We have finally found a point of agreement with Assembly Speaker Carl Heastie – policy issues don’t need to be included in the state budget.

That doesn’t mean we agree with his recent proposal to allow state lawmakers to be paid when the state budget is late because the governor inserts policy in the budget, a process that has led to late budgets the past few years because Hochul and state legislative leaders struggle to find compromise on the policy issues.

We have long preferred that policy issues get hashed out on the Senate and Assembly floor where there can be an open and honest policy debate on those issues rather than a two-day marathon meeting where the budget and policy are debated. Issues like discovery reform deserve to be discussed and debated because they do have an impact on all of us who live in the state. The state budget is complex enough without throwing policy issues into the equation.

Heastie tries to make the argument that lawmakers are innocent bystanders when the governor inserts policy into the budget. But, whether it’s policy we support or oppose, there is a reason a governor inserts policy language into budget bills – it’s the only way the governor can get those bills in front of state lawmakers in the first place.

Look at discovery reform. We’ve heard about issues with discovery timelines for the past five years. Prosecutors said during debate on bail reform legislation in 2019 that discovery timelines were too short. Half a decade later we find ourselves in a budget stalemate over an issue we all saw coming. Yet the majority leadership in the Assembly and Senate wasn’t going to deal with the issue until forced to do so.

So let’s not act as if legislative leadership plays no role in budget stalemates like this one. Would discovery reform have made it to the floor of either legislative chamber this year, or any other year, on its own? Probably not, judging from the three-week stalemate over the issue.

Either give governors a way to more easily get their unpopular policy items in front of legislators outside of the budget or expect stalemates like this one to happen every spring. Either way, state legislators shouldn’t be let off the hook through a bit of legislative legerdemain. It takes two to tango … or, in this case, not to tango.