<i>Theme music</i> Welcome to this week's edition of New York Now.

I'm Shantel Destra.

It appears the end may be near for negotiations for the state's budget, now four weeks delayed.

While state leaders have still not yet come to an official agreement, Assembly Speaker Carl Hastie told reporters this week that the policy items were still being worked through and conversations around actual dollars have officially started.

The latest budget extender goes until Monday, May 4th, will continue to bring you updates on negotiations around the budget right here on the show.

And apart from the budget, it's also election season for state leaders and elected officials.

New York State Comptroller Tom DiNapoli is facing primary challengers for the first time in almost two decades.

The slate of challengers argue that New York's longtime money manager has not been doing enough to help residents, and it's time to change the status quo of the office.

Meanwhile, DiNapoli asserts that his record speaks for itself.

In this next segment, David Lombardo of WCNY's The Capital Pressroom and Dan Clark of the Times Union dive into the dynamics of this race.

Here's that conversation.

Well, Dan, thank you so much for making the time.

I really appreciate it.

Anytime.

So this primary kind of feels like a referendum on the role of the state comptroller with the potential challengers to incumbent Tom DiNapoli all laying out a vision that is maybe a little different, a little more expansive, a little more aggressive than what we've seen for nearly two decades from the incumbent.

Can you talk a little bit about how these challengers envision using this role if they were to be elected in November?

Absolutely.

So let's start with how the comptroller, the incumbent, views the job now.

He really views it as more of a behind the desk job, a job where the primary responsibility is auditing state agencies, local governments, local school districts.

His challengers see it as a job where he should be out there advocating, that he should be out there in public, making his positions known politically, taking certain positions on specific legislation, being more active with the legislature.

In reality, this is a product of actually the election of Zoran Mandani in New York City, where these challengers saw Zoran take on the Democratic establishment and win.

And they think that they can do the same thing here.

And I think one of the issues related to that New York City mayor's race is something like housing.

And we've seen some of the challengers, like Drew Warshaw, who's a veteran of the Spitzer administration.

if people can remember that far back, has basically argued that we can use this controller's office as a tool to develop more affordable housing in New York and that the control of something like the pension fund is an opportunity for the controller to pick and choose some winners and to invest more in priorities of this government.

I mean, does that represent a major departure of what DiNapoli has done, or do you feel like there are ways in which DiNapoli has used the pension fund and its largesse to try to advance certain priorities?

Well, the pension fund in the current comptroller's eyes is really just a pension fund.

This is the pension fund for public workers.

So his primary responsibility as he sees it is just to keep it at a healthy level.

It's about $290 billion at the moment.

It's not a small amount of money.

That being said, Drew Warshaw, who is a veteran also of a national affordable housing nonprofit, wants to take $10 billion of that and invest it into affordable housing.

That's a big chunk of change when it comes to housing.

It could build quite a few homes.

The problem being is, do you then keep the pension fund healthy by doing that?

And how many times can you do that before the pension fund gets put at risk?

For example, if you want to use, as one of the challengers wants to, I believe it's also Drew Warshaw, use part of the pension fund to finance public utility infrastructure as a way to lower costs for energy consumers.

How many times can you do that before you say, Okay, now we gotta leave the pension fund alone?

That's the big question.

DiNapoli says, you know, the pension fund is a big part of his job, but it's not necessarily the only part of his job.

So he shouldn't use it necessarily to advance all of his priorities.

The way that he does policy is more from a broader point of view.

A big responsibility of the comptroller's office is to audit these state agencies, so he'll look at specific state programs.

Maybe it's an affordable housing program and his staff can do an audit that shows that maybe the state isn't administering it effectively.

Maybe that money isn't being spent effectively.

And that's another way to try to advance affordable housing.

So.

It's just another strategy towards the same goal, but not one that DiNapolis explored in the past.

And I would say the comptroller will point to his main raison d'etre when it comes to the pension fund being this idea of the return on investment and that his focus is what's going to get the most bang for the buck so that the employers, in this case, different levels of government, don't have to raise taxes to augment the pension fund.

But you mentioned the audit power and Raj Goyal, one of the other Democrats looking to run a Kansas transplant, has argued that the audits could be more aggressive when it comes to something like the Public Service Commission.

And the comptroller has pushed back on this and basically said, you want to be looking at the PSC, go serve on the PSC.

You want to do XYZ as it comes to legislation, run for the state legislature.

What do you think of that argument of the sort of, I guess, version or narrow casting of the comptroller's office as opposed to maybe what we've seen with the attorney general's office, which over the last three decades plus has evolved and has grown as its office holders push the limits of what might be acceptable.

Absolutely.

And we should know that the legislature itself has passed plenty of laws in the past couple of years, in the past 10 years to expand the powers of the attorney general's office.

We don't necessarily see that from the legislature when it comes to the state comptroller's office.

Raj Goyal is right that the comptroller's office could do a wholescale audit of the PSC, but to what end?

What are you looking for there?

You can't do an audit of the PSC and then say something about a utility company, for example.

It may not have anything to do with that.

When you're auditing the PSC, you're auditing the PSC's practices.

And when you pull back the curtain on that and see how the state is negotiating these settlements with these utility companies, that's something that could deserve more scrutiny from somebody like a state comptroller.

Now, But it really depends on what outcome you're looking for.

Are you trying to make the agency more effective or are you trying to lower utility rates?

And at that point, why not just run for the state legislature?

I think it's something to be said that Drew Warshaw and Raj Goyal both, their first run at office in New York is to run statewide.

I don't believe that either of them have considered running for lower office in Congress or the state legislature.

That being said, I don't know necessarily if members of the state legislature have power there either.

You know, it seems like everybody seems to acknowledge that utility prices are too high and nobody wants to do anything about it.

Well, sticking with some of the candidates who have run for lower office before, Adam Bunkadeko, he's run multiple times for Congress, and he, along with the other challengers, have all flagged the state controller's control of the unclaimed funds.

This is $20 billion in money that theoretically you at home might have a right to, so go to the comptroller's website and type in your name.

But they've argued that instead of making people proactively search for money, that the state should be proactively returning some of this money to New Yorkers.

How big of a deal is this, though, for voters or the general public or Comptroller DiNapoli, who has implemented some changes in the way they handle this, I mean, in response to legislation, though?

I have to tell you, I don't know what happens on the back end of the unclaimed funds search and recovery system.

Sure.

But as somebody who has moved about five times in the past decade, I get real concerned about thinking about the state automatically sending me money.

How come?

I don't know if it's going to land at an old address, and at that point, it might as well not come to me.

And that's a concern the comptroller has raised in terms of opposing proactive distributions.

Exactly.

At the same time, I mean, I think the comptroller does a pretty good job about publicizing these unclaimed funds to the press.

I don't know necessarily if the public hears that.

has a booth at the state fair, the very well-attended state fair.

I don't know.

And honestly, I don't know if that's an issue on the top of voters' minds.

When we say $20 billion in unclaimed funds, very few people out there are going to have much more than, I don't know, $30 here or there in these unclaimed funds.

I know because I've gone on there several times myself.

and found unclaimed funds.

I think it's those bigger issues in terms of how are we going to make state government more effective for the people that are going to hit harder with voters.

And it's really a battle of the newcomers, the challengers saying, Tom DiNapoli, you're not using this office effectively to represent your constituents.

Whereas they're saying, we would institute these new things in the office to do that.

Whereas Tom DiNapoli is saying, you're just not seeing what I'm doing, which is true.

I mean, the state controller comes out with audits every week of municipalities, school districts, and state agencies.

It's just that you don't necessarily care if you're not one of those.

In terms, though, of people aware of what the state controller is doing, poll after poll after poll this year has reiterated the fact that New Yorkers have no idea who the state controller is by a large degree.

I think it's only 30% even have an opinion about him positive or negative.

We're talking about two months out from the primary.

Is that an issue for an incumbent like Tom DiNapoli?

Does that create an opening for one of these three challengers, assuming they all make it onto the ballot?

Or is this an issue where he's got the institutional support, the labor organizations are backing him?

I mean, pretty much every Democratic politician is rallying behind him.

Is the lack of name recognition not gonna be a problem?

It's a big problem for him.

Okay.

And I'll give you an example of why.

In 2018, Kathy Hochul was lieutenant governor.

She was on the ticket with Andrew Cuomo at the time.

I believe she came within 3%, definitely within 10% of losing lieutenant governor nomination, even though she had been lieutenant governor for four years at that point and had all of the establishment and union support behind her.

This is the first time in 18 years that Tom DiNapoli is facing a real challenge for this office.

There have been names on the ballot beside him before that have dropped off the ballot.

This is the first time that, unless these names get bumped off the ballot, that he'll actually have to face a real campaign and a real challenge for the Democratic nomination.

We're not even getting into the Republican candidate for comptroller.

So it's a real challenge for him, and it's something that he should take seriously if he's looking to win re-election.

Well, Dan, that's all the time we have for this conversation.

I really appreciate you joining us in studio.

Thanks a lot.

Anytime.

And for more on the Comptroller's race, you can visit our website that's at nynow.org.

Now turning to another important topic.

In New York, state lawmakers have long been pushing for a bill that would help eliminate food deserts and improve access to fresh produce.

This year, supporters and advocates of the Fresh Communities Act say that they have a renewed push for the bill and are hopeful that it will make it into the budget this year.

Our Elise Klein has more in this next story.

For more than a decade, New York State lawmakers have tried to pass a bill intending to increase access to fresh produce in underserved communities.

This year, they have renewed their push to pass the bill and secure funding in the budget.

The Fresh Communities Act would provide loans, subsidies and grants to incentivize building new grocery stores and expanding other ones in underserved areas.

If enacted, the legislation would also mandate participation in the New York State Grown and Certified program, which helps connect the state's farmers to the retail food market.

Some state legislative sponsors Bill say if passed, this policy will have a significant impact on the community.

I deeply believe that every community deserves a grocery store and we need more small business owners leading the charge on that, not multibillion dollar chain chains.

Access to fresh produce in the state varies.

However, many communities, both urban and rural, have limited access to full service grocery stores.

In Albany, for example, many neighborhoods are low income where residents are up to 10 miles from the nearest supermarket, according to US census data.

Kaleem Hannah, Schenectady resident and college student, says he can walk to a market 32 grocery store to get food, but the prices are often too high.

Their prices are crazy.

Their prices are freaking insane.

Aldi's, Aldi's is honestly, I would say, the best place, but like, Dude's gotta ride like two or three buses just to get to Aldi's and it could really be a pain.

Hannah says the bill sounds like a good idea and could be helpful to improve access.

In theory, yes, it would be.

We would have more access to healthier foods.

We'd have better alternatives than just fast food 'cause I'm gonna keep a real wind and urban environment.

A lot of the food we eat is just trash.

Like a lot of the food we eat, stuff we eat, it's not good for us, gets stuck in our colon.

Vita Myers, a Troy resident, says not being close to a full-size grocery store is very challenging.

says they can walk to the good food market on River Street but typically need to plan trips with their car to get everything they need.

It is challenging that there's not like a full grocery store in downtown Troy and like this grocery store is great for a few basics but like I have a car so it's not as bad for the people who have to ride the bus and stuff but there's really poor grocery access here and now it's great in In these two spots in River Street, this in the bargain grocery, there's some, but it's not comprehensive.

Meyer says the bill could absolutely be beneficial for New York residents.

Any increased access to like healthy food would be great for Troy.

It's becoming like a really large There's a lot happening in Troy that it was revitalization, but like food access continues to be like a glaring process.

and for almost everybody.

Sina Batti, a downtown Albany resident, says she also has to use her car to grocery shop.

When I didn't have a vehicle, it was a lot more difficult to get to the grocery store because most of them are not meaningfully on like public transit lines.

But he also supports the bill, saying for people who are on a limited income, there are a lot of barriers to shopping for fresh food.

And if you're taking a bus to get there, taking a bus to get back.

You can't do any meaningful shopping unless it's shelf-stable products.

And if that's not the way in which you want to eat, then that's going to also present a lot of barriers for you.

Some of the supermarkets closest to residents are bodega-type grocery stores where produce is limited.

Akm Kareem, owner of Lark Central Market in Albany for 12 to 13 years, sells bananas, eggs and milk.

Kareem says he has about 10 to 15 customers a day who come looking for these fresh items.

Kareem adds prices for produce have increased and state aid could be beneficial for small stores like his that could expand their produce and operations with assistance.

Yeah, if it is very easy to produce, then it is very easy to ask for.

doing this business.

Milton Pina, owner of La Grande Meat Market and Produce in Albany for about 13 years, says the prices of food are constantly changing, which presents some challenges to keeping up with providing fresh produce.

Rice went up is not good for us.

It's not good for us.

Pina says he travels all the way to New York City to get almost half of the produce for his store because the wholesale prices are better than vendors closer to him.

He adds that better prices for him means better prices for his customers.

We get probably like 40% my product from the city.

We go to Manhattan and we go to the Bronx to get the products and the rates we get here at some company coming to do service in our store.

Pina says these trips can take up to 18 hours.

Some company, they do selling stuff in here, like restaurant depot, they got the same stuff we selling here, but they selling very, very high, you know.

So we provide to go to the city.

So we get a little load and we can get and that way we can give a better price to my customer.

Karina Lee, director of Wholesale Grow NYC at a community based organization and food hub, says the Fresh Communities Act could help grocery stores and supermarkets handle operational business costs at a time when the cost of food and operating small businesses are fluctuating.

I think that's where a fresh this act, but the Fresh Communities Act really would be would really be impactful because it's potentially able to subsidize some portion of that cost that otherwise would be getting passed through to the customer via the price margins or the markups that are applied to the food purchases themselves.

Lee adds this legislation could also help producers and small local farmers who to compete against large scale anchor farms in the supply chain market.

Many of them are blocked out of the large scale broadline warehouse needs that typically are focused within the Hunts Point area.

A lot of those distributors currently that are serving the New York City market are really looking to work with like one or two New York State or maybe regional large-scale anchor farms.

The Fresh Communities Act is currently stalled in committees in both houses.

However, many state lawmakers are actively pushing for the policy to pass as soon as possible.

In a lot of places, there are no readily available farmers market or grocery store for that matter.

We've had so many clothes across the Southern Tier and across the state.

So we really want to try to help those grocery stores, especially the small ones that are struggling.

or those who would like to open and need that little extra push.

We want to get food from the farms to the people of New York who need it, to our food banks and our schools and our smaller communities or urban communities that aren't well served by grocery stores.

Some lawmakers stress this policy isn't just about food security and equity, it's about public health.

The number of individuals with diabetes continues to grow dramatically with the American diet.

And I say that in quotes.

And usually it's because people have kind of not really paid attention to past and even current food pyramids.

In regards to that, fruits and vegetables should be covering up a good third to a half of your plate every single meal.

And people just aren't doing it.

And one of the reasons why is having access to it.

The bill also has bipartisan support in the legislature.

Yeah, the Fresh Communities Act is a great bill.

It's one that connects two really important needs.

One, making sure that people who live in disadvantaged communities or who don't have grocery stores or access to be able to buy food locally in their community, being able to actually set up grocery stores in those communities, and also working to ensure that we can get fresh, healthy, nutritious food in those same grocery stores, which would, by default and by kind of design, set up new markets for our farmers, for our local farmers.

Bills like this support local local agriculture.

And local agriculture is struggling and a lot of it due to bad policy out of Albany.

So this is one good policy out of Albany that we can all agree on, which is why it's bipartisan.

Many advocates and community members want to see this legislation pass.

The good food market run by the local nonprofit Capital Roots was one of the first more full-sized grocery stores to open in downtown Troy in quite some time.

Amy Klein, CEO of Capital Roots, says more grocery stores in underserved communities is the strongest path to address food insecurity.

We really believe, as an organization, that retail food access is the solution to food access, where, while emergency... Food is an important component of solving immediate food access needs.

It is not the solution to food access for our community.

Some advocates in emergency food assistance agree.

So Feed More Western New York and hunger relief organizations, we work to provide nutritious food to community members experiencing food insecurity, but we are one part of that puzzle.

We need to be working in tandem with the public and private sector to make sure that we are increasing Nutritious food access.

Rhonda BC, a community advocate who spent years pushing local government officials to open a grocery store in Syracuse's Valley neighborhood, says the Fresh Communities Act would make a big difference in New York communities like Syracuse.

Syracuse ranks with some of the highest poverty rates in the nation, according to US census data.

It could help if it were in place right now, we we'd be able to serve produce inside of a community where we are.

the most impoverished in the nation.

We have six schools in the community, the three senior citizen buildings in the community, lack of transportation and lack of people with automobiles.

It very much could be a game changer for what's happening right now in 2026.

For many years, the Topps grocery store in Syracuse Valley was the only full-sized grocery store where residents could get fresh produce and groceries.

The tops grocery store closed its Syracuse Valley location in 2018, leaving residents with only a Dollar General nearby to shop for food.

BC pushed for the store to be reopened and improved community access to fresh produce.

After five years of fighting, VC saw her advocacy come to fruition.

A newly renovated grocery store is planned to open this month.

I have a community of neighborhood person who saw a tremendous need and.

I've tried to help fill the gap.

So to me, this is huge.

More acronym with the Syracuse Onondaga Food Systems Alliance stresses the Fresh Communities Act will help ensure the work to improve food access doesn't solely come from advocates and community members.

It becomes a partnership of grassroots neighbors organizing to say, hey, we want this and.

state and federal or state and local entities sort of collaborating to be able to make those investments to make that equation a little bit easier and lower the risk for food retailers to enter into lower income needs.

The bill has struggled to make it out of committees since it was first introduced in 2011.

However, it passed both houses nearly unanimously and for the first time in 2024.

It was then vetoed by the governor.

The governor's veto message stated the bill was not accounted for in the state's financial planning.

This year, state lawmakers are pushing to get 10 million in the final budget to get this legislation off the ground.

Senator Baskin says she's feeling optimistic.

The state did have a program to address food accessibility through the Grocery store development that has recently signed.

So it is my purview and Senate and Assembly Member Stirpy, who carries the bill in the Assembly, that this cost is going to be budget neutral.

We'll simply pick up the investment from the previous program that is currently ending and apply the money to the Fresh Act.

In a statement sent to WMHT, a spokesperson from the governor's office said the governor continues to negotiate in good faith to finalize a budget that supports critical hunger prevention programs, Baskin says.

has had its challenges since it was first introduced, she doesn't see that as a reason for the bill not being able to move forward.

This has been over a decade ping pong battle with this bill.

So some years, bills that have been successful in the past but ended up making it to near the finish line, but then getting vetoed sometimes lose their way when they have to go back to what we call the repass process.

So I don't think that the fact that the passing of the bill has ebbed and flowed throughout both houses Is it a reflection of the intention of the bill being something good, good for the public?

Basket adds she has reengaged the assembly sponsor and feels they are a strong team to get the bill passed this year in both houses.

Many state lawmakers say while the budget is moving slowly towards the finish line, they feel optimistic about this measure.

I'm hopeful, though.

This seems like a year when this makes a lot of sense.

We're seeing.

SNAP benefits dry up for people or, the federal government is making it much harder for people to get SNAP.

we support it in the budget.

We had it in our one house this year, which is a really important step to make sure it's at the table because we want to make sure that there's funding attached to it to actually be able to put that into action.

It has not come up yet as far as I know in conversations, but I'm incredibly hopeful that it does.

Final budget negotiations are still ongoing, and while this measure doesn't seem to have come up yet in budget talks, lawmakers seem determined to get this measure in the final state budget.

Lawmakers also say if that doesn't happen, the fight isn't over, and they plan to continue to try and push to pass this bill outside of the state budget.

We'll be following this process as it unfolds.

Elise Kline, New York Now.

Well, that does it for this edition of New York Now.

Thank you for tuning in and see you next week.

Funding for New York Now is provided by WNET.