The state budget passed at last: What’s in it for NYC?

New York City Mayor Eric Adams came away from the state budget deal largely victorious, scoring several big policy wins that he’s long pushed for as he gears up for a competitive reelection battle.

The state Legislature at last finished voting on its roughly $254 billion budget for fiscal year 2026 Thursday night, capping off a process that has dragged on for weeks after the initial April 1 deadline – not to mention 10 days after Gov. Kathy Hochul announced a “general agreement.”

Adams’ alignment with Hochul paid off big time for him this year. Most of his asks were in her initial budget proposal. And from lowering the standard for involuntarily hospitalizing people experiencing mental health crises to a proposal to eliminate the city’s income tax for low-income New Yorkers, Adams ended up getting just about everything he’d asked lawmakers at “Tin Cup Day” this year. The lone exception was his request for $1.1 billion in funding for migrant services – a request Hochul had shut down, citing the city’s slow reimbursement requests over what she’d already allocated over the previous two years.

“No doubt having the governor with you on these issues is always important,” said Diane Savino, a senior adviser for Adams who was heavily involved in the city’s budget outreach to the state. Savino served in the state Senate from 2005 to 2022.

Granted, Adams list of priorities was simultaneously shorter and less contentious than previous years. While he was also ultimately largely successful during the 2024 session, the mayor had to wait until the final hours of budget negotiations to learn the fate of a two-year extension on mayoral control over city schools, the suite of housing-related changes he’d advocated for, a plan to shut down the city’s illegal cannabis shops, an expansion of the city’s borrowing ability and funding for migrant services. Adams' record in Albany the first two years of his tenure was a bit more of a mixed bag. 

Savino attributed this year’s smooth path largely to the fact that much of the Adams administration’s biggest priorities were included in the previous few budget deals. “You throw everything against the wall and see what sticks,” she said, explaining that it sometimes takes several years for lawmakers to get on board with what the city is touting as important. “We got a lot of what we wanted to get done last year and the year before. This year’s list is a little bit smaller, but no less important.”

Altogether, it’s a good note for Adams to close out his first term on – particularly as he faces an immensely challenging path to reelection. Here’s a breakdown of what the mayor came away with in the state budget and some of the other aspects included in the deal that’ll impact the city. 

Involuntary commitment 

After years of Adams urging lawmakers to take up the issue, the state is loosening the legal standard for involuntary mental health commitments to apply to people who are unable to care for their “basic needs” – essentially making it easier for the city to take people with severe mental illness off the streets and into psychiatric treatment. City clinicians have charged that the current version of Kendra’s Law wasn’t clear on who could be transported to hospitals for evaluation, meaning the standard for involuntary commitment was generally interpreted as only applicable to people who pose an imminent physical danger to themselves or others. The state also approved several other similar changes to reform involuntary commitment requested by the city, including giving qualified psychiatric nurse practitioners more authority to make decisions on whether someone should be hospitalized – rather than just doctors. 

Adams held a press conference Thursday morning in which he touted the changes, describing them as the right and compassionate thing to do. Since 2022, he’s urged lawmakers to amend the involuntary commitment law, arguing that doing so would help prevent random violent attacks on the streets and subways. 

Discovery

Lawmakers approved a handful of changes to the state’s discovery law process aimed at reducing the number of criminal cases that are dismissed on technicalities. While the final language adopted in the budget is a watered down version of what Hochul initially proposed (and what Adams, New York City Police Commissioner Jessica Tisch and district attorneys had pushed for), it will still impact how and when prosecutors turn over evidence to the defense going forward. Some of the biggest tweaks to the law include a provision to give the defense 35 days to challenge a prosecutor’s certification that they’ve completed a discovery effort, a clarification that cases should only be dismissed if prosecutors didn’t exercise “due diligence” in turning over evidence, a slightly narrowed scope on what evidence prosecutors must turn over, and a stronger requirement for courts to consider whether missing evidence prejudiced the defense. 

Ultimately, it’s a complex issue – one that pitted the governor, district attorneys and law enforcement against civil rights advocates like the Legal Aid Society and the Bronx Defenders. Lawmakers had enacted reforms to the state’s discovery law in 2019 alongside bail reform and other criminal justice measures. The new changes will roll some of that back. 

Axe the tax

Hundreds of thousands of low-income New Yorkers with at least one dependent living at or below 150% of the federal poverty line will no longer need to pay personal income tax thanks to a provision tucked in the state budget package. A family with two married adults and one child for example would qualify if they make $36,789 or less in a year. The same applies to a single parent with one child making $31,503 or less. The change, proposed by Adams in December, will apply to an estimated 582,000 people, saving them nearly $63 million in total, according to the city. An analysis by the Independent Budget Office shortly after Adams unveiled the proposal last year found that the initiative would ultimately apply to just 4% of tax filers in New York City.

Cellphones in schools

Most New York City K-12 students will no longer have access to their cellphones and other personal devices that connect to the internet during school hours. While this “bell-to-bell” ban will apply to all public and charter schools across the state, it’ll be up to the New York City school district to craft a plan for its roughly 1,600 schools by August that’ll dictate how the phones will be stored, how to pay for the policy and how to enforce it. The change will take effect come September. 

The ban has been a big priority for Hochul, but Adams has also expressed support for the change – albeit initially with more reservations. Under former schools Chancellor David Banks’ leadership, the city’s school system seriously considered enacting its own ban, but the mayor ultimately dialed this message back, saying in August 2024 that the city wasn’t ready yet for a full ban. (Former Mayor Michael Bloomberg had previously banned cellphones in schools only for it to be overturned a few years later by former Mayor Bill de Blasio.) Roughly two months ago though, Adams expressed his full support for the change, declaring his goal was to have a cellphone ban in place by next school year.

A few other aspects that’ll impact the city 

While they weren’t necessarily cited as a priority of Adams this session, there are a number of other aspects included in the state budget package that’ll impact the city. The Metropolitan Transportation Authority will receive $68.4 billion – fully funding its five-year capital plan to repair and update the city’s sprawling mass public transportation system. The Housing Voucher Access Program will be extended into a four-year pilot program. The state funding formula for public schools will be tweaked going forward, reducing what city schools would have received under the current formula by a projected roughly $350 million – though that still translates to an overall increase of about 5% from what schools are receiving now. An existing pilot program to install speed cameras in work zones will be expanded in the city, allowing the MTA to put cameras on its seven bridges and two tunnels. The city will also be allowed to install automatic weight sensors to a handful of bridges – an expansion on the current automatic ticketing system for overweight trucks on the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway.