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Brian Lehrer: Brian Lehrer on WNYC. We're about two weeks away from the deadline for New York State budget negotiations between the legislature and the governor. The New York State Senate and Assembly have passed their versions of a budget, Governor Hochul has introduced hers. These things touch on so many issues.

This is that time of year for those of you who haven't followed New York state politics closely in the past, it is March when so much New York State policy gets made. It's not just budget like, "We're going to spend this much on this, we're going to spend that much on that." This is when the marijuana legalization law was passed last year, they're debating changes to the bail reform law.

In the context of this, this year, they're debating not just rent relief, which would be a budget item pandemic related, but they're also debating new rent laws, like Good Cause Eviction that would limit rent increases and evictions for certain landlords and tenants. There's so much in here, childcare funding, homecare, and so much more.

We're going to talk about some of the biggest issues in these last few weeks of budget negotiations and what's at stake with Liz Krueger, New York State Senator representing Manhattan's East Side, she's the Chair of the Senate Finance Committee. So she is in the thick of these talks. Senator Krueger, always great to have you with us. Welcome back to WNYC.

Liz Krueger: Thank you, Brian. Nice to be here.

Brian Lehrer: Listeners, if you're involved as an activist or just a concerned citizen with any of the things that are going on in Albany right now, 212-433-WNYC, 212-433-9692, or tweet @BrianLehrer with a comment or a question. Senator, I'm going to let you decide where to start. Highlight an issue between the legislature and the governor right here, what's important that people should know about?

Liz Krueger: I think the governor and the legislature are ideologically not that far apart, but everybody picks their battles and prioritizes where the money ought to be spent. My conference took this assignment very seriously, that this is a transformative moment for the state of New York, that we are coming out of a pandemic that has exposed major holes in our safety nets and supports for New Yorkers. That we need to be better prepared for emergencies. We also need to respond to the demands of a changing economy, and a changing demographic reality. I'll start there with for children and for people towards the end of life.

We are committed in the democratic conference to moving towards a universal childcare system, we universalize Pre-K statewide in our proposed budget. New York City, of course, has done so, but very few of the rest of the state has, and we recognize it's needed statewide. Then we expand on ensuring that we address daycare, childcare deserts, and invest more money in childcare for zero to four years old because guess what, Mom and Dad or Dad, Mom or Dad, Mom and Dad, Mom and Mom, Dad and Dad can all go to work unless there is a guarantee of a safe healthy place for their children to be while they're working.

Brian Lehrer: How would that work, briefly, Senator Krueger? I want to go on to a lot of other issues, including, by the way, some I didn't mention in the intro like a conversation that's going on now about a temporary gasoline tax break because of the hike in gasoline prices for various reasons. I know-- [crosstalk]

Liz Krueger: Oh, we're going to need to be an hour and a half, Brian. You're going to cover everything. [crosstalk]

Brian Lehrer: I know. There's controversy over to-go cocktails, should restaurants be able to sell drinks to-go, the liquor stores don't want that and that's, I guess, a tussle between the legislature and the governor. To finish up on childcare, which, to many people, is the most important thing that will be new this year. If there's a universal childcare system enacted by the state legislature and signed by the governor, how would it work?

Liz Krueger: It would be graded in over a number of years, so we would both be upping the amount of money available to supplement childcare deserts and support childcare for low-income New Yorkers, but we're moving that up to a scale of we start at hitting 500% of poverty. We're moving up pretty quickly, and then we want to go further than that. We want to ensure that there is access to childcare for everyone's children, but if you're a higher income, you will pay some greater share of the total costs than on a tiered schedule if you're lower income.

We think it's fundamental for getting our economy jumpstarted back, and it's the right thing for our children. Countries all over the world are doing this, and we can do this here in New York. The same issue, at the other end of the spectrum of life, we have a desperate crisis in homecare workers and healthcare workers who provide people assistance when they are frail elderly, when they are disabled, when they are heading towards the end of life. Literally a crisis. No one is taking these jobs, they pay less than the minimum wage in fast-food restaurants in New York City.

We have organizations reporting themselves that they're in violation of the law because the hospital say we have to release you, insurance won't pay. We know we're supposed to release you with homecare, but there is no homecare so we're actually in violation of the law, and horrendous things are happening. That can be anybody's family, Brian, and it's a growing number of people throughout the state because guess what, we're an aging state. We're an aging world. More and more people need this kind of assistance, fewer and fewer are getting it. It's a crisis. We are committed to increasing the salary level to get more people working in homecare.

Brian Lehrer: Let me ask you about rent, and what might come down from the legislature. I know there were factions on this, so you could tell me if you think you're going to pass what some advocates have called The Good Cause Eviction Bill. We did a call-in yesterday on rents. We know, based on New York Times reporting and other things, that rents in New York City, at least, have come back to pre-pandemic levels.

In some neighborhoods, like Upper West Side and Williamsburg, it was reported, then some, and yet, the economy has not come back to pre-pandemic levels, there's still more unemployment than there was beforehand. There are still more people suffering economically. As you know, some people are for a so-called Good Cause Eviction Bill, which would rent-stabilize all the rents in the state to some degree that are not in the rent stabilization system now, depending on landlords' and tenants' circumstances. What can you tell us is going to make it through?

Liz Krueger: Sure. I think the Good Cause should pass as a bill, I don't necessarily believe it will get slid into the budget. I think there's enough controversy, it doesn't get slid into the budget, but it is not nearly the radical action that some people think. The whole state of New Jersey has had Good Cause Eviction, for something like 50 years. Trust me, they've been building housing, people have been renting housing, people have actually been evicted because Good Cause Eviction is not if you can't pay the rent, they can't evict you, is putting some reasonable limit on the annual increases in what landlords can charge and there's all kinds of exceptions in the law for special situations.

It is an attempt to control for an overheated real estate market. You described it, Brian, that is what we have, we have an overheated real estate market that is not actually in the best interest of the people who live in New York.

Now, we have a whole series of housing proposals within our budget. We want to see more money coming through from the federal government and the state government to make sure that people who fell behind on their rent because of the pandemic have money available to pay their rent. That is a win, obviously, for the tenants, but it is also a win for the landlords.

We also had set up a program and we want to continue that for homeowners who fell behind on being able to make their mortgage payments. We don't want them losing their homes either. We have commitment to housing vouchers like a New York State Section 8 type program. We have commitment to a fairer formula for the City of New York when they are trying to get people out of the shelter systems into rental apartments, but the level that they are allowed to pay is so low that no landlords are interested in working with accepting homeless into their apartments, so we need to up the amount of rent we're prepared to pay there to move people out of the shelter system.

We have a broad and a diverse set of proposals on housing that are statewide that would apply from rural New York issues to suburbans New York issues to New York City's big picture issues.

Brian Lehrer: I guess there's going to be a lot of last-minute negotiating with pressure from the landlords' lobbies and the tenants' groups for how that comes out by April 1st in the details.

Let me touch on a few issues and go down a list in fairly brief form on a few. One is this temporary tax break on gasoline that I see some in your party, the Democrats in the state legislature are pushing for. Gasoline tax break is not usually a liberal agenda item, are you for it?

Liz Krueger: It wouldn't have been a top priority for me, but I do support it. My conference is very small, the democratic. We talk everything out and we try to come up with the best answers possible, and the truth is because of Putin and the situation in Russia and in Ukraine, the gasoline prices are skyrocketing at a time where inflation is very high. While I would like everybody off of gasoline petroleum products ASAP, much of New York does not live in areas where public transportation is an option, and we do not have the EV vehicles yet to so radically move into them as to solve the gas price problem right now.

I actually think a bit of a gas holiday for a few months is not an unreasonable effort to try to help address the skyrocketing costs of gas at the gas stations for people who need those cars to get to work, to get anywhere, and of course, we also are completely dependent on trucks to move our products from place to place to place in New York.

Brian Lehrer: Apparently, the governor isn't convinced yet on the gasoline tax break from what I've read, and some progressives say that because wealthier households consume the most gasoline and therefore pay more in gasoline taxes, a tax break would be regressive. It would help wealthier households far more than poor people who are more significantly hurt by the high prices, even though they buy less of it. How much is that a consideration for you, or how you might implement this?

Liz Krueger: I think actually that is quite important to us because we are a conference that strongly believes in progressive versus regressive taxes. If there was a proposal that we could implement that would target the tax reduction to people below certain income levels, I think we would be very open to that.

Brian Lehrer: We'll see how that one comes out. One area where it looks like Governor Hochul has already seated ground on a thing that may not be the most important state policy, but that made a lot of news when she gave her budget address, it's the to-go cocktails and probably a lot of people in the media thought, "Okay, well, this worked during the pandemic when people weren't going into restaurants." The Governor wants to make it permanent, it's going to be permanent, but it looks like you all in the legislature are blocking it. Is this the liquor store lobby influence?

Liz Krueger: No, I actually don't think it's a liquor store lobby. I think it is the position of both Carl Heastie as the speaker of the assembly and Andrea Stewart-Cousins as the majority leader of the Senate, that policy issues that don't have a direct connection to the state budget should be dealt with separate from the state budget, so lots and lots and lots of individual policy proposals were omitted from the budget, and that's standard almost every year. I think that the drinks to-go issue could be taken up, again, as a freestanding issue, without it being in the budget.

Interestingly, I hear from colleagues in all directions on this. I hear from colleagues in the suburbs that they don't like this because it will mean more people drinking and driving, and that there are reasons we have no open container laws for alcohol. They're very concerned about it from a DWI and driving safety perspective.

Yes, in the city, you tend to not hear as much about the drinking and driving, because you are more likely to be walking to the restaurant or bar for to-go drink versus hopping in a car, and there you do hear about the liquor stores saying this will bite into their business model. No, I'm not a drinker, so maybe I should stay out of this, but I always think, "Wow, if I can buy a bottle of liquor and a bottle of mix and make myself eight drinks for the price of one drink at a to-go option, why the hell would I not just buy the bottles I need and be much more cost-efficient? I don't think it's that hard to mix a drink." Again-- [crosstalk]

Brian Lehrer: People could also buy beer in the supermarket and then pop it open and drink and drive just as well, maybe not a mixed drink so easily, but there are certainly ways that they can do that.

We're going to run out of time shortly. I want to touch on at least one more thing. That is what Governor Hochul apparently is staking out now as her position on criminal justice reform. I think I've only seen this in the New York Post so far, so you can confirm whether this is actually happening as far as you know because I only have one source for this, but the Governor reportedly stating her intention to negotiate a new public safety package as part of the state budget, even though it's not specifically a spending item, this would include what Mayor Adams has been asking for, giving judges more discretion to detain those accused of criminal offenses on a perceived dangerousness ground, which you can't do in New York state now. How much do you know about Governor Hochul's plan here? Would you personally dig in on bail reform as it now exists, or would you be open to a dangerousness standard?

Liz Krueger: I know nothing about what's actually being proposed other than the New York Post story. I even looked at my email right before I came on in case some memo popped up that there were facts available and there really aren't. The legislature discussed, debated, conferred on bail reform and the dangerousness standard question for years before we made the changes we did in bail reform. Then we even went back and adjusted them afterwards.

I do not believe that the legislature thinks that the problems we are dealing with are related to the changes we made in bail reform. Are we concerned about guns on our streets and increased violence? Absolutely. Are we concerned about more violence from what appear to be mentally ill people without having any services available to them on the streets and the subways? Absolutely.

We have been proposing and even begging the state and city to expand the number of residential psychiatric beds available, expand the types of shelter beds that are targeted to those who are suffering the most, the safe haven model shelters.

We are absolutely calling for expanded solutions for specific real issues, but the data continues to reflect that the changes we made in bail are not correlated to the growth in gun violence or physical violence towards others on the streets. I'll never say that the legislature isn't open to making changes when we believe they're called for.

I do think that what we think is called for are new models that will help get guns off the streets, new models that will support alternatives to violence for young people, that have proved to be successful such as the SNUG programs that are still only available in a small number of neighborhoods and communities, expansion of services for people who are suffering from mental illness, which does include the possibility of there being required to stay in a residential facility and get care. There's all kinds of protections that, of course, are built into law and need to be there in law.

We want to see expansion of our mental health courts, which have been successful. For example, Manhattan's court can only take 50 cases at a time. That's woefully inadequate. We are very interested in exploring why the rate that police close cases, meaning capture the guilty party in felonies has been going down, down, down for the years. The question is not just is there a crime, but did somebody get caught for doing the crime, and did they actually go through the system correctly?

Brian Lehrer: That's interesting if that rate is going down. That would be an interesting one for us to do a full separate segment on. We have to leave it there for now. Listeners, now you know more about some of the issues that are prominently in play in these last phases of the New York State annual budget negotiation. The budget year begins April 1st. So all these things are being negotiated by major players in Albany, including our guest, Liz Krueger, State Senator from the East Side of Manhattan, who chairs the Finance Committee. Senator Krueger, we always appreciate it. Thanks a lot.

Liz Krueger: Thank you, Brian. Take care.

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