New York/Florida State Budget Comparison, FY 2027 Edition

New York’s and Florida’s respective state budgets have just been finalized for what they call the 2027 “fiscal year.” In New York’s case the FY runs from April 1 to March 31, so the budget is supposed to be final by April 1; but, this being New York, the budget was about 8 weeks late. In Florida the FY runs from July 1 to June 30, and the legislature has already completed its work on the FY 2027 budget.

Ability to meet fixed deadlines is just one of many ways in which Florida exemplifies responsible state government while New York exemplifies the irresponsible version. Over the past several years, I have had multiple posts comparing state governance in New York versus Florida, for example this post from June last year comparing the budgets of the two states. With another year’s budgets now complete, it’s time for an update.

The short version is that with each passing year the New York/Florida comparison gets a little better for Florida and a little worse for New York. The change may be small in any given year; but over ten years, or twenty, the difference becomes huge. And the important changes are always in the same direction.

Here is the announcement from the New York State Assembly of the total size of the FY 2027 New York State budget: $268.1 billion. Last year the number was (from my blog post, based on the State’s Executive Briefing Book): $252 billion. So the increase is $16.1 billion, or 6.4%. For reference, the consumer price index increased 3.8% from April 1 2025 to April 1 2026.

In Florida, the enacted budget amount, from a May 26 State Senate release, is $114.5 billion. That amount actually represents a small decrease from last year’s figure of $115.1 billion.

Population figures come out with about a year delay, so the latest estimates from the Census Bureau are from July 1, 2025. At that date, the estimate for Florida was 23,462,518 (up from 23,372,215 on 7/1/24); and for New York 20,002,427 (up from 19,867,248 on 7/1/24). If you believe these Census estimates, New York’s population actually went up slightly more than that of Florida during that interval (135,179 v. 90,303).

But even with that slight narrowing of the population gap, Florida’s population remains 17.3% higher than that of New York, while its budget has gone from 45.7% as much to now only 42.7% as much. On a per capita basis, New York’s spending this year is $13,400, versus $12,700 last year. In Florida, per capita, state spending is $4,880 this year, versus $4,920 last year. So per capita state spending in New York has gone from 2.58 times that of Florida last year to 2.75 times higher this year. That is a substantial change in just one year.

The respective releases from the two legislatures illustrate the extent to which the two states have completely opposite ideas of the purpose of state government spending. In Florida, the goal is to minimize state spending to accomplish only necessary purposes:

“The best thing we can do to keep Florida affordable is to keep taxes low, limiting the financial burden taxes and regulations place on Florida’s families and businesses. To keep taxes low, state government has to live within its means, pay down debt, and save for the future. These key principles are shared by the Senate, House, and Governor DeSantis and reflect the sound financial stewardship Floridians expect and deserve,” said Senate President Ben Albritton (R-Wauchula).

In New York, it’s all about spending as much money as you can possibly get away with. Hey, it’s not “spending”; it’s “investment”!

Speaker Carl Heastie and Ways and Means Committee Chair J. Gary Pretlow today announced that the $268.1 billion State Fiscal Year (SFY) 2026-27 Enacted Budget puts money back into New Yorker’s pockets and invests in our communities and in our children’s futures. “While the federal government causes instability and uncertainty, the Assembly Majority is committed to investing in and supporting our communities,” Speaker Heastie said. “This budget makes critical investments in our students and their futures, protects immigrant New Yorkers and our communities, and puts money back into the pockets of hardworking New Yorkers. We will continue working to uplift all New Yorkers.”

Looking at the vast discrepancies between state spending in the two states, I noted in my post last year that New York does not have any large areas of spending that Florida does not have. Rather, New York just spends hugely more on the same basic functions without achieving measurably superior results. In particular, last year New York spent about 50% more per student on K-12 education, and more than triple the amount that Florida spent on Medicaid and other healthcare for low income people, servicing a population almost 20% less. For that additional spending, New York did not achieve any notable measurable superior results by such metrics as, for example, the NAEP tests for K-12 students, or in the case of medical care, in life expectancy. Those metrics have not changed meaningfully.

So what is New York Assembly Speaker Heastie talking about when he says that the state’s budget “puts money back into New Yorker’s [sic] pockets”? Read a little further into the release, and you learn that this line refers to a perfect example of New York’s deceptive budgeting. The specific program Heastie is talking about is a plan to partially offset rising electric utility rates by handing each ratepayer a rebate check of $100 to $200:

The enacted budget includes funding to provide relief to families struggling with rising utility rates through Protecting Our Wallets Energy Rebate (POWER) Checks. The POWER Checks will be sent out from September to December of this year and provide $1 billion in relief to 8.2 million New Yorkers. The checks will be available to full-time residents of New York and are based on 2024 tax returns. . . .

But of course, as readers here know, New York State has intentionally driven up ratepayer electricity costs with a suite of bad policies, from expanding wind and solar generation, to making it impossible to modernize natural gas plants, to joining the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative with other Northeastern states. Here are the latest (March 2026) state-by-state average residential electricity rates per kWh from the EIA. In New York, the average rate was 28.55 cents. In Florida, where they don’t have all the fossil fuel restrictions and the Climate Act and RGGI, the average rate was 14.86 cents. For an average household that uses about 10,000 kWh of electricity per year, the difference between paying New York rates and Florida rates is $1369 per year. Are these New Yorkers fooled into thinking they’re coming out ahead by getting a “rebate” check from the state of even the maximum of $200? Well, these are New York voters, so never overestimate their ability to do arithmetic.

Given that New York’s politicians think they are doing the right thing by endlessly growing the state government faster than the economy, the odds of these negative trends getting reversed any time soon are poor.