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Brigid Bergen: It's The Brian Lehrer Show on WNYC. I'm Brigid Bergen, Senior Reporter in the WNYC and Gothamist newsroom, filling in for Brian today. On today's show, we're going to dig into some data with the economist related to their annual glass ceiling index, which looks at the roles of women in the workforce across many countries. Plus, did you know March is not just Women's History Month, but also colorectal cancer awareness month? Cancer and GI doctors are seeing more cases in younger people. We'll talk to a doctor about what to take care of your health in this area and hear your questions and stories.

Lastly, if you're a teacher, or have kids in school or even preschool, you'll know what I mean when I say, "The spirit days are getting to be a little bit much." Who is shouldering the extra work? Those outfits don't plan themselves all these spirit days and which kids are getting left out, but first, there's $227 billion worth the news out of Albany. That's because both the State Senate and Assembly released their budget documents yesterday. That's how much of our money they're deciding how to spend. It's all part of the negotiating process leading up to the April 1st budget deadline. More on that later.

There are some new proposals in here that could have a dramatic impact on your personal budget in daily life. Like for those of you who are listening to me now in your car, maybe driving around the block for the umpteenth time looking for a place to park, how does the residential parking permit fund for the MTA sound right about now? It's one of the many items we're going to unpack with my first guest WNYC's Albany reporter extraordinaire, Jon Campbell. Jon, welcome back to the show. How's the snow up there?

Jon: We got socked pretty good with the snow up here, but it's about 40 now, so it's melting. That's that.

Brigid: Oh, dear. Now you're going to be watching out for the floods. Listeners, if you have a question about the budget process, this new residential parking permit plan, or any of the other new proposals in the budget, from charter schools to menthol cigarette bands, give us a call. Do you want to know how Governor Hochul or other lawmakers are going to enter these negotiations? Give us a call with your questions for my guest, WNYC's Albany Reporter, Jon Campbell. The number is 212-433-WNYC. That's 212-433-9692, or you can always tweet @BrianLehrer. Jon, let's talk parking. You wrote about this proposal for a residential parking permit plan that's included in the State Senate's budget proposal. What's the idea here?

Jon: Well, the idea is this could be a way to actually fund the MTA. One of the big disagreements that the governor and the legislature has is how to boost the lagging MTA, which struggles from not having the ridership that it had prior to the pandemic. The Governor proposed a bunch of different ways, the legislature doesn't really seem to like many of those, and so the Senate stepped in and put in some different proposals, the Assembly put in different proposals too, but one of the Senate's proposals is a residential parking program in New York City.

Basically, they would take it to the City Council and say, "Hey, you have the ability to create a program where New York City residents or perhaps residents of a particular neighborhood have permit access to that parking and others would be restricted." The idea being that they could charge up to $30 a month for those permits, and the money from that would go to the MTA. This is an idea that's been kicking around for a long, long time. This is one of the MTA funding options that the Senate Democrats are laying out there.

Brigid: I know we have someone listening in their car right now, just dreaming of the idea that this could create an open spot for them. You spoke with the Senate's deputy Majority Leader, Mike Gianaris, who framed it like this.

Mike Gianaris: It's not unusual to hear horror stories of people driving around their own block of their home for 30, 45 minutes at the end of the night trying to find a place to leave their car. We wanted to authorize the city to do this as a way to offset, for example, the straight-up $500 million contribution the governor was asking the city to make to the MTA. This is a way to raise those revenues through other means.

Brigid: Gianaris mentioned the governor's budget proposal from earlier this year, you talked about it too. She wanted the city to provide $500 million to pay for paratransit and school transportation for kids in K through 12. Does this State Senate proposal bring in enough revenue to do that?

Jon: Yes and no. There's other proposals in the senate plan and the Assembly's plan that they say would, but I'm sure there would be squabbling between them in the governor's office about that. Gianaris said that the Senate is anticipating that it would bring in about $400 million a year. That's a little less than the $500 million that the city would have to pay for paratransit services in K through 12 transportation under the governor's plan, but there's other pieces here too. Both the Senate and the Assembly rejected the governor's proposal to increase the payroll mobility tax, that is a tax on employers within the MTA region that they pay into to help fund the MTA, the government wants to increase that to help cover the MTA.

Really, how Gianaris described it to me is they want to lay out as many options as they can because they didn't like the governor's options, and they want to try to pick and choose a plan that gets the MTA to where they need to be to fill their funding gap. Oh, also the Senate and Assembly want to reject fare increases in 2023 and 2025, which are currently moving ahead and the governor's plan would keep in place as well.

Brigid: Back to this parking permit idea, this was a proposal just in the State Senate's one-house budget, it wasn't in the Assembly's, is that correct?

Jon: Yes, that's kind of this budget dance that we do in Albany every year. The governor puts our proposal out in January, or in this case, February 1st, this year. Then mid March, the Senate and the Assembly after holding all these different hearings, they put out their individual proposals. You're right, this is one that is in the Senate proposal, the residential parking program is in the Senate's proposal. It is not in the assemblies. It was not in the governor's, so I would say the chances of it happening are pretty-- It's a long shot at this point, since there's only one side on board.

You also saw some pushback from some lawmakers and city council members, Justin Brannan, in South Brooklyn. They see this as a money grab, a way of getting New York City residents to pay for the MTA when they already do pay for a good share of the MTA. There's definitely some pushback, but this is the furthest the idea has ever gotten in Albany because you do need Albany approval to allow a residential parking program, and this is the furthest that seems to have ever gotten.

Brigid: It's interesting, Jon, you mentioned it is a money grab, but I think for some of these council members, and Councilmember, Justin Brannan, who runs the finance committee's deep in the weeds of negotiating the city's budget. This also becomes, potentially, a campaign issue for these folks. They're all up for reelection this year. You can imagine the type of conversation that could be started around the idea of, "Do you want a residential parking permit for this neighborhood or not?" Anything involving transportation tends to get people pretty animated. We have callers already who have some very strong opinions about this program. I'm glad to welcome Vicki from Tudor city to the show. Vicki, welcome to WNYC. What do you think of it this residential parking permit?

Vicki: First of all, thank you so much for this conversation and for taking my call. I was just delighted to hear that this was a subject today. I want to know how soon realistically something like this could be implemented, and what can residential parkers who live in the city do to expedite, promote the process with their Assemblyman or Congressman or whomever? I live in Tudor city, which is a four-block square cul-de-sac in midtown Manhattan. We have so much through traffic and when the outside parking happens, I call it the parking wars, because people nearly come to fisticuffs.

I've seen abusive people, either stealing, filching parking places that people have had for a while and need, or trying to get half into the space, and when they can't get all the way in, literally shouting and screaming at people sitting in cars who are trying to ignore them and becoming traumatized in the process.

Brigid: Sure.

Vicki: I'm sorry to be so long-winded, but additionally, the police are here observing this entire thing and do not ever interfere or help. Can something happen where people are helped when it gets to be almost a violent situation. Also, what can we do to make it go faster? Sorry.

Brigid: That's okay, Vicki. I want to jump in there because I want to get you some answers. Jon, Vicky lamenting the parking wars that I think people far beyond Midtown probably can relate to, but from a process standpoint, this is not something where the switch is being flipped anytime soon, correct?

Jon: Yes. There's a lot of steps, even if this were to find its way in the final budget, which is a heavy lift in and of itself, the budget is due at the end of the month. Even if it were to get in there, this proposal would essentially kick the tough decisions to the city council. Then the city council would be tasked with coming up with which neighborhoods to implement this in, which boroughs, which times of day, how many spots should be reserved. If you got a parking permit, would you be guaranteed a spot? The answer to that is probably no, but that would be something left to the city council, how much to charge.

I'm sure there would be public hearings, things like that. Even in the fastest of scenarios, even if everybody could have miraculously jumped on board with this in Albany tomorrow, it would be months and months and months, if not well over a year, a couple years.

Brigid: Sure.

Jon: Listen, bureaucracy moves slowly, and there's a lot of layers here, so it would be quite some time.

Brigid: We have a bunch more callers and I want to get a couple of them in, but just to answer the other part of your question, Vicky, how do you advocate for this? It's the same way you advocate for any of the issues in this budget that we're going to unpack in this conversation. As you mentioned, it's calling your state lawmakers, calling your assembly or senators, and letting them know how you feel one way or the other. They are your representatives. Let's go to Chris in Manhattan, who has a different take on residential parking. Chris, welcome to WNYC.

Chris: Hi. Thanks for taking the call. I am a little perplexed based on my experience. We seem to be taking London as a role model for a lot of these ideas about transportation in the city. I was living in London during the instigation of both the congestion charge and the residence parking scheme. Now, the residents parking scheme sounds like the answer to everybody's prayers. Let me give you a rundown of what actually happened in London. It was sold as being a resolution to congested parking and also lack of spaces for residents. How it worked was that a private contractor was given a contract to run it and they instigated parking spaces on all the routes where you could park. All the parking spaces actually reduced the amount of available parking.

Instead of solving the problem, what it did was aggravate the problem because you could park fewer cars, then you had to pay for an annual permit as a resident. Now, this didn't stop other people parking there, because then you also had a metering system. You do not have a reserved space and you do not have a guaranteed space. Then once they'd instigated this, and bear in mind now that the local government is getting an income from your permit and also an income from this private contractor who is supposed to police the parking itself. I can then tell you, and also the people that are not residents that are paying for parking tickets, and they can park everywhere that the residents can park, then within a matter of two years, all of the private contractors at least disappeared.

Brigid: I'm going to jump in because it sounds like you bring a wealth of experience from your time across the pond, as we say, with a residential parking permit, and you're raising, I think, a lot of the issues that the lawmakers will have to contend with as they examine whether or not this is a reasonable way to fund the MTA. I want to get one more caller in here. Joe from the East Village. Joe, thanks for waiting. Welcome to WNYC. You have one alternative idea if you give it to us briefly.

Joe: Yes. Good morning. I think residents who have registered vehicles in the city of New York should have free parking to the street, and anyone else who comes into the city who parks on the street should be charged because they're parking on the street because they don't want to pay the high fee of a parking garage. Actually, a lot of these people don't mind getting a summons because the summons is actually less than parking in a parking garage. It's about loss of revenue, that's all this is. It's a revenue grab, and they should actually get the money by having many meters on every street and residents park for free, because then if you're charged to residence, it's just a taxation upon them, and that's not right.

Brigid: Joe, thanks so much for your call. Jon, you can tell we could have an entire segment fully dedicated only to this question of the residential parking permit proposal that's in the one-house budget. I want to ask you about a couple other things. [clears throat] Excuse me. This is all about funding our extremely cash-wrap transit system, the MTA. Governor Hochul wanted a tax hike on businesses and casino revenue as the major sources of funding in addition to money from the city. Are those items still in the one-house proposals?

Jon: It depends on which one house proposal we're talking about here. The Assembly, actually, is okay with the idea of using future New York casino revenue to help fund the MTA. There's three casino licenses that are still out there that are up for bid as we speak. They're all going to end up in New York City or the surrounding area, and Governor Hochul proposed taking funding from that when it comes down the line and putting that toward the MTA. The state gets a big share of casino revenues. The Assembly said, "Yes, we're cool with that." The Senate, on the other hand said, "No, we want to make sure that that goes to education." The governor also proposed that what we were talking about earlier, this payroll mobility tax, she wants to increase it on companies in the MTA region.

Both the Senate and the Assembly rejected that, and they have different tax proposals. The Senate wants to increase what's known as a franchise tax, the Assembly wants to increase taxes on the wealthy with those that are within the MTA region, the revenue from that increased income tax would go toward the MTA. There's different options. We should also mention the Senate wants to add a $0.50 fee on Uber, Lyft ride-sharing. That's another way they want to pay for the MTA. Like I said, there's all these different options. In the next two weeks, really, with the state budget on the line here before the start of the new fiscal year, that's when the governor and lawmakers are going to come together and pick which options works for all three of them that will help fund the MTA going forward.

Brigid: Ooh, we have a lot more to unpack here, but we have to take a short break. More with WNYC's Jon Campbell in just a moment. Stick around.

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Brigid: You're listening to the Brian Lehrer Show on WNYC. I'm Brigid Bergen from the WNYC and Gothamist Newsroom, in for Brian today. I'm speaking with my colleague, WNYC's Albany Reporter, Jon Campbell. We are unpacking this stage of state budget negotiations and really, what it means for you. This is a huge amount of money and it's your tax dollars. Let's talk about how it's going to impact your life. We're going to shift gears, pardon my transportation pun, Jon, to some other areas where state legislators and the governor are at odds with each other, like the debate over the state's bail laws. It was one of the issues, Hochul was hit hardest on during last year's governor's race. First, can you talk a little bit about what she wanted to do to change the bail laws?

Jon: Absolutely. The bail laws were overhauled in 2019, and essentially, lawmakers and then Governor Cuomo made it so judges can't impose bail on somebody for lower-level crimes, and they've been debated ever since, particularly as there was this mid-pandemic spike in crime about their effect on that. There's been pushes to repeal ever since, but Democrats and the legislature have generally held strong behind them. The governor did get some loosening of those laws last year. Governor Hochul essentially made it a little easier for judges to hold people if they were charged with two crimes in quick succession and added some crimes back to the list. This year, she wants to remove what's known as the least restrictive standard.

Basically, it says in the law that judges can consider for serious crimes, consider this or that to set bail, history of domestic violence, gun crimes, things like that, but also, it says that they have to consider or impose the least restrictive standard to ensure that these people come back to court because that's the entire point of bail, which is to ensure that people come back to court. She wants to get rid of that least restrictive standard part for bail-eligible crimes.

That is something that's getting a lot of pushback from the Legislature, from public defenders who essentially they say it would give judges more leeway to set bail, essentially, and that's not what they want. They want specific standards that can't be subject to a judge's individual bias. Both the Senate and the Assembly, they said, "No," to the governor's proposal, and that's really, really going to be a big sticking point in negotiations because the governor is going to keep on that. She says it's one of her biggest priorities going forward.

Brigid: Wow. It sounds like another big sticking point is going to be related to taxes. Governor Hochul really celebrated the fact that her initial proposal did not raise personal income taxes, but lawmakers in the Senate and Assembly seem to want the wealthiest New Yorkers to pay more. Can you talk about what their proposal is?

Jon: Yes, absolutely. I actually misstated the Assembly's proposal earlier. The Assembly does want to increase taxes on the wealthy. The Senate does as well. That's for people making income in excess of $5 million. They want to increase those rates. I said that the Assembly's increase would go toward the MTA. The Assembly also wants to increase corporate taxes, and that is what would go to the MTA, so a little correction there. Yes, the Senate and Assembly Democrats, they both want to increase taxes on the wealthy. The governor has drawn a line in the sand there and said she does not want to raise income taxes.

Yes, another dispute between the governor and the Legislature, another area where they're not seeing eye to eye. I think you're starting to see that's a trend here. There's a lot of things that they don't quite see eye to eye on here. Negotiations, at this point, they seem to be far apart, and the budget deadline is April 1st.

Brigid: Jon, the argument against raising taxes is always that wealthy New Yorkers are going to flee the state for other low tax havens. Is that a concern that the governor is raising?

Jon: It is a concern that certainly, people within her administration are leaving. There's a reason for that because the tax department, the State Department of Taxation and Finance, they recently published a website that has all sorts of really, really good tax data and graphs, and it's really easy to understand. If you look at all of the state's income tax receipts, all of the money that the state took in from income taxes, the top 200 taxpayers paid about 9.5% of that entire total. I mean, we're talking 200 people here. If any one of them are to leave, that could be a problem.

That said, at the same time, in 2021, which is the most recent tax data that we have that we can analyze, there were 84,000 income millionaires in New York. That's people who earned at least a million dollars in 2021. That was a huge jump from the previous year. Some of that, a lot of that, maybe, is due to the stock market doing very well in 2021 and it didn't do as well in 2022. In fact, did much poorer in 2022, but a lot of people look at that and say, "Well, look, people are making a lot of money still here." At the same time, the fiscally conservative people, they say, "Well, if you look at the million-dollar earners from 2020, about 5% of them left the state in 2021, and that's compared to 3% of all taxpayers." They're leaving at a higher rate, and that can be a big issue for the state's tax revenues.

Brigid: Sure. Let's talk for a moment about housing, which was another key element of Hochul's plan to expand affordable housing development in the state, 800,000 new units in a decade. Can you refresh us on how she wanted to do that and how lawmakers want to approach it differently?

Jon: Yes, absolutely. The governor has a plan, she's calling it her Housing Compact, where every city, town, village in the state would have a goal of housing numbers to hit. If you're within the MTA region, so New York City, Long Island, the Lower Hudson Valley, the Mid Hudson Valley, you would have to increase your housing stock by 3% over the next 3 years. Outside of that area, "Upstate," that would be 1% over 3 years. The need for housing is lesser up there.

How she would convince these local governments to do that would be by saying, "Well, if you don't, then the state can step in and override local control, override local zoning decisions for multifamily residential apartments." Local control is one of these things that local governments hold dearly. They fight and fight and fight for that, and anytime the state infringes on that, it's a big deal to them. There's been a lot of pushback to that plan, particularly on Long Island. Both the Senate and the Assembly rejected the idea that the state would override local control. The Senate wants to offer treats, essentially, to make sure that these local governments will do it.

They'll keep the housing targets, but say, "Hey, we've got $500 million worth of funding that you can get a piece of if you hit these housing targets." They would go with a carrot rather than a stick, so to speak.

Brigid: $500 million is one heck of a treat. For a moment, let's talk about tenant protections. Advocates have been pushing for good cause eviction protection that would prevent a landlord from kicking a tenant out for no reason or giving them a chance to challenge some of those astronomical rent spikes that we've been reading about. Where does the Legislature fall? Is this picking up any traction? How much of a sticking point do you think it's really going to be in the negotiations?

Jon: This is a tricky one for the Legislature because good cause eviction essentially would cap annual rent increases, cap the amount that landlords could increase somebody's rent each year, and also, say, "Landlords can only evict somebody or not renew their lease for a bona fide good cause reason." They were doing something illegal in the apartment or they left it in such disrepair that they-- There's a list of reasons in the bill that would allow landlords to evict somebody or not renew their lease.

Some Democrats in the Legislature really, really want that. Others are a little more wary. What you saw in both of the Senate and the Assembly's budget is like-- I'd call it a half-hearted embrace of good cause eviction. The Senate's budget says something to the effect of, "We advance something resembling good cause," essentially is what it says. The Assembly has said something similar as well. They're making clear that they want tenant protections, though they're stopping just short of embracing the actual good cause eviction bill that is out there, and instead, are embracing maybe something that looks like that, but that's a notable difference from the governor.

The governor's plan, part of the criticism from tenants is that it doesn't have tenant protections. Her idea is, "Well, if we increase more housing, then the prices will come down and this problem will solve itself." People want more bona fide tenant protections. By people, I mean Democrats in the Legislature, but they didn't really put a firm proposal out there of how they want to do that.

Brigid: Jon, in terms of areas of disagreement, I feel like we could just keep going here. Hochul wanted to lift the Charter School Cap. Lawmakers didn't include that. Commission hikes at SUNY and CUNY didn't make it. Are there some other big areas of disagreement that you're going to be watching?

Jon: Yes, an interesting one comes to the idea of banning flavored cigarettes and tobacco products. Already, flavored vaping products are banned in New York City, flavored tobacco products, except for tobacco and wintergreen are banned. The governor wants to ban all flavored tobacco products, which includes menthol. That has been a major sticky point, particularly in the Black community, where people use menthol at a higher rate than the white community.

You've seen pushback on the governor's plan from, say, some pastors in the Buffalo area that have raised concern about whether this would allow police to target members of the Black community if they're using menthol cigarettes, although the proposal focuses on distributors more than people who are actually using these. You've seen the convenience stores owners, the bodegah owners, they've been pushing back against that as well. The Legislature isn't on board with the menthol ban. Both the Senate and the Assembly took that proposal out of their budget, although they both did back the governor's proposal to increase cigarette taxes by $1 a pack.

Brigid: Jon, you've said this already, but I just want to put a fine point on it that we are talking about a Democrat-controlled state. Senate, a Democrat-controlled state assembly, a Democrat-controlled executive branch, and we've spent a half an hour talking about all the ways that they don't agree at this point. Of course, we're talking about a negotiation process, so that makes sense, but certainly, they must agree on something. Some of the headlines of things that they are in agreement on, what would you say they are?

Jon: They don't agree on the exact number, but in general, they seem to be in a pretty good place on education funding. Education funding is something that is a big, big sticking point most years. The governor, in her proposal, Governor Hochul, she proposed more than $30 billion in education school aid. Aid to school districts throughout the state as well as, most significantly, in New York City. She wants to fully fund what's known as Foundation Aid, which was born of a lawsuit years ago and has never really been fully funded and is designed to aid the higher-need schools more than the lesser-needs schools. She finally wants to fully fund that.

The legislature's on board with that. That seems to be generally an area of disagreement. They're squabbling over maybe some of the specifics, but in general, they seem to be in a pretty good place on that. That's usually one that is a major, major sticking point.

Brigid: Well, let's talk about the negotiation process, the budget deadline, as you've said, April 1st, just over 2 weeks away. Here is what Governor Hochul said about that deadline just earlier this week

Hochul: On-time budgets are always very nice to have. Last year, our budget was nine days late for one reason. I said I'm not leaving Albany until I get substantial changes to the bail laws to make sure that serious crimes that were left out are now covered and that we have discretion for judges. I think people know it's a nice target. I would like an on-time budget. I'm not planning on one that's not, but I also know that I'm here to do the work of the people of New York State and they expect me to not leave town until the job's done.

Brigid: Yikes. Nice. Nice to have said many times there by the governor. We already know that bail reform is going to be an issue again. It sounded there like Hochul is not exactly wed to that April 1st deadline. What are you going to be watching as they move towards this final, we'll call it now, the two women and one man in a room phase of these negotiations?

Jon: I'm going to be watching bell reform. I'm going to be watching the MTA plan and I'm going to be watching charter schools, in particular. That is a big sticking point between the governor and the legislature. I would be, I think, flabbergasted is the right word if they got an on-time budget this year, quite frankly. There are a lot of sticking points here. A lot of issues where they are not in agreement.

One of the governor's best leverage plays is to run out the clock, essentially. She can run this past the deadline after the budget deadline. Lawmakers don't get paid. Their salaries are paused. I should say their paychecks are paused and held until there's a budget in place. That is a huge point of leverage for the governor.

Now, former Governor, Cuomo, he didn't use that leverage generally. He generally liked on-time budgets as a way of showing that the trains are running on time in Albany, that the government is working. He held that up as a symbol of government functionality but governor Hochul is taking a different approach. She held the budget late nine days last year, and you just heard her there. She's not going to be afraid to do it again. If she can use that as leverage to get her priorities.

Brigid: Jon, this has really already been a tough political year for Governor Hochul. She saw her pick for Chief Judge Hector LaSalle get rejected by some of these same state lawmakers she's now negotiating with. How much of the political fallout from that is going to follow into these negotiations?

Jon: We're kind of in a weird spot on that right now because the Senate rejected Hector LaSalle, her pick for chief judge, essentially thought he was too moderate to conservative and they wanted somebody on further left. That's essentially what it came down to. We're in this process now where they're picking new candidates. The Commission on Judicial nomination is picking new candidates. That list of candidates won't come out until after the budget, it seems, and the governor won't pick one until after the budget.

This could be a post-budget thing more than a pre-budget thing, but it does show that the legislature was willing to flex its muscles. The Senate, in particular, was willing to flex its muscles when it came to that, and really, budget negotiations, there's a lot of muscle flexing between the Senate, the Assembly, and the Governor. Who can use their leverage, who can use their power to get what they want? We saw the legislature wasn't afraid to use their power on that, and will they be afraid to do it for the budget process? Who knows? It was a sign of things to come when it came to that.

Brigid: Sure. Well, speaking of flexing, the New York Democrats are making a big push to bring the Democratic National Convention here to New York City next year, but there seems to be a pretty significant amount of infighting among state Democrats, beyond just those in the budget talks. The state party chair, Jay Jacobs, was on the show just last week to respond to critics who say that the state Democratic Party is a mess.

I would think that securing the convention would be a big boost for folks like Hochul and Mayor Eric Adams who's making the push and all the state Democrats. Are you hearing anything in Albany about what people think the chances are of that and what united front they could bring to something that would potentially be very important nationally, but might also pull the curtain on some of the internal state divisions?

Jon: I would say the short answer is not really. No.

Brigid: Interesting.

Jon: There hasn't been a whole ton of talk about it in Albany. This is much more generated from the mayor. The governor is certainly on board and has been out in front on it as well. This has been city-generated more than state generated, I would say. You did see the state party put out a promotional video the other day with Whoopi Goldberg saying about how great it would be to have the Democratic National Convention in New York City, the world stage, blah, blah, blah.

Brigid: It's a pretty good video. I thought it was pretty good.

Jon: Yes. It was pretty, it was flashy.

Brigid: Yes. Pretty sleek.

Jon: There are other cities in the mix but there hasn't been a whole ton of talk in the Capitol about it, I got to say that.

Brigid: Interesting. Well, we'll leave it there for today. Much more to come on the budget front in the coming days and weeks ahead. My thanks as always to Jon Campbell, WNYC's Albany Reporter. Talk to you again soon, Jon.

Jon: Thanks, Brigid.

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