Marina Marcou-O’Malley wins City & State 2025 budget poll

Nearly 400 people entered City & State’s 2025 budget poll, and most of them underestimated just how long Gov. Kathy Hochul and legislative leaders would take to finally reach a deal – with only 11 people correctly guessing that the budget would be finished on May 8.

The winner of the 2025 City & State budget poll is Marina Marcou-O’Malley, the co-executive director of the Alliance for Quality Education, whose prediction that the final budget bill would pass the Legislature at 10 p.m. on May 8 was less than an hour off. She is the winner of a free “City & State New York” beach towel. (Don’t feel too bad if you lost the poll, since you can still purchase the towel on City & State’s merch site.)

How did Marcou-O’Malley predict that this year’s budget would be the most delayed in the past 15 years? In an interview with City & State, she credited her “17 years of experience in the field and the fact that the governor kept introducing new things as part of the negotiations.” 

She said she closely followed all the twists and turns of the budget process, since most of the Alliance for Quality Education’s legislative demands are tied to the budget. She praised the final budget’s inclusion of universal school meals and the expansion of the child tax credit, though she said it was “a total mixed bag” overall.

Marcou-O’Malley also had kind things to say about the publication that is sending her a free beach towel. She said that she has been reading City & State since it was founded more than a decade ago and encourages others to read it, too. “I appreciate the balanced reporting and the opportunity to get to know politics and the people in it,” she said.