ALBANY, NY — Joseph Hernandez, candidate for New York State Comptroller, released the following statement today regarding the tentative $268 billion FY2027 state budget agreement:
“Spending is exploding two to three times faster than inflation while the biggest programs run on total autopilot, and Kathy Hochul, Tom DiNapoli, and Albany Democrats don’t give a damn.
This isn’t governance. It’s fiscal betrayal on steroids, a bloated, self-perpetuating monster devouring taxpayer money and screwing over every New Yorker struggling to make ends meet. Even though this so-called ‘deal’ technically hasn’t passed yet, the framework they’re pushing is already a disgrace.
The number one outrage is Medicaid.
The state share alone hits $48.3 billion, a staggering $4.3 billion, or 10 percent, increase in just one year. The full program now tops $123 billion. It has nearly doubled since 2019 and surged roughly 60 percent since 2022 alone, nearly five times the rate of inflation.
New York already has the highest per-capita Medicaid spending in America, roughly double neighboring New Jersey, yet health outcomes remain mediocre at best. Even Governor Kathy Hochul has called this growth ‘unsustainable’ for the fourth year in a row while continuing to push the same blank checks. No real reforms. No hard caps. Just endless gravy for unions, hospitals, and politically connected insiders.
Then comes the pure, shameless pork.
Millions for Governor Hochul’s ridiculous ‘NY Kicks’ youth soccer fields, a pathetic 2026 World Cup photo-op. Nearly $1 billion in one-time ‘energy rebate’ gimmick checks, a Band-Aid for sky-high utility bills Albany’s own regulations helped create. Hundreds of millions more in secret member-item slush fund grants and backroom handouts for library HVACs, school fields, and university labs with little transparency and virtually no oversight.
This is the Albany machine operating at full corrupt speed.
Kathy Hochul, Carl Heastie, Andrea Stewart-Cousins, and the Democratic supermajorities continue protecting the autopilot entitlement programs consuming more than half the state budget while tossing out pet projects to buy headlines and votes.
New Yorkers already pay some of the highest taxes in America, and for what? Structural deficits, future tax hikes, rising debt, and a fiscal trajectory that becomes more dangerous every single year.
And where is Tom DiNapoli? Where is the ‘watchdog’ New Yorkers were promised?
Clearly not barking, and definitely not biting.
For nearly two decades, Tom DiNapoli has branded himself as New York’s fiscal watchdog while state spending exploded from roughly $121 billion to $268 billion. Reports get issued. Warnings get made. But when it comes time to actually stop the Albany spending machine, taxpayers get silence.
Fiscal watchdogs, media, and oversight groups have gone completely quiet while this monstrosity moves forward.
As your next Comptroller, I would bring a blowtorch to this taxpayer abuse party. I will expose every dime of waste, demand real accountability, aggressively audit state spending, and stop this fiscal malpractice dead in its tracks.
It’s time to vote these clowns out before they bankrupt this state completely.”