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.

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“is to cut the revenue and spend money on nothing but essentials”

Generally, this is my philosophy here too in NH.
Except, we get our revenue from primarily property taxes.

IMHO, the sales tax or VAT is the best method. The more you spend, the more taxes you pay. So, poor people do not pay as much as wealthy people because they tend to spend less.

This is the issue we have here in NH. Older poor people are almost forced to sell their homes because they can not afford the property taxes. Many then want an income tax. Yet , they do not take into account they do not pay any sales tax UNLESS you go out to eat. Or buy any prepared food.

Yet, the state of NH makes a lot on people crossing the border to buy things. Booze, fireworks, retail clothes, etc are all right on the MA border. The liquor stores are at the highway rest stops.

There is nothing conservative about raiding your reserve funds, your trust funds, relying on federal taxpayers to balance your bleeping budget.

The federal share of the Medicaid program isn’t ’relying on federal taxpayers’, it’s actually a federal program that relies on state taxpayers ‘to balance’ its budget.

And I don’t think you understand the nature of state trust funds. e.g. The state of Florida has a trust fund for newborn screening. Newborn screening blood tests are billed to insurance, the insurance payment fills the trust fund. The trust fund is tapped annually for the newborn blood screening follow up program. It’s literally the funding mechanism, nothing is being ‘raided’. It has a surplus that exceeds the annual funding needs of the following up program.

One of the biggest issues in Florida right is affordability, especially in housing.

With all the people that have moved to Florida, the cost of homes and apartments has risen substantially.

New Construction if Florida is booming, housing developments and apartments are being built everywhere, and they still can’t keep up with the number of people moving here.

With the price of housing rising substantially, it also raises the price of existing homes which has driven up property taxes.

This is a good problem to have in many ways, the only way to solve the problem is to keep building until the supply of new homes and apartments meets the demand of the number of people moving here or reduce property taxes on the primary residences of the citizen.

IMO, if this amendment passes, local governments will declare financial Armageddon at first then get creative and really prioritize spending and then spread taxes out to more people by probably raising the sales tax 1-2% which wouldn’t be noticed that much and result in tourists paying the same rate.

I subscribe to this guy on YouTube called Reventure Consulting. He mostly is trying to sell his APP.
However, he was the first person to call a top to some of the real estate markets in the south. Such as Austin. Then Nashville.

He is now located in Florida. I think he even bought a condo down there somewhere. However, it was a quite a discount to what they were once asking. He is showing that prices are coming off pretty big in some parts of Florida.

I see the building starts by metro in Florida and every other major market in the USA. I subscribe to a service.
Orlando is now one of the largest construction markets in the country. However, all the other Florida markets are pulling back from their high in starts/permits in 2022-2024.

Almost all the major markets in the country have pulled back from their peak in 2024 of 1.6 million starts.
The majority of the building starts are still in the south.
Where as the north is reconstruction. In NYC there are tens of thousands of office space being converted to residential housing. Same in almost every other metro area. Even here in Manchester, NH they converted a 22 story downtown building built in the 70s to apartments. Very expensive apartments.

Even the largest markets in the country Dallas/Ft Worth and Houston have pulled back. They are still the two biggest volume of raw building starts in the USA. Phoenix is still third. LA, NYC, Austin, Atlanta, and Orlando are all in the top ten. Orlando is the newest entry into the top ten.

Florida has some issues to keep an eye on... Medicaid spending, public pensions and health insurance costs, education spending... Looks like it’s also using trust fund and reserve money to make the budget balance. And if this is accurate, per AI... “Federal funds make up approximately 33% to 34% of the Florida state budget, accounting for roughly $1 in every $3 spent by the state. This translates to about $37.9 billion of the state’s total appropriations.” FL is walking a fiscal tightrope and the only reason it hasn’t landed on its butt is thanks to federal taxpayers.

So if Florida dramatically increased its spending to where that percentage/ratio of Federal dollars reduced, that would be make it more fiscally sound?

I'm trying to figure out how what you are saying makes sense...

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