Court Opinion

ID: 9716422
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-26 06:38:39.31118+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T09:59:33.522705
License: Public Domain

OPINION OF THE COURT
R.S. Smith, J.
Since 1927, the New York Constitution has provided for executive budgeting. Under this system, the State’s budget originates with the Governor, and he must submit to the Legislature *81proposed legislation, including “appropriation bills,” to put his proposed budget into effect. The Legislature “may not alter an appropriation bill submitted by the governor except to strike out or reduce items therein” (NY Const, art VII, § 4).
In these cases, the Governor and the Legislature accuse each other of overstepping limitations placed by the Constitution on their roles in enacting the budget. We resolve the dispute in the Governor’s favor. We hold, in both of these cases, that the Legislature altered the Governor’s appropriation bills in ways not permitted by the Constitution. In Pataki v New York State Assembly, we also hold that the Governor did not exceed constitutional limits on what his appropriation bills may contain.
Five members of this Court agree with these two conclusions, and with the reasoning that leads to the first of them. As to our second conclusion, two members of the majority have reservations about the analysis in the section of this opinion entitled “The Content of Appropriation Bills” (at 92-99), as explained in Judge Rosenblatt’s concurring opinion.
I. Background: New York’s Executive Budget System
Until 1927, all budget legislation, like other legislation, originated with the Legislature. The Governor’s only power over budget legislation was the veto. He could veto any bill passed by the Legislature, and if any such bill contained “several items of appropriation” he could veto one or more of those items while approving the remainder of the bill (1894 NY Const, art IV( § 9). The Legislature, if in session, could pass a bill or item of appropriation over the Governor’s veto by a two-thirds vote (id.).
In 1915, executive budgeting was proposed as a way to reform the planning and management of the State’s finances. A report submitted by a committee to that year’s Constitutional Convention argued that the Legislature was not the right body to prepare a budget. The Legislature, the report said, did not administer government departments, and therefore lacked both the knowledge about and the authority over those departments that was necessary to design a budget properly. Legislators were accountable to voters in their own districts, rather than to the State as a whole, and thus would prepare a budget by “compromise or bargain”—a process which “has become so common . . . as to be stigmatized by the terms Tog rolling’ and ‘pork barrel’ ” (Report of Comm on State Finances, Revenues and *82Expenditures, Relative to a Budget System for the State, State of New York in Convention Doc No. 32, at 8 [Aug. 4, 1915]). The committee chairman, Henry L. Stimson, said that legislative budgeting produced “extravagance, waste and irresponsibility” (Stimson, Saving the State’s Money: The sound and far-reaching financial reforms contained in the proposed Constitution, Albany: Committee for the Adoption of the Constitution, 1915, No. 12, at 8). The solution, in Stimson’s view, was to make the Governor accountable for the budget by giving him, not the Legislature, the duty to originate it. He explained:
“We cannot expect economy in the future unless some one man will have to lie awake nights to accomplish it. The only way to stop waste is for the people of the State to know exactly whose fault it is if waste occurs, or if the cost of government steadily rises without compensating increase in service rendered.
“So the proposed Constitution provides that the estimates of all administrative departments shall be first submitted to the Governor, and shall be revised by him. The responsibility for securing an economical and systematic plan for the annual budget of the State is thus laid squarely on his shoulders.” (Id.)
Stimson’s 1915 proposal contained a provision saying: “The Legislature may not alter an appropriation bill submitted by the Governor except to strike out or reduce items therein.” (1 Unrevised Rec, 1915 NY Constitutional Convention, at 1135.) This limitation, Stimson argued, was essential to the preservation of an executive budget system. The proposal, he explained:
“provides that when the Governor introduces his budget that budget must be disposed of without addition. The Legislature can cut down, the Legislature can strike out but they must approach it from the standpoint of a critic and not from the standpoint of a rival constructor. The budget must be protected against its being wholly superseded by a - new legislative budget and a resort to the same situation that we have now. Otherwise you would have nothing.” (2 Unrevised Rec, 1915 NY Constitutional Convention, at 1586.)
Thus the original purpose of the executive budgeting system was to change the roles of the Governor and the Legislature in *83the process—to make the Governor the “constructor” and the Legislature the “critic.” As the dissent stresses, the newly-proposed system did not “deprive the Legislature of any of its prerogatives”; nor did it, in a fundamental way, “add to the Governor’s power” (dissenting op at 107). It remained true, before and after executive budgeting was adopted, that no budget could pass without the Legislature’s assent. In that sense, we agree with the dissent that the new system Stimson proposed did not “transfer significant lawmaking authority from the Legislature to the Executive” (id. [emphasis added]). It certainly did, however, transfer the role of “constructor” from the Legislature to the Governor. That was the whole point.
A proposed Constitution containing the executive budget provisions that Stimson favored was rejected by the voters in 1915. But efforts to reform budgeting continued, eventually with the support of Governor Alfred E. Smith. In 1926, the voters approved constitutional amendments similar to the 1915 executive budget proposals. These provisions took effect in 1927, and were carried forward with little change in the 1938 Constitution that is in force today.
Article VII, §§ 1-7 now govern the budget process. Several of these sections vest certain legislative powers in the Governor, creating a limited exception to the rule stated in article III, § 1 of the Constitution: “The legislative power of this state shall be vested in the senate and assembly.” Thus the classic “separation of powers” between the executive and legislative branches is modified to some degree by our Constitution—a fact the dissent seems to ignore.
In the process prescribed by the Constitution, the Governor receives estimates from the heads of departments of their financial needs (NY Const, art VII, § 1). By the second Tuesday in January (or February 1, in the year after a gubernatorial election), the Governor submits a budget to the Legislature accompanied by “a bill or bills containing all the proposed appropriations and reappropriations included in the budget and the proposed legislation, if any, recommended therein” (NY Const, art VII, §§ 2, 3). The manner in which the Legislature may act on these bills is governed by article VII, § 4, the provision that is central to these cases. That section provides, in relevant part:
“The legislature may not alter an appropriation bill submitted by the governor except to strike out or *84reduce items therein, but it may add thereto items of appropriation provided that such additions are stated separately and distinctly from the original items of the bill and refer each to a single object or purpose. ...
“Such an appropriation bill shall when passed by both houses be a law immediately without further action by the governor, except that . . . separate items added to the governor’s bills by the legislature shall be subject to [the governor’s line-item veto].”
The opening words of section 4 are taken verbatim from the proposal submitted to the voters, and defended by Stimson, in 1915. They accord to an “appropriation bill submitted by the governor” a special status; the Legislature may not “alter” it except in the ways specified. We have held that the no-alteration provision is “a limited grant of authority from the People to the Legislature to alter the budget proposed by the Governor, but only in specific instances” (New York State Bankers Assn., Inc. v Wetzler, 81 NY2d 98, 104 [1993]). In other words, all the power the Legislature has to alter the Governor’s appropriation bills stems from article VII, § 4.
The Constitution provides that, absent a message of necessity from the Governor, the Legislature may not consider “any other bill making an appropriation” until it has finally acted upon all the Governor’s appropriation bills (NY Const, art VII, § 5). Except for appropriations in the Governor’s appropriation bills “and in a supplemental appropriation bill for the support of government,” the legislation may make no appropriations “except by separate bills each for a single object or purpose” (NY Const, art VII, § 6). These separate bills, and the “supplemental appropriation bill,” are subject to the Governor’s line-item veto, which may be overridden by a two-thirds vote in the Legislature (id.; see NY Const, art IV § 7). Article VII, § 6 contains the Constitution’s only explicit substantive limitation on the content of an appropriation bill—the so-called “anti-rider” provision. The last sentence of article VII, § 6 provides:
“No provision shall be embraced in any appropriation bill submitted by the governor or in such supplemental appropriation bill unless it relates specifically to some particular appropriation in the bill, and any such provision shall be limited in its operation to such appropriation.”
*85The effect of appropriations is limited to two years (NY Const, art VII, § 7).
These constitutional provisions implement Stimson’s vision of executive budgeting—with the Governor as “constructor” and the Legislature as “critic.” They do not, of course, leave the Legislature powerless. The Legislature can reduce or delete the Governor’s appropriations and enact (subject to the Governor’s veto) new appropriations of its own. It can pass legislation over the Governor’s veto—as it has done in recent years with unprecedented frequency. Perhaps most important, the Legislature can—and almost invariably does—refuse to act on the budget pending negotiations with the Governor. All budgets within recent memory have been largely a product of such negotiations, often extremely protracted ones. The inefficiencies of New York’s budgeting system are well known today, and much deplored; the word “gridlock” is often used. No one familiar with the process can believe that it is one in which the Governor is omnipotent, and the Legislature helpless.
Our decision today leaves all of the Legislature’s constitutional prerogatives intact, but preserves the role of the Governor as the “constructor” of the State’s budget.
II. Facts and Procedural History
One of the present lawsuits, Silver v Pataki, arises out of the budget submitted by the Governor to the Legislature in 1998; the other, Pataki v New York State Assembly, out of the budget submitted in 2001. The appropriations made in those years have expired, so that the present controversy appears to be moot, but all parties and all members of the Court agree that the importance of the issues warrants our ruling on them (see Matter ofHearst Corp. v Clyne, 50 NY2d 707 [1980]).
A. Silver v Pataki
It is undisputed that the first step taken by each side to the dispute in 1998 was constitutional. The Governor submitted appropriation bills, as well as other legislation, to the Legislature; and the Legislature passed the appropriation bills without altering them, except to strike out or reduce particular items. The bills, as so modified, became law. But then the Legislature, by amending the Governor’s other, nonappropriation budget bills, sought to change the appropriation legislation it had just enacted—not altering the amount of any appropriation, but altering the purposes for which, and the conditions upon which, the money could be spent.
*86For example, the Governor proposed, and the Legislature passed, an appropriation of $180 million to build a prison in Franklin County; but the Legislature shortly thereafter passed a bill providing that the funds would be available only when authorized by later legislation and that the prison must contain a separate building “suitable for educational, vocational, recreational and other inmate activities” (L 1998, ch 56, part C, § 2). Another appropriation item proposed by the Governor, and passed by the Legislature, provided $80.8 million for the “regulation program” of the Insurance Department; the Legislature’s subsequent enactment provided that $48.2 million should be expended “under the regulation of insurance organizations program” and $32.4 million “under the regulation of insurance product program” (L 1998, ch 57, part A, § 11). This sort of thing occurred dozens of times.
The Governor claimed that the Legislature’s subsequent actions altered his appropriation bills, in violation of article VII, § 4 of the Constitution. He purported to use his line-item veto to delete 55 of the provisions he considered invalid.
The Speaker of the Assembly brought suit against the Governor, seeking a declaratory judgment that the purported line-item vetoes were unconstitutional. The Senate later joined the case as a plaintiff. The Governor asserted, among other defenses, that “the items that were subject to the vetoes in question were unconstitutional and therefore void and unenforceable ab initio.” Supreme Court in substance upheld this defense, holding that the legislation the Governor objected to was invalid to begin with; Supreme Court therefore did not reach the question of whether the Governor’s veto power was properly used. The Appellate Division affirmed. The Speaker and the Senate appealed as of right, pursuant to CPLR 5601 (b) (1), and we now affirm the Appellate Division’s ruling.
B. Pataki v New York State Assembly
In 2001, in contrast to 1998, the first steps in the budget process were controversial. Certain of the bills submitted by the Governor as appropriation bills contained material which, according to the Legislature, did not belong in appropriation bills. For example, the Governor proposed to appropriate $8.3 billion for “general support for public schools for aid payable in the 2001-02 school year” and for “school-wide performance payments” (2001 NY Senate-Assembly Bill S 905, A 1305). The description of this appropriation in the bill contains 17 pages of *87provisos and conditions, determining (based on pupil population, services provided and many other factors) how much money would go to each school district. In previous budgets, such extensive material had not been contained in appropriation bills; the complex formulas for dividing state education aid were contained in other proposed legislation submitted with the budget by the Governor.
The 2001 appropriation bills also contained language changing the method previously established by the Public Health Law for computing the Medicaid rates payable to residential health care facilities (2001 NY Senate-Assembly Bill S 904, A 1304); and appropriating funds for the State Museum and State Library to a proposed Office of Cultural Resources, though these entities were, by statute, under the control of the Department of Education and Board of Regents (2001 NY Senate-Assembly Bill S 905, A 1305). These provisions and many others, in the view of the Legislature, could not properly be included in “appropriation bills” that were protected from alteration by article VII, § 4.
The Legislature purported to delete from the Governor’s appropriation bills some of the language it considered unconstitutional. In other cases, the Legislature struck whole items of appropriation (as it indisputably had a right to do), and then enacted its own appropriation bills, appropriating identical amounts of money for similar purposes, but subject to different conditions and restrictions. In doing this, the Legislature purported to act pursuant to article VII, § 6 of the Constitution, which authorizes it, after passing or rejecting the Governor’s appropriation bills, to make its own appropriations “by separate bills, each for a single object or purpose”; the Legislature passed 37 such “single purpose bills.” Finally, in some instances the Legislature adopted the same technique it had used in 1998: enacting the Governor’s appropriation as submitted, but then amending the appropriation by making changes in the Governor’s other budget legislation.
The Governor, though contending that the 37 single-purpose bills and certain of the other bills passed by the Legislature were unconstitutional, signed them all. He then immediately began this action against the Assembly and the Senate. The Governor sought a declaration that the bills in question were unconstitutional; the Assembly and Senate counterclaimed seeking, among other things, a declaration that the provisions in the Governor’s appropriation bills to which the Legislature objected *88were invalid. Supreme Court ruled for the Governor and the Appellate Division affirmed, with two Justices dissenting on the ground that the Governor lacked standing. The Assembly and the Senate appealed as of right pursuant to CPLR 5601 (b) (1) (the Assembly relying also on CPLR 5601 [a]). We now affirm the Appellate Division’s ruling.
III. Discussion
A. Preliminary Issues
In Silver v Pataki (96 NY2d 532 [2001]), we decided that Speaker Silver had capacity and standing, as a member of the Assembly, to bring the case relating to the 1998 budget. The Governor raises no other issue that would bar us from reaching the merits of that case. In Pataki v New York State Assembly, however, the Assembly argues that: (1) the Governor, having signed the legislation he complains of, lacks standing to bring this case; and (2) the Governor’s suit is barred by the Speech or Debate Clause of the State Constitution (NY Const, art III, § 11 [“For any speech or debate in either house of the legislature, the members shall not be questioned in any other place”]). The Senate, apparently preferring to see the case decided on the merits, does not raise either a standing or a Speech or Debate Clause defense.
Both of these defenses, assuming them to be valid, may be waived (see CPLR 3018 [b]; Matter of Fossella v Dinkins, 66 NY2d 162, 167-168 [1985]). Since the Senate has waived them, it makes no practical difference in this case whether they are validly asserted by the Assembly. All three parties seek declaratory relief only, and the declaration that results from our decision will be exactly the same whether or not the claims against the Assembly are dismissed. We therefore think it unnecessary to decide the standing or Speech or Debate issue, and we proceed to the merits (cf. Powell v McCormack, 395 US 486, 501-502 [1969] [where certain defendants could not plead the bar of the Speech or Debate Clause, it was held unnecessary to discuss the issue as it affected the other defendants]).
B. The Merits
1. Silver v Pataki
It is undisputed that the effect of the legislation at issue in Silver v Pataki was to amend language originally proposed by the Governor in his 1998 appropriation bills. The Governor contends that this violated the plain terms of article VII, § 4: *89“The legislature may not alter an appropriation bill submitted by the governor except to strike out or reduce items therein. . . .” The Legislature contends that it did not violate the no-alteration clause because: (1) it did not amend the appropriation bills before passing them, but passed them unchanged and then amended them by subsequent legislation; and (2) the amendments changed only the language describing the purposes of, and the conditions on, the appropriations, not the amounts appropriated. We find both of the Legislature’s contentions to be untenable.
If the no-alteration clause of article VII, § 4 were read to prohibit only amendments to appropriation bills before passage, not subsequent amendments, it would be a completely formal, ineffectual requirement. The Legislature could discard the Governor’s budget and enact its own, by the simple procedure of passing his appropriation bills and then amending them out of existence. Executive budgeting would be replaced by legislative budgeting. The whole purpose of the no-alteration clause, as Stimson explained it in 1915, was to assure that the Legislature remains “a critic” of the budget and does not become “a rival constructor.” Stimson’s warning is apposite here: If a Governor’s budget may be “wholly superseded by a new legislative budget. . . you would have nothing.”
Nor are we persuaded by the Legislature’s argument that subsequent legislation may amend the words of appropriation bills, so long as it leaves the dollar amounts untouched. In the first place, the text of article VII, § 4 was obviously not intended to prohibit changes only in the amounts appropriated. Indeed, article VII, § 4 expressly permits changes in the amounts so long as they are changed downward: the Legislature may “strike out or reduce items” in the Governor’s budget. If the authors of the no-alteration clause had meant to say only that the Legislature “may not increase” the amount of any appropriation they could have said so; they would not have used the cumbersome phrase “may not alter . . . except to strike out or reduce.”
Furthermore, the theory that the Legislature can rewrite the text of the Governor’s appropriation bills is inconsistent with the basic idea of executive budgeting. The author of a budget must make the initial decision not only on how much money is to be spent, but on what the money is to be spent for. The Legislature acknowledges that in a broad sense this is true; counsel for the Assembly admitted at oral argument that, if the *90Governor’s appropriation bills appropriated money for a prison, subsequent legislation could not strike out the word “prison” and substitute the words “football stadium.” But the Legislature contends that it is free to make changes of narrower scope—to change, for example “prison in Syracuse” to “prison in New York City.”
We doubt that a meaningful line between broad and narrow changes could ever be drawn. But more fundamentally, to permit the Legislature to rewrite the details of the Governor’s budget, as embodied in his appropriation bills, is inconsistent with the aims of the executive budget system. It is the Governor, not the Legislature, who was expected by the framers of this constitutional provision to “lie awake nights” to produce “an economical and systematic plan for the annual budget of the State” (see, supra at 82). That “systematic plan” must be based on the Governor’s judgment not only on how much money to spend, but on which specific expenditures are prudent, and what preconditions should be imposed on them. The Governor will be able to perform his constitutional role only if the no-alteration clause of article VII, § 4 applies to the details of the appropriation bills he submits to the Legislature.
The Legislature’s argument is contrary not only to the basic theory of executive budgeting, but also to our decision in New York State Bankers Assn. v Wetzler (81 NY2d 98 [1993]). In Bankers, the Legislature had added to an appropriation bill a provision authorizing the Department of Taxation and Finance to charge banks a fee for the cost of conducting bank audits. The provision did not disturb the amount the Governor had allocated to cover the audits. Yet we concluded that the Legislature’s addition to the Governor’s appropriation violated the no-alteration clause. And even before Bankers, opinions by Attorneys General Lefkowitz and Abrams contradicted the idea that the Legislature may revise language included by the Governor in an appropriation bill (1978 Ops Atty Gen 76; 1982 Ops Atty Gen No. 82-F5).
If the Legislature disagrees with the Governor’s spending proposals, it is free, as the no-alteration clause provides, to reduce or eliminate them; it is also free to refuse to act on the Governor’s proposed legislation at all, thus forcing him to negotiate. But it cannot adopt a budget that substitutes its spending proposals for the Governor’s. If it could do so, executive budgeting would no longer exist.
*91We therefore conclude that the 55 legislative provisions as to which the Governor purported to exercise his line-item veto were invalid under article VII, § 4 of the State Constitution. That makes it unnecessary for us to determine whether the line-item veto was properly exercised; the legislation was invalid whether it was vetoed or not.
2. Pataki v New York State Assembly
In defending its actions with respect to the 2001 budget, the Legislature makes essentially two arguments. First, it repeats, in a slightly different context, the argument we have just rejected—that the Legislature may, without violating the no-alteration clause, enact subsequent legislation (mostly taking the form, in this case, of single-purpose bills) that effectively amends appropriation legislation proposed by the Governor in ways not authorized by the no-alteration clause. Secondly, the Legislature argues that the bills proposed as “appropriation bills” by the Governor, were, in significant part, not appropriation bills within the meaning of the Constitution and were thus not protected by the no-alteration clause. We reject both arguments.
(a) The Use of Single-Purpose Bills as Substitutes for Appropriation Bills
What we said in our discussion of Silver v Pataki largely disposes of the Legislature’s first argument, though the technique the Législature used in 2001 was, in most instances, different from the one used in 1998. Whereas in 1998 the Legislature passed the Governor’s appropriation bills and then tried to alter them by amending other budget legislation, in 2001 it more frequently struck out items from the Governor’s appropriation bills and then replaced them by single-purpose bills, which it purported to enact under the authority given it by article VII, § 4 to “add . . . items of appropriation provided that such additions are stated separately and distinctly from the original items of the bill and refer each to a single object or purpose.” This use of single-purpose bills is no different in principle from the use of other legislation to amend appropriation bills, and it is no less contrary to the idea of executive budgeting.
Indeed, we pointed out 65 years ago that using single-purpose legislation to substitute for items deleted from the Governor’s appropriation bills would violate the Constitution. In the second of two cases named People v Tremaine (281 NY 1 [1939] [Tre*92maine II]), we said, referring to the “single object or purpose” clause of article VII, § 4:
“[The Legislature] may . . . add items of appropriation, provided such additions are stated separately and distinctly from the original items of the bill and refer each to a single object or purpose. The items thus proposed by the Legislature are to be additions, not merely substitutions. These words have been carefully chosen. The added items must be for something other than the items stricken out.” (Emphasis added.)
There may be cases in which it is difficult to say whether a single-purpose bill passed by the Legislature is an “addition” to, rather than a “substitution” for, a deleted item. We do not suggest, as the dissent implies, that every bill originated in the Legislature that touches on the same subject matter as an appropriation is unconstitutional. Of course, the Legislature remains free to legislate on such subjects as the way in which prisons should be operated (see dissenting op at 119-120). The question is simply whether the challenged legislation does or does not alter an appropriation bill submitted by the Governor.
In this case the question is not difficult. It is clear from the Legislature’s own description of the bills it defends that they are substitutes for items in the Governor’s appropriation bills. The Assembly argues that these bills “did not have the same purpose as the Governor’s proposals,” but it bases this argument on the assertion that its bills “modified the terms and conditions of the Governor’s appropriations” and in some cases “directed the funding to different agencies or institutions.” In other words, the appropriation bills were altered.
It is undisputed that each of the single-purpose bills at issue had its counterpart in the Governor’s appropriation bills, and that the Legislature, in each case, replaced provisions it did not like with provisions it preferred. The no-alteration clause does not permit the Legislature to treat the Governor’s appropriation bills in this manner.
(b) The Content of Appropriation Bills
The Legislature’s second argument—that what the Governor called “appropriation bills” in 2001 were, in significant part, not appropriation bills within the meaning of the Constitution—presents, at least in theory, a troublesome issue, for we recognize that the Governor’s power to originate appropriation *93bills is susceptible to abuse. A Governor could insert into what he labeled “appropriation bills,” and thus could purport to shield by the no-alteration clause, legislation whose primary purpose and effect is not really budgetary. A few hypothetical questions may illustrate the point: Could a Governor raise a mandatory retirement age for firefighters, by making the higher age a condition of appropriations to fire departments? Could a Governor insert into an appropriation bill for state construction projects a provision that Labor Law § 240 (the scaffold law) would be inapplicable? Could an appropriation bill provide that workers in certain state-financed activities were free to engage in conduct the Penal Law would otherwise prohibit? Each of these proposals seems to go beyond the legitimate purpose of an appropriation bill.
The Governor’s position in this litigation is that the only limit on the content of an appropriation bill submitted by the Governor is the anti-rider clause of article VII, § 6: “No provision shall be embraced in any appropriation bill submitted by the governor . . . unless it relates specifically to some particular appropriation in the bill, and any such provision shall be limited in its operation to such appropriation.” This is a less than satisfactory answer, because it is quite possible to write legislation that plainly does not belong in an appropriation bill, and yet “relates specifically to” and is “limited in its operation to,” an appropriation. The hypotheticals offered in the previous paragraph are, at least arguably, of that description.
Thus we reject the sweeping proposition, attributed to us by the dissent, “that what the Governor sees fit to include in an appropriation bill is properly placed there” (dissenting op at 115). Some matters are not “properly placed there.” We also reject, however, the dissent’s suggestion that no “public policy matters” (id. at 105) or “substantive or programmatic” legislation (id. at 114 n 8) properly belong in an appropriation bill. The line between “policy” and “appropriations” is not just thin, but essentially nonexistent: every dollar the State spends is spent on substance, and the decision of how much to spend and for what purpose is a policy decision. Thus all appropriations are substantive, and all appropriations make policy. It is true that there can be substantive legislation that does not contain appropriations—as demonstrated by the cases from other states, cited by the dissent (at 112-113), in which nonappropriation legislation was held not to be subject to a line-item veto. But the converse is not true—there cannot be a “non-substantive” appropriation bill.
*94Thus, we agree with the dissent that “choices pertaining to the statewide allocation of resources among school districts involve policy determinations” {id. at 116). But “allocation of resources” is almost a definition of what an appropriation bill does. The dissent errs in saying that appropriation bills cannot be used to make “policy determinations” that are “fundamentally legislative” {id.). The purest and simplest appropriation bill imaginable—the example chosen by the dissent, Governor Franklin D. Roosevelt’s bill to fund an investigation of securities sales {id. at 104)—was plainly the legislative embodiment of a substantive policy choice.
The dissent admits that the line between appropriations and policy is “difficult to fix” {id. at 111). The dissent therefore abandons, if we read it correctly, the idea of judicially-imposed limits on “what the Governor can do in an appropriation bill,” and addresses instead “what the Legislature can do in response” {id.). The dissent’s answer seems to be that the Legislature can do anything it wants to the language of an appropriation bill, as long as it does so by separate legislation, rather than by amending the appropriation bill itself. According to the dissent, the 1929 Legislature could have, after passing Governor Roosevelt’s appropriation for an investigation of securities sales, passed other legislation conditioning the expenditure as the Legislature saw fit. Or it could have stricken the proposed appropriation and passed single-purpose legislation redirecting the funds to an investigation of bribery in municipal contracts, or any other purpose the Legislature liked—and it could have treated every one of Governor Roosevelt’s other proposed appropriations in a similar fashion. We reject the dissent’s argument for the reasons explained in previous sections of this opinion: to accept it would be to countenance the effective abolition of executive budgeting.
While we do not agree with the dissent that it is wrong to put “substantive” matter into an appropriation bill, we acknowledge, as we have said, that a Governor should not put into such a bill essentially nonfiscal or nonbudgetary legislation— measures like the hypothetical ones suggested at pages 92-93 of this opinion. We do not find it necessary to answer in this case the question of what is to be done when a Governor does include such unsuitable material; but we will try to advance understanding of the question by exploring it briefly.
The Governor argues, in substance, that no judicial remedy should be available when an appropriation bill contains mate*95rial which, though not prohibited by the anti-rider clause, ought not to be there. He points out that political considerations may well deter a future Governor from inserting such material—and that, if he does insert it, the Legislature does not have to pass the bill. The Governor argues that, if an uncontroversial or popular appropriation is accompanied by an unsuitable condition or proviso that is not barred by the anti-rider clause, the Legislature’s remedy is to refuse to enact the appropriation until the offending material is removed. The result may be a stalemate that will be resolved one way or another without judicial intervention—in other words, a check on gubernatorial abuse by political means.
The Governor suggests that the problem of inappropriate content in an appropriation bill is analogous to the problems of itemization and transfer of appropriations—problems with which we have struggled in previous cases, and which we eventually left to be resolved in the political process. In the first case entitled People v Tremaine (252 NY 27 [1929] [Tremaine I]), the Governor submitted a budget bill containing lump-sum, rather than itemized, appropriations, with a provision stating that he alone could later decide how the lump sums should be broken down or “segregated.” The Legislature struck out the items to which the Governor had attached such provisions, and restated them with clauses calling for the participation of legislators in the segregation process. We disposed of the case on other grounds, but remarked in dictum that the Legislature appeared to have violated the no-alteration clause of what is now article VII, § 4 (252 NY at 47-48). We then added:
“If the Legislature may not add segregation provisions to a budget bill proposed by the Governor without altering the appropriation bill, ... it would necessarily follow that the Governor ought not to insert such provisions in his bill. He may not insist that the Legislature accept his propositions in regard to segregations without amendment, while denying to it the power to alter them. The alternative would be the striking out the items of appropriation thus qualified in toto and a possible deadlock over details on a political question outside the field of judicial review.” (Id. at 50.)
Thus, in Tremaine I we said that the Governor “ought not to” put “segregation provisions” into a lump-sum appropriation bill, but also suggested that his doing so might generate “a political question outside the field of judicial review.”
*96In 1939, in Tremaine II, we implied in dictum that there are constitutional limits on the Governor’s choice between lump sums and itemizations, saying “we expect the appropriation bill to contain items . . . sufficient to furnish the information necessary to determine whether in the judgment of the Legislature all that is demanded should be granted or is required” (281 NY at 5). Decades later, in Saxton v Carey (44 NY2d 545 [1978]), we decided that this issue is one for the political process, not the courts, adopting in substance the dissenting opinion of Judge Breitel in Hidley v Rockefeller (28 NY2d 439 [1971]). While we reiterated in Saxton that “the Governor is required to submit an ‘itemized’ budget” (44 NY2d at 548), we held that the remedy for violations of that requirement lay with the Legislature itself:
“[T]he degree of itemization necessary in a particular budget is whatever degree of itemization is necessary for the Legislature to effectively review that budget. This is a decision which is best left to the Legislature, for it is not something which can be accurately delineated by a court. It is, rather, a function of the political process, and that interplay between the various elected representatives of the people which was certainly envisioned by the draftsmen of the Constitution. Should the Legislature determine that a particular budget is so lacking in specificity as to preclude meaningful review, then it will be the duty of that Legislature to refuse to approve such a budget. If, however, as here, the Legislature is satisfied with the budget as submitted by the Governor, then it is not for the courts to intervene. . . . Should a Legislature fail in its responsibility to requiré a sufficiently itemized budget, the remedy lies not in the courtroom, but in the voting booth.” (Id. at 550-551.)
We reached a similar conclusion in Saxton as to the extent to which a Governor’s appropriation bill could authorize transfers of appropriation within programs or departments (id.). Yet we also disavowed in Saxton any suggestion that “the budgetary process is per se always beyond the realm of judicial consideration.” (Id. at 551.) We said: “The courts will always be available to resolve disputes concerning the scope of that authority which is granted by the Constitution to the other two branches of the government.” (Id.)
*97Our cases, in short, reflect the ambivalence we express today about the use of judicial power to resolve disputes over budgeting between the executive and legislative branches. Today we do not reject, but we also do not endorse, the Governor’s argument that no judicial remedy is available (where the anti-rider clause does not apply) for gubernatorial misuse of appropriation bills. The dissent makes a valid point that political stalemate over a budget is an unattractive prospect. On the other hand, to invite the Governor and the Legislature to resolve their disputes in the courtroom might produce neither executive budgeting nor legislative budgeting but judicial budgeting—arguably the worst of the three.
When a case comes to us in which it appears that a Governor has attempted to use appropriation bills for essentially nonbudgetary purposes, we may have to decide whether to enforce limits on the Governor’s power in designing “appropriation bills” or to leave that issue, like the issues of itemization and transfer, to the political process. We conclude, however, that we confront no such problem here, for there is nothing in the appropriation bills before us that is essentially nonbudgetary. All of the appropriation bills that the Legislature challenges are, on their face, true fiscal measures, designed to allocate the State’s resources in the way the Governor thinks most productive and efficient; none of them appears to be a device for achieving collateral ends under the guise of budgeting.
This is well illustrated by the bill the Legislature most vigorously attacks—the school funding proposal (2001 NY Senate-Assembly Bill S 905, A 1305). The purpose and effect of this proposed item of appropriation is to determine how much of the State’s money goes to each school district—almost as purely budgetary a question as can be imagined. Whether to include the allocation of funds to school districts in an appropriation bill or in other budget legislation is a political choice; nothing in the Constitution forbids the choice of an appropriation bill.
The Legislature, and the dissent, in substance offer three reasons why the Governor’s 2001 school funding proposal does not belong in an appropriation bill. First, they point out—correctly—that the bill does not look like a typical appropriation bill; rather than briefly identifying recipients of funds and specifying the dollars to be received by each, it contains many pages of narrative with no numbers at all. The narrative, however, is merely a very complex formula, or series of formulas, for distributing the money, and a rule prohibiting an appropria*98tion bill from taking this approach would be both formalistic and unworkable. There could be no objection on constitutional grounds if the bill, instead of reciting the formula, named every school district in the state and specified the sum that would go to each—in other words, if the authors of the bill had applied the formula themselves and written the result into proposed legislation. Nor would there be a valid constitutional objection to an appropriation bill that distributed dollars by a simple formula—x dollars per pupil, for example. The bill is not less an “appropriation bill” because the formula it uses is complex—or because, as the dissent emphasizes, the formula occupies 17 pages, rather than a page or two.
Secondly, the Legislature and the dissent point out that, until 2001, the details of distribution of school aid had usually not been the subject of appropriation bills, but of other legislation submitted with the Governor’s budget. We decline, however, to adopt a narrow historical test of what is an “appropriation bill”—to require, in effect, that the Governor may never use an appropriation bill to deal with subject matters addressed by other types of legislation in the past. Nothing in the Constitution says or implies that, once it becomes customary to deal with a particular subject either in appropriation bills or in other legislation, the custom must be immutable. On the contrary, it was an important part of the purpose of executive budgeting to enable budgets to be adjusted to the changing needs of an increasingly complex society. Also, it would involve courts in endless difficulties if they had to determine, every time the validity of an appropriation bill was challenged, whether the particular subject of the bill was being dealt with in accordance with historical practice.
Thirdly, the Legislature notes, and the dissent emphasizes heavily, that the Governor’s 2001 school funding proposal altered existing statutory provisions for the distribution of school aid. But the Legislature does not even argue, and could not successfully argue, that it is forbidden for an appropriation bill—whose effect is limited to two years by the Constitution (art VII, § 7)—to supersede existing law for that time. The Governor points out that appropriation bills superseded other legislation long before executive budgeting was adopted, and have continued to do so since. To permit the Legislature, by ordinary legislation, to limit the Governor’s flexibility in making future budgetary choices would seriously endanger the whole structure of executive budgeting. For this reason, the dis*99sent is simply wrong in saying that, if the Governor had written the result of a formula into an appropriation bill, he “would be required to apply the formula codified in Education Law § 3602” (dissenting op at 115). An appropriation that is effective notwithstanding other law to the contrary is still a legitimate appropriation. Indeed, one of the single-purpose appropriation bills that the dissent would uphold as valid is of that description (see 2001 NY Senate-Assembly Bill S 5742, A 9353).
In short, we conclude that the 2001 school funding proposal raises none of the concerns that might be raised by the insertion of essentially nonbudgetary legislation into an appropriation bill. The Governor’s choice to use an appropriation bill, rather than other budget legislation, as the means of distributing school aid may have been politically controversial, but it was clearly within the authority given him by the Constitution.
Nor do we find that any of the other proposed measures that the Legislature challenges in this case are an attempt to abuse the Governor’s power over appropriation bills. The Legislature contends that the Governor abused his power by using appropriation bills to transfer the State Library and State Museum to the control of a newly created Office of Cultural Resources; this contention, however, seems to be based on a misreading of the legislation the Governor submitted. The Governor proposed other budget legislation, not appropriation bills, to create the new agency and to transfer the Library and Museum to it. This other legislation was rejected by the Legislature (see 2001 NY Senate-Assembly Bill S 1145-B, A 1997-B). The Governor’s appropriation bills did include provisions for funds to the Office of Cultural Resources for the purpose of operating the State Library and State Museum, but that shows only that the Governor was proceeding on the assumption—which proved ill-founded—that legislation creating that entity would be passed.
We therefore leave for another day the question of what judicially enforceable limits, if any, beyond the anti-rider clause of article VII, § 6 the Constitution imposes on the content of appropriation bills.
IV Conclusion
Accordingly, in each case, the order of the Appellate Division should be affirmed without costs.