Tim Williams

Update: State Budget Director Blake Washington tells me over $4B of this $8.1B was already put into the state reserve fund this week. Brings total in state rainy day fund back up to over $19B Adds @KathyHochul will propose in her exec budget what to do with the rest.

Yesterday, two Albany-area officials here at Somos told me they think @KathyHochul only took issue with a controversial commuter tax on non-residents who work in the capital city before the Nov. 3 election. They suggested maybe they could convince her to put it back on the table to help Albany with its whopping $55.5 million deficit over the next 16 months. But earlier, @MayorApplyrs, who vetoed the Common Council resolution Oct. 30, made it clear today the commuter tax proposal will not be revived. “The veto is going to hold,” she said. “There were council members who supported the notion, but this is an initiative that would require support from he city and the state, and it’s very clear that the support wasn’t there from the state.”

Assembly Speaker Carl Heastie said the jury is still out on who’s going to replace @CPeoplesStokes as Assembly Majority Leader. Heastie said he’ll speak w/ various members in the coming weeks to select a new majority leader. He wouldn’t say who’s on the short list. “There’s a lot of great members that can do the job, and I can only pick one, but there's a lot of good people,” he said, adding he won’t just entertain choosing a new leader from upstate. “I think it's (about) who is a good match, you know, for the conference. We have a very diverse conference. There's committee chairmanships all across the state, and I know people believe that, symbolically, it's been upstate, but I'm not saying it's not going to be. “It's fair to allow any member in the state that's qualified and good enough and wants the majority leader to give them that opportunity to make their case.”