The Real Rebecca Kassay.

The vote was 4-1 to adopt a local law letting the village exceed the state's 2% cap. Mayor Lauren Sheprow voted against it. The village treasurer told TBR News Media Port Jefferson had already gone over the cap in eight of the previous nine years, by anywhere from $8,000 to $380,000.

WalletHub's 2026 study of state and local tax rates ranks New York 50th out of 51. Only Illinois is worse. A separate WalletHub measure of tax burden, the share of personal income going to property, income and sales taxes, puts New York second highest in the country at 12.39%.

Hochul and Mayor Zohran Mamdani announced nearly $8 billion in new state assistance over two years to close a deficit of more than $12 billion. About $3 billion is direct aid. The rest is permission for the city to defer costs it already owes.

The Empire Center's Bill Hammond ran the numbers: New York City skips $16.7 billion in pension contributions over the next seven years, then pays $24.3 billion back over the five years after that. Net cost to taxpayers, $7.6 billion more than simply paying the bill on time, before roughly $151 million a year in Tier 6 sweeteners. Hochul signed it anyway.

The budget missed the April 1 deadline and was signed May 26, 2026 as Chapter 58 of the Laws of 2026, moving through the Legislature on a message of necessity.

The budget she voted for exempts qualifying multifamily housing from state environmental review: up to 300 units in urban areas, 100 elsewhere. To qualify, a project has to sit on a previously disturbed site already connected to water and sewer, so the exemption is aimed squarely at parcels inside existing neighborhoods.

The State Environmental Quality Review Act has required since 1975 that a project's impacts be studied and disclosed publicly before approval. An attorney for Save the Sound, representing 4,400 households, called the new exemption poorly drafted and overly broad. Long Island sits on a sole-source aquifer, meaning every drop of drinking water here comes from the ground underneath the development.

Long Island civic and environmental groups led by Group for the East End warned the change would undermine local control and let development proceed without public input, leaving towns to pick up the mess. A national real estate practice told developer clients the reforms give them a "statutory basis to bypass lengthy environmental reviews," effective immediately, cutting their risk of being sued. Hochul's office says local zoning still applies, so what Albany took is the study, the public process, and the record a neighbor would need to challenge a project.

Save the Sound noted the reforms contain no language requiring anyone to lower rents. The exemption is granted on the size and location of a project, not on what it charges.

Englebright was one of roughly 70 elected officials statewide who signed a letter organized by Riverkeeper asking the Governor not to roll back the review process, warning it would strip municipalities of local authority. He argued construction should not outrank the environment, and pointed to what poor planning leaves behind: asthma, heart and lung disease, shorter lives. He also warned that keeping the law intact is what guarantees New Yorkers clean and healthy places to live.

A8560-A was introduced May 20, 2025 and pushed through on the final day of session, passing the Assembly on June 17 after the Senate cleared it 58 to 1 on June 13. The sponsor memo states the easement must reserve the Department's right to build a future bridge over the Greenway for the realignment of Route 25A, and must include a mutual acknowledgement that the rail yard and the bridge project can coexist. Governor Hochul vetoed it in December 2025.

A10341 passed the Assembly on May 28, 2026 and the Senate on June 3. Hochul signed it July 6, 2026 as chapter 164. Kassay has run on the protection ever since.

The Governor's office states that should the rail infrastructure be constructed in the future, the Greenway and its conservation easement will be rerouted to the south of the rail yard. The corridor is protected from becoming a road. It is not protected from being moved.

The Legislature repealed the rule in June 2025 and Hochul signed it that December, effective April 2027. A new applicant now pays 100 percent of the material and installation cost instead of splitting it across existing ratepayers. Assembly Republicans warned it would add thousands in costs during an affordability crisis.

The act rewrites the obligation to serve so utilities are no longer required to provide gas, and directs the Public Service Commission to plan the transition off segments of the system. Existing service and existing appliances are not touched. The cost lands on new homes, additions and replacement systems. Roughly six in ten New York households heat with gas.

New York's net domestic migration loss has now passed 1 million over the five years since 2020. That is a net figure: more than a million more people left for other states than moved here from them. The 2024-25 net outflow of 137,586 pushed the five-year total past the million mark, the second largest loss of any state behind California.