The latest on Albany’s final session day

Lawmakers debated bills late into the evening Friday and into the morning on Saturday, an end-of-session tradition at the State Capitol. After 3 a.m., the State Senate wrapped up for the year. The Assembly returned during the day on Saturday to finish voting.

Both houses of the Legislature passed a bill that would move many local elections in New York to even-numbered years. 

The bill would mean many important local elections in Warren, Washington and Saratoga counties would be in even years, beginning in 2026.

According to reporting by Newsday, elections for town and village boards and county legislatures and executive would run in even election years. The bill would not apply to positions where the terms are set under the state constitution, including judges, district attorneys and county clerks.

The bill passed the Senate on Saturday morning at nearly 2 a.m. by a vote of 40-23. 

If signed into law by Hochul, the bill could well advantage Democrats in local elections, since turnout is typically higher in even years, when races for governor, Congress and U.S. president are at the top of the ballot. Higher turnout usually benefits Democratic candidates.

Democrats in the Legislature also framed the move as a cost-saving measure for local Boards of Elections, since it could conceivably require fewer elections to be held.

Ralph Mohr, the Republican commissioner on the Erie County Board of Elections, argued that would not be the case, since elections will still have to be held on odd-numbered years for certain offices.

“This is another example of Democrats in the Legislature trying to engineer rigged elections for their party’s benefit,” Mohr said. “It’s not going to end in saving the taxpayers money and it’s going to cause more confusion on the part of the taxpayers.”

Under the bill, local officials elected to two-year terms in 2025 would only serve one year before running again; officials elected to four-year terms in 2025 would serve three-year terms.

The Democratic-controlled State Senate narrowly passed a bill on Friday undercutting a program that sought to reduce the influence of major donors in New York elections.

Immediately after the vote, a Senate official announced the result as passage by a 32-31 margin, meaning that a substantial number of members of the 42-person Democratic supermajority opposed the measure – an unusual degree of dissent. (Senate staff said Friday evening that the vote tally was unofficially recorded as being 34-29.) Republicans also broadly voted against the bill. 

It’s unclear whether Gov. Kathy Hocul would sign the measure, which also passed the Assembly on Friday.

In explaining her “no” vote, Democratic State Sen. Rachel May called the bill pushed by the Democratic majority a “betrayal of the original intent of New York’s pathbreaking campaign finance law.”

“With this change in how matching funds are treated, I can no longer tell my low-income constituents that we are lifting up their voices in that way,” May said. 

May said the bill would feed the populace’s belief that “when push comes to shove, our campaign system will always ensure those with the deepest pockets have the loudest voices.”

The Buffalo News first reported on the bill last week. On Tuesday, the chair of the elections committee in both the Senate and Assembly introduced the eleventh-hour legislation, and a number of editorial boards came out in opposition, including a lengthy and scathing editorial in the New York Times stating lawmakers were trying to “sabotage” campaign finance reform. 

The new publicly-funded system, which was meant to reduce the impact of major campaign donors in state elections, is severely undercut by the changes, according to critics of the bill. The new program took effect this year ahead of the 2024 elections.

Under current law, only campaign donations of $250 or less would be matched with generous amounts of public funds, a provision meant to elevate the importance of small donations to candidates.

The bill now removes the $250 cap, so that the first $250 of a donation of any size up to the maximum amount is matched with public funds. For instance, a statewide candidate for office could receive an $18,000 donation and see the first $250 matched, vastly diminishing the incentive for candidates to rely on small donors.

The new bill also significantly raises the number of in-district donors and the total donation figure needed to qualify for matching funds – likely making it more difficult for incumbents’ opponents to qualify. Proponents of the change argue that “unserious” candidates for office should not be able to qualify for hundreds of thousands in taxpayer funds, necessitating the higher threshold.

In the Assembly, the bill passed 84-62, meaning a number of Democrats in the 102-member majority voted against it.

The State Senate is declining to hold a vote on whether to confirm Justin Driscoll, the acting president and CEO of the New York Power Authority, a setback for Gov. Kathy Hochul’s administration.

On Tuesday, The Buffalo News had reported on several discrimination complaints lodged at the Niagara Power Project in Lewiston. Between 2014 and 2021, Driscoll was counsel for NYPA and his office was charged with reviewing all such complaints.

Before her death in March, Shirley Hamilton, the former leader of the Niagara Falls NAACP, had sought to raise awareness about the claimed mishandling of discrimination complaints under Driscoll’s leadership, a charge that Driscoll denies. Hamilton had worked at NYPA for 44 years, rising to become the first Black female control room operator at the Lewiston plant.

In statement Friday following the news that Driscoll would not be confirmed, the coalition Public Power NY, which opposed Driscoll’s nomination, said it was “deeply grateful to Shirley Hamilton, whose tireless activism for racial justice fueled us, and to all the NYPA employees who were brave enough to share their stories and struggle for justice in their workplace.”

On Thursday, a potential deal aimed at protecting tenants and building more housing fell apart.

In a rare joint statement, Assembly Speaker Carl Heastie and Senate Majority Leader Andrea Stewart-Cousins blamed Hochul, stating, “Unfortunately, it was clear that we could not come to an agreement with the governor on this plan.”

Many of the proposals that were under discussion impacted New York City, although some aspects – including a proposed Housing Access Voucher Program, providing housing assistance to the homeless – would have had statewide ramifications. 

According to the New York Times, the potential deal between the Legislature and Hochul fell apart when Hochul balked at including “good cause eviction” in the package, which would have limited a landlord’s ability to raise rents and evict tenants in New York City. According to the Times, at a meeting on Wednesday, Hochul said she would veto the housing package if it included the “good cause” measure.

Hochul’s office fired back on Thursday, arguing that the Legislature was “blaming the governor for their own failure to act” and arguing that “absolutely nothing stood” in the way of the Legislature passing the bill.

In both houses, there are on paper enough Democrats to override a veto by Hochul. But such a veto override, which is rarely used, would require almost all Democrats in both houses of the Legislature to support it. Instead, the Legislature chose not to introduce their final agreement at all, bringing criticism from groups supporting the housing measures.