With New York’s state budget being almost two weeks past due, Gov. Kathy Hochul said she’ll continue “to keep up the fight” for New Yorkers. 

“Everyone knows what I’m standing for, and I’m not wavering on my belief that we need to make some significant reforms so we can say that this budgeting process is over,” she told NY1 political anchor Errol Louis on “Inside City Hall” Monday. 

The governor and state lawmakers have been at a standstill over how to spend upwards of $252 billion in a state budget since April 1. 

One of the points of contention in the budget process has been over changes to a 2019 discovery law, which required prosecutors to turn over more evidence, and turn it over faster, to defense attorneys.

Defense lawyers say the reforms have ensured that all defendants get access to evidence in their cases in a timely and fair manner, but Hochul said the current law is too restrictive. 

“New York’s discovery laws are by far the most progressive in the nation in terms of being, I would say, skewed toward more positive outcomes for the defense,” she said.

“What I am trying to do is make sure that the judge will actually look at what was missing, how much weight that should have against the importance of the case,” the governor added. “Let them make that decision. Let a judge be involved in that.”

Hochul also expressed strong disapproval to the Trump administration’s decision to take away federal funding from Columbia University and Cornell University.

“It’s despicable. Threatening our education institutions because they don’t teach the way they want them to?” she said.

While Hochul said people criticizing antisemitism on campuses are “not wrong,” she said the funding is used for things like “research and vaccinations and cures for cancer.”

“These institutions are laboratories of ideas, and especially in the health care space,” she said. “It’s a real crisis for New York to have that money gone from our institutions, and the problem is, the state can’t make it up.”

Hochul was also critical of some of the federal government’s recent actions on immigration, including another Columbia University student being taken into ICE custody Monday, and the detaining of a family who was removed from their home in upstate New York and was released after pressure from officials and community leaders.

“This is America, for God sakes. Why should we worry about kids getting scooped off of campus or out of their beds in Sackets Harbor?” the governor said. “I’m the governor. I will fight for my state. But this has gone too far.”