Gov. Kathy Hochul doesn’t have much time to rest on any laurels from her State of the State address because next week she’ll have to answer the looming question: how is she going to pay for everything?

She’s already promising checks and tax cuts, new money for transit projects, cops on the subway and programs supporting pregnant women.

Now she must convince New Yorkers she has a plan to pay for all her promises. Most of those details are expected to be revealed during her state budget address next Tuesday, Jan. 21.

“She presented an enticing menu of affordability options, but only until we see next week’s budget will we figure out whether the state can actually pay the bill without destabilizing the state’s finances in the long run,” Andrew Rein, president of the fiscally conservative Citizens Budget Commission, said in an interview Tuesday with NY1.

New York governors past and present have been warned: they must seriously check their spending for fear of overextending their cash flow.

“We have a $15.6 billion dollar structural budget gap, so we need to see the bill for all these programs and see what it does in the future,” Rein said.

Last year, Hochul and the legislature agreed on a nearly $240 billion spending plan. Since then, Medicaid and education spending have gone up. The state also shelled out an extra $2 billion last year for the city’s free migrant housing, meals and legal assistance. This year, Hochul didn’t bring it up.

“We are under 50,000 migrants in our system, which we all celebrate, but we also know it still costs to have 49,000 migrants in our system,” Anne Williams-Isom, NYC deputy mayor for Health and Human Services, said.

Also left out: a plan for detailing how New York will pay for its massive — and expensive — transition to a renewable energy-run economy.

Already two years past her deadline, Hochul said she won’t release her strategy in 2025.

“We have to get ‘cap and invest,’ right or else it will be unfavorable for New Yorkers, bad for business and not good for the environment. However, this is really a long extension. It was fairly stunning to put an almost year-long extension on developing what we had hoped would be the full regulations out by now,” Rein said.

Previously, Hochul promised she won’t raise taxes. But her administration is already eyeing “new revenue sources” — a code word for taxes — for MTA projects detailed in the authority’s nearly $70 billion proposed capital plan through 2029.

“To fund the plan, the governor is proposing a balanced mix of federal, state, city, and MTA contributions in line with historical practice, alongside new revenue sources to be agreed during budget negotiations this spring and cost efficiencies to be achieved by the MTA,” Hochul wrote in her 2025 State of the State briefing document obtained by NY1.

“The governor has been very clear: we have to make sure we have investments in that infrastructure,” Kathryn Garcia, New York’s director of State Operations, said.

But some legislators favor raising taxes on New Yorkers making a million dollars or more.

“She’s not going to raise income taxes and I cannot foresee any future in which that occurs,” Garcia added.

Meanwhile, there’s good money news for Hochul on a political front. She raked in $10 million since July for her 2026 reelection bid, according to her campaign. And she has around $18 million in cash to spend on fending off her challengers.