sponsored the segment. "Brought to you by a beer? I love that; it's about time." The host replied, "It's that time sometime" — i.e., 5 o'clock somewhere. Responding with a coy smile, she said, "All the time." The show is broadcast from the campus of Isothermal Community College in the state's Appalachian west: "I feel like I'm going to school again; I want to get some supplies," she said, not in reference to textbooks or pens. Then she launched into "The Drinking Song," a melancholy number about drowning sorrows after the death of a loved one, vowing to "drink, drink, drink" and "dream, dream, dream" when sleeping off the binge. McKay's musical knowledge is vast. She's hip to the Hawaiian music craze that brought the ukulele to the mainland in the 1920s and 1930s. As a pianist, she recorded a tribute album to music, movie and television icon Doris Day, who broke out in the mid-1940s and promoted animal rights. When the topic of World War I came up in conversation, McKay immediately referenced Death of the Liberal Class, by Chris Hedges, which focuses on the Committee on Public Information, a federal agency that created and spread propaganda. "That's where the war economy and the misinformation in the mass media started," she says. "I have to be political — we're such pawns." To escape, she tries to avoid the noise. "It's so good to unplug," she says. "Silence is my favorite music, but it can be hard to find." McKay is a seasoned actor and writer of themed musicals that cover obscure historical figures, like Barbara Graham, the third woman in California to die in a gas chamber (at San Quentin). She also encapsulates the life of Billy Tipton (born Dorothy) in a "Girl Named Bill," a play on Johnny Cash's biggest hit, "A Boy Named Sue." Tipton, who kicked off a career as a jazz pianist and bandleader in the 1930s, passed as a man for her entire life. Paramedics who responded to her death in 1989 discovered the truth. McKay lives on the road, with no fixed address. "Sometimes venues put me up, but I just travel," she says. "I'm a trucker." The Chapel Restoration is located at 45 Market St. in Cold Spring. McKay's performance, which begins at 7 p.m., is sold out, but tickets may be available at the door. To download music, see nelliemckay.com.