It’s good to have friends in high places. In the 2026-27 New York state budget, Yonkers’ powerful state legislators brought home the bacon. They came to Will Library to explain how they did it, and to take something of a victory lap for delivering record state funding to the city. The evening also raised a harder question: What happens next year if Albany can’t come to the rescue?
About 50 people packed into a room at the Grinton I. Will Library on the evening of Aug. 3 for a town hall hosted by long-serving state Senate Majority Leader Andrea Stewart-Cousins, Sen. Shelley Mayer, who chairs the Senate Education Committee, and retiring Assemblyman Nader Sayegh.
The meeting was billed as “an informative Town Hall and recap of the 2026 legislative session and state budget,” which was adopted May 28, nearly two months late.
Stewart-Cousins Provided the Big Picture
In her opening remarks, Stewart-Cousins recounted how the Legislature negotiated an additional $1 billion in state spending for aid to municipalities outside New York City. That allowed for an additional $163 million in funding for Yonkers, which helped fill a projected city budget gap that threatened hundreds of layoffs in the city’s schools.
Stewart-Cousins then explained the state budget process and discussed some of the many policy and funding decisions that the Legislature and Gov. Kathy Hochul settled on after protracted negotiations.
The quietly powerful majority leader said “affordability” was foremost on her mind, a challenging priority when the state needed to counter the adverse effects of steep federal spending cuts. Ultimately, she argued, the budget represented a substantial investment in the people of New York.
Her list of wins included increases in education spending; universal student meals; changes intended to provide greater fairness for public employees in Tier 6 of the state pension system; aid to hospitals, including $100 million for St. John’s Riverside Hospital in Yonkers; changes to the SNAP application process to comply with new federal requirements; and public safety initiatives, including an additional $100,000 to support police patrols in Yonkers. Later in the evening, she also discussed bail reform and gun violence.
Mayer Says Yonkers Is Now Treated Fairly
Mayer spoke passionately about state support for Yonkers schools. She said that since Democrats took control of the state Senate in 2019, the state has directed an additional $354 million in education funding to Yonkers.
Mayer argued that Yonkers is now being treated more fairly under the Foundation Aid formula, the main way the state doles out education funding. She attributed that, in part, to the positions of power held by the city’s representatives and to their continued attention to issues affecting Yonkers. She emphasized that the Yonkers delegation works together to make sure the city receives its fair share.
Sayegh Says Delegation Delivered on Flood Relief
Sayegh focused more on constituent services and problem solving. He was particularly proud of the work the Yonkers delegation has done to alleviate flooding throughout the city. Like Mayer, he emphasized that having Yonkers legislators in influential positions has put the city in a unique position to obtain help from Albany.
Republican Candidate Claims False Advertising
The format left very little time for audience questions, and those were submitted in writing. The limited opportunity for questions subsequently became a point of criticism.
In social media posts, Anthony Merante, a former Yonkers city council member and the Republican candidate running against Stewart-Cousins this year, criticized the event for not really being a town hall because attendees were not permitted to question the legislators directly.
He has a point. A meeting with only written questions, with very few being answered, does not provide much of the spontaneous give-and-take normally associated with a town hall.
But Merante’s criticism of the format overlooked the substance of the meeting. The legislators provided detailed information about the state budget process, the decisions made in Albany and the extent to which Yonkers benefited from this year’s budget.
Stewart-Cousins, Mayer and Sayegh made a persuasive case that Yonkers has benefited enormously from having a legislative delegation with seniority, influence and important positions of power in Albany. This year, that influence helped deliver an extraordinary infusion of state assistance at precisely the moment Yonkers needed it.
But What Happens Next Year?
Our state legislators deserve credit for bringing home the bacon. This year they brought home a lot of it. There was, however, one important issue the meeting did not address: What happens next year?
Yonkers entered this year’s budget process facing the possibility of significant cuts and layoffs. Albany came through with extraordinary assistance, helping the city and its schools avoid much of that pain.
But nothing guarantees the same help next year — much less more of it, if Yonkers opens another large gap.
This year, strong state revenues, including tax receipts generated by a robust Wall Street and financial sector, gave Albany greater flexibility to increase spending. Those revenues may not be there next year. Other municipalities will compete for the same money, political priorities shift, and leadership in Albany eventually turns over.
What the town hall did not explain was how Yonkers will manage its finances if Albany cannot provide another extraordinary infusion of money next year.
That question deserves a closer look. It will be the subject of a follow-up article examining the state of Yonkers’ finances, its recurring budget gaps and the city’s growing reliance on Albany to help make the numbers work.
