ALTAMONT — The State Senate and Assembly have each produced their one-house budgets in response to Governor Kathy Hochul’s $260 billion executive budget. Negotiations on a final spending plan are to be complete by April 1 but that deadline has rarely been met in recent years.

Against this backdrop, Senator Patricia Fahy and Assemblywoman Gabriella Romero — both Democrats as is the governor and the majority of both houses — gave an overview of the proposed spending plan in Altamont on Friday evening.

About 30 people attended the cordial session; a third of them were local leaders: members of the town and village boards, the Guilderland schools superintendent, a county legislator, and the directors of both the Guilderland and Altamont libraries.

“We’re challenged this year more than ever because of the federal cutbacks,” said Fahy.

About a third of the revenues in the governor’s proposal comes from the federal government with the lion’s share — $61 billion — for Medicaid. This represents a $10 billion reduction in Medicaid support from last year.

About 450,000 New Yorkers could lose health coverage because the so-called “One Big Beautiful Bill” eliminates the Essential Plan for low-income New Yorkers.

State and local governments face up to $1.4 billion in new annual costs once shifts in the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, known as SNAP, formerly food stamps, take effect.

Fahy and Romero took turns highlighting proposals for education, health care, housing, economic development, environment and energy, transportation, public safety, and immigration and civil rights.

Fahy stressed the proposed increase in funding for pre-kindergarten programs, calling it “one of the big wins.”

The pre-pupil spending last year had ranged from about $5,000 to $6,000 for Berne-Knox-Westerlo, Guilderland, and Voorheesville schools. The proposal is $10,000 per pre-kindergarten pupil for each of those districts — an 85 percent increase.

Fahy also noted a 16-percent increase, to $395 million, for universal school meals, which she called “extraordinarily popular.”

Romero noted that Guilderland has been designated a Pro-Housing Community and highlighted the $250 million proposed by the governor in new capital meant to spur construction of affordable housing.

Fahy said, “UAlbany is a huge economic engine,” as she noted the 4-percent operating aid increase — for a total of $3.7 billion — proposed in the executive budget for the state university system.

On immigration, Fahy said, “It’s been like a reign of terror to have masked armed agents on our streets ignoring fundamental constitutional rights.”

She said the hope is to adopt an immigration packet separate from the budget “to address the extraordinary overreach and extraordinary aggressive tactics of ICE on civil immigration enforcement.”

Romero, who worked as a trial attorney before being elected to the Assembly, said, “The governor’s package includes three bills. One of them is my bill, which would create a state cause of action to sue federal government officials when they violate your civil rights.”

The second bill would end agreements to use local jails to house ICE detainees or to deputize local police to do the work of ICE while the third bill would create safe spaces ICE officers could not enter without a judicial warrant such as schools, hospitals, and houses of worship.

“It’s important that you know these things,” said Romero, “and I love being transparent with you because I think this will change the state of New York state.”

Fahy’s final comments were on the environment and energy. She said she had “proudly championed” the state’s Climate Leadership and Community Protection Act, which was adopted in 2019 with the goal of reducing greenhouse gas emissions 40 percent from 1990 levels by 2030 and 85 percent by 2050. It mandates 70 percent renewable energy by 2030 and 100-percent zero-emission electricity by 2040.

“No one could have anticipated in 2020 that we would have an international pandemic or complete upheaval in 2020 with the invasion of Ukraine into the international energy market,” said Fahy, adding that the current United States and Israeli war on Iran has further upended the energy market.

“Some modifications will be made but, make no mistake,” said Fahy, “there is still a real interest in making critical energy and environmental investments because the more we have energy independence in this country and less reliance on some of the traditional fossil fuels, the less we have to worry about ships getting through the Strait of Hormuz, driving up gas prices by almost a dollar within just over three weeks.”

Fahy exited, to applause, for another engagement, leaving Romero to field questions.

Picking up where Fahy left off — on the environment — Romero said, “We never implemented cap and invest …. I think that’s like something people don’t know was that we never actually did what we said we were supposed to do with our climate goals. And so we were sued.”

In an Albany County Supreme Court case, environmental groups alleged that, although the state’s Department of Environmental Conservation had prepared a cap-and-invest regulatory framework by late 2024, it abruptly halted its release in early 2025 and failed to provide any timeline for resumption.

While a judge ordered compliance by February 2026, the administration has appealed.

Romero said of the lack of implementation, “I think that that is something that is really negative and very bad and it has a lot to do with why we’re not on track to meet the CLCPA because literally nothing was ever implemented.”

Hochul wants to delay the deadline for establishing certain CLCPA regulations from 2024 to 2030, asserting that initial goals are no longer achievable without significant costs.

Hochul’s Republican adversary in November’s election, Nassau County Executive Bruce Blakeman, issued this statement on March 20 in response to Hochul’s proposed changes to the state’s climate law: “New Yorkers are fed up with Kathy Hochul’s delay tactics — her energy taxes, endless fees, and 36 rate hikes are crushing families with soaring utility bills. Delaying the pain doesn’t make it disappear — it just makes New Yorkers pay later. I won’t delay it — I’ll kill it for good and cut your utility bill in half.”

Local questions

Jill Loew, a Guilderland resident, said that, while New York prides itself on being a sanctuary state for productive rights, she is concerned that, “as smaller community hospitals lose funding, many of them are forced to merge with entities such as St. Peter’s Trinity, which results in a loss of reproductive services — birth control, abortion, trans care.”

Loew asked how access to these services would be assured.

“This is an emerging and very serious issue,” Romero responded. “Gender-affirming care is health care … and life saving care for so many.”

She has proposed a bill, should the federal government end gender-affirming care, that would have the state’s health department assemble a consortium of experts to lead a continuity-of-care program funded by the state, Romero said, so people could “find other places within New York State where they can continue to get their care.”

Loew said that Ellis, the only Schenectady County hospital, is merging with St. Peter’s Trinity, which will leave residents without services. “So, in many instances,” Loew said, “people are going to have to be forced to have to travel to Albany Med for a lot of their services and that’s really not feasible for a lot of people.”

Romero responded, “You might have to travel … I can’t tell you that it’s going to be OK. I hope that a bill like mine passes … but in the interim people might have to find bastions and safe spaces where they can continue in this moment of potential darkness.”

Betty Head, of Altamont, asked Romero what New York state would do to preserve the sanctity of voting if the federal Safeguard American Voter Eligibility Act, or the SAVE Act, becomes law.

The act, which narrowly passed in the House of Representatives in February and is pending in the Senate, would require voters to prove their citizenship in person upon registration, ban IDs without a photo at polling places, and criminalize failures to enforce such requirements.

Although President Donald Trump is pushing the act, claiming voter fraud, actual fraud is rare. Democrats who oppose the act argue that it would suppress and discourage legal voting.

An estimated 9 percent of eligible voters, or 21.3 million Americans, either do not have documents that prove their citizenship, such as passports and birth certificates, or cannot retrieve them in a day or less, according to a study by the Center for Democracy and Civic Engagement at University of Maryland and the Brennan Center for Justice.

Head asked Romero, “What should we look to New York doing to ensure no voter rolls are given over to the feds as well as I think we need assurance about the safety of our elections.”

Romero, who sounded unfamiliar with the SAFE Act, responded, “As it relates to this budget, we’re making sure that voting locations are safe spaces, meaning that federal officials can’t enter voting locations without a judicial warrant. And we expanded voting locations to SUNY campuses so that voting locations can be extended.”

She also said, “That’s terrifying what you’re mentioning … That is a literal voter suppression.”

Romero went on to say that the state’s governor and attorney general “will continue to protect us” and added, “I try to stay focused on what’s happening right in front of me, personally, what I can control …. But I hear what you're saying … It’s like a very terrifying thing to think about.”

She concluded, “I would have hope instead of fear.”

Altamont resident Edna Litten suggested increasing the perimeter around polling places to keep armed ICE agents at a distance so as not to scare voters away.

“I’ll take that back,” said Romero of the suggestion.

Joe Burke, director of the Altamont Free Library, noted that the governor’s budget proposal includes flat funding — $104.3 million — for general library aid.

“But in fact,” Burke said, “that represents a cut because what that money goes to is library systems. Not public libraries, but library systems.”

Referring to Pete Petruski, the director of the Guilderland Public Library, sitting next to him, Burke went on, “The infrastructure connects all of New York state’s libraries and will allow small libraries to not have to have every single thing that a big library like Pete’s has so that folks in small communities can have the same educational materials and enriching materials and empowering materials that they need access to.”

The Assembly has added $4 million to the governor’s proposal and the Senate has added $10 million over the governor’s proposal, he noted.

Burke concluded by urging Romero and her colleagues “to think critically about the role of library infrastructure in connecting communities and empowering particularly small communities and allowing us to do the incredible work that we do.”

Finally, Kerry Dineen, Altamont’s mayor who worked as a Guilderland teacher, asked about making changes to Tier 6, a level of the pension plan for public workers that offers less than earlier tiers.

Employees who joined after April 1, 2012 have a higher retirement age at 63, mandatory contributions of 3 to 6 percent for their entire career, and a 10-year vesting period.

“It's really discouraging to people that are younger,” said Dineen, adding that she has a niece who is a “natural teacher” but won’t consider going into the profession because of “the way things are here.”

She said of retired teachers, “We go back and we teach still because we don’t have an earnings cap.”

Changes would also benefit the village, Dineen said. “Just on a side note, that would be great for municipalities because we have retired folks who are back working for the village of Altamont right now, but they have to stop at a certain time through the year.”

“I’m a big supporter,” said Romero of changing the policy for tiers 5 and 6. “I was at the rally at MVP with like literally 15,000 people. It’s incredible … The governor was there. She expressed she would do something if the legislature gave it to her.”

Romero said both houses had included statements of support in their one-house bills but continued, “Fixing your Tier 5 and Tier 6 would be multi-billion dollar fixes. So we have to find revenue somewhere. Personally, as the senator mentioned, I think we find revenue through taxing the wealthiest New Yorkers, the people that make over 5 million and 10 million dollars ….

“But frankly this budget is so many billions of dollars that we actually can’t just tax the rich. We would have to do so many other things as well …. I think that there are some helpful compromise tweaks that will be able to fix it in a way that makes sense for everyone … in a way that’s hopefully fiscally responsible. Frankly … I don’t want to do it on the backs of working-class New Yorkers.”

Romero concluded the session by saying, “I love being your assembly member. It’s been an eventful but also completely chaotic first year …. I love Altamont …. Thanks for having me.”