Full Episode: State Lawmakers Return to Albany for 2023 Legislative Session. What's Next?

Full transcript of State Lawmakers Return to Albany for 2023 Legislative Session. What's Next?

David Lombardo: It’s the start of a new year and a new legislative session in New York. This week our panel considers what's ahead as state lawmakers return to Albany, and Governor Kathy Hochul shares her vision for her first full term.

I'm David Lombardo, host of WCNY is the Capital Pressroom in for the Indomitable Dan Clark. This week saw the start of a new legislative session as state lawmakers returned to Albany for the first time since their lame duck session last month. The state legislature is scheduled to be in session through June, and there's a lot on the table to tackle between now and then, including public safety concerns, creating more affordable housing and adopting a state budget. But the week kicked off with Governor Kathy Hochul delivering her inaugural address from Albany as she embarks on her first full term as chief executive of the Empire State.

Kathy Hochul: As the sign says, I didn't come here to make history. I came here to make a difference and to pursue the worthy causes, pursue them together. As your governor, I'll keep fighting for you every single day.

DL: In the speech, she also gave some hints of her plans for 2023.

KH: First, we must and will make our state safer. This means New Yorkers can walk our streets and ride our subways, our kids can go to school free from fear.

Secondly, we have to make our state more affordable. Yes, people want to be here, but the thought of not being able to have your grandkids grow up in the same community that they were raised in because they can't afford it, that's very sad.

Lastly, we must create opportunities for the people today, but also investment of tomorrow. So our young people, like our poet Caden, can have a better life.

DL: That all starts the clock on the next six months for planet Albany. Let's get into it with this week's panel with Jon Campbell, capital reporter for WNYC and Gothamist, and Marie French energy and environmental reporter at the capital for Politico New York.

I want to begin our discussion with the first priority that Governor Kathy Hochul identified in her inaugural address, which is to, quote unquote, make our state safer.

Jon, based on last year's session and the recent election season, is that a surprise to hear her want to focus on this, and what could that priority end up looking like during the legislative session?

Jon Campbell: I wouldn't necessarily say it's a surprise. It's a topic that dominated the campaign season, but it dominated the campaign season because Lee Zeldin, her opponent, made it dominate the

campaign season. You can see from public polling that public safety is a concern of New Yorkers, and there are areas of the state where violent crime has gone up.

A lot of people associate that with bail laws, bail reform., but others have different definitions. So we want to know what Kathy Hochul is going to be proposing on the issue of crime and public safety. We know that recently, during a special session, she made some overtures to the legislature about perhaps making further tweaks to the state's bail laws, but we don't know exactly what that will look like. We're hoping to learn more in the state of the state.

Marie French: It’ll be interesting to see what legislative leaders want to make of whatever her proposal is. Certainly, I got the sense from Majority Leader Andrea Stewart-Cousins’ remarks on the first day of session that she's willing to sort of look at the issue of public safety, but definitely in a more look at the root causes sort of way as Democrats want to do.

DL: Well, yeah, in 2022, when Governor Kathy Hochul was focusing on public safety, the issue was restricting the use of cashless bail or ensuring that there are more crimes, that monetary bail can be imposed, and she had to drag the legislature essentially kicking and screaming to adopt those types of measures. Is there any indication Marie that the legislature is interested in doing those types of rollbacks again this year, or are they more thinking about taking on criminal justice measures like clean slate, which is basically clearing people's criminal records or breaking parole reforms, things more on the far-left end of the political spectrum?

MF: I certainly haven't seen any indication that there's a whole lot of appetite to tackle the bail issue again.

JC: Yeah, I think there's a general sense among the Democratic leadership that they stand behind the reasons for bail reform in the first place, which is you don't want to criminalize poverty, and if you have two people charged with the same crime and one person can afford bail and the other person can't, and the first person gets out, then that's essentially what you're doing.

So, they very much stand behind that premise, and I think that the fear is if you make tweaks here and there, that eventually you hollow it down until it's nothing. So, that'll be a battle if that's the route that Kathy Hochul wants to take.

DL: Well, Jon, we're speaking before the governor has her official state of the state where she said that she wants to lay out more a vision in concrete terms, but is there any reason to expect that she'll take on public safety in any significant way or it's going to be more around the margins? Because I don't really see her going to bat for, say, creating a dangerousness standard that judges could utilize when determining pretrial sentencing do?

JC: I mean, that would be the big leap. We didn't have a dangerousness standard even before bail, but that is something that say, Mayor Eric Adams from New York City is pushing for to give judges more discretion to hold someone in jail before their trial if they are considered a danger. Now, legislative leaders will say that invite bias into the process, and especially bias against black and brown people who have historically been on the wrong side of those kind of things. So, it is a difficult needle to thread, and we'll start to hear more about it from the governor in her state of the state, but also, you hear the broad overviews in the state of the state, you've got the budget address a couple of weeks later, and that's really where you get the nuts and bolts often.

DL: You mentioned New York City Mayor Eric Adams, and we'll get to the rest of the governor's priorities in a second, but, how successful do you think Mayor Eric Adams, who is a veteran of the state Senate, how successful will he be at navigating the politics of Albany in his second year in office? Because I think it's fair to say that he did not get everything he wanted in 2022 from state lawmakers. So is there reason to believe that 2023 is going to be different for him?

JC: You know, so much of New York City's agenda flows through Albany, and that is something that is vexed mayors for decades and decades and decades and led to really bad relationships between mayors and governors over the years.

DL: They don't like coming up to Albany, you know.

JC: You know, Eric Adams, it was kind of a mixed bag in his first year. Maybe more going toward the negative in from his perspective, but there are always things that they're going to want. He did hire Diane Savino, who is a state senator who just left office to kind of help with the relationship in Albany as well as in New York City.

I'm curious to see how that might alter his strategy going forward, because legislative leaders weren't really happy with, the negotiations or lack of communication from the mayor's office during his first year in office.

DL: So let's turn to the second priority then that the governor identified in her speech, Maria, which was affordability. In 2022, that meant she was looking to repeal certain gas taxes for New Yorkers, she was pushing a middle class tax cut, is there any reason to suspect, based on the fiscal condition that we're expecting for 2023, that there's going to be a big swing on this issue of affordability and making New York a cheaper place to live, a cheaper place to do business, or based on your track record and experience in Albany, do you think this is something around the margins, again, trying to nickel and dime ways that people might be able to save money?

MF: Well, I think the focus on the affordability conversation is going to be housing. You know, one of the big things that people are talking about and Hochul made that point as well, that housing is going to be a big focus for her. You know, the cost of living is higher, but I don't know that she's going to want to do another gas tax suspension or anything like that. I think with prices kind of coming down at least a little bit, that conversation maybe can be left alone.

DL: On housing, she's hinted that she wants to talk about this and she's, again, not giving us details, which we probably won't get until a budget address, but given the way she approaches government, are you expecting her to take on housing from more of a market driven approach as opposed to what the progressives in the state would like to see, which is more of a government regulation approach, really setting the terms and standards for what new housing is going to look like and what sort of rules existing housing operates under?

MF: Yeah, I think that we'll know more later, but I wouldn't be surprised. You know, they had the expiration of that real estate tax credit, what is it, 421a or whatever it's called? So, they definitely will want to do some sort of market incentive to sort of increase housing stock, I'm sure. But you'll definitely see the progressive push progressives pushing for controls on rent or at least limitations on when people can be evicted.

DL: Yeah, what Marie's referring to there is legislation that's the so-called “good cause eviction”, which is a de facto cap on the growth of rent and codifies the types of reasons that someone can actually be evicted. Is this the year that good cause eviction gets done Jon? It's something that Democrats have been pushing since they took the majority in both houses of the state legislature back to 2019, when they did pass a series of rent reforms, but good cause was not one of those. Is the reason to think that 2023 is their year?

JC: Listen, they're going to push for it, but the real estate lobby in New York State is very, very powerful, and it remains powerful even as that progressive wing in the legislature grows. They don't like that. They view that it good cause eviction legislation is an infringement on the free market and their ability to charge what they want from rent or charge what the market says they can charge from rent. So, they are going to push back against that.

Marie mentioned 421a tax credit, and that is something they want. Naturally everything gets traded for everything in Albany, so observers are kind of looking at both of those things. They say maybe this will get traded for that, but you know, the progressives hate that tax incentive program and the real estate lobby hates the good cause eviction bills. So I don't know if that's really something that would happen.

DL: One of the things that's new in the housing front this year is that we have a new housing chair in the assembly, and that's the product of turnover in the legislature and particularly in the assembly, where we saw a whole host of new chairmen coming in to run housing, environmental conservation, energy, higher education, health, etc. In particular though I'm interested, Marie, we have new chairs of environmental conservation for the Assembly and the Senate. Is that a meaningful change? Is that going to impact the policies that actually reach the floor in either houses or do the legislative leaders essentially pull the strings for these committees, and it doesn't really matter who the head of a committee is?

MF: I think it does open up a new opportunity. I mean, you've got fresh eyes to look at different policies, a new relationship to be built between the two chairs. We saw Todd Kaminsky and Steven Englebright, the previous chairs, Kaminsky in the Senate and Englebright in the Assembly

They worked together on several issues but sometimes they couldn't really come to an agreement on things like extended producer responsibility or the bottle bill. So, I think you'll see that the new leadership in those committees should open up some opportunities. Of course, it's a very different year now that we have a final climate plan that lays out a lot of priorities that the legislature could take up if it wants.

DL: Let's follow up on that. We got the final scoping plan from the Climate Action Council at the end of 2022, and that's the road map in New York supposed to follow for reducing our greenhouse gas emissions. Is there any significant policies on that front that you're anticipating lawmakers will actually want to take up in 2023 because some of them are politically controversial?

MF: Yeah, there's a lot in there. I think some of the fights that will definitely come up will be the gas ban in buildings, new construction in particular.

DL: And we’re pretty close on making that happen in 2023 or how far away with it?

MF: You know it's Albany, so distance is imaginary as well as time.

DL: guess until it gets done. There's a huge gulf there. Yeah.

MF: There was definitely support from the governor's office in the Senate to reach a deal on that. It fell through kind of because of the Assembly not really being willing to take it up.

I think that that there is going to be appetite to tackle it. The question of the dates and there's, potentially a regulatory way, they could do it, but it sounds like the building codes council doesn't actually want to do it. So, advocates are saying, well then we need another law to like make sure that we get this enshrined and codified and that it actually happens and that we stop building new office buildings, houses, and apartment buildings that are relying on natural gas, oil or propane.

JC: Listen, you mentioned 2023. I mean, the chances of controversial legislation coming up are better in 2023 than they would be in 2024. That's simply because 2024 is an election year. So, we have these two-year cycles in the state legislature. One is an election year, the other one isn't, and you're more likely to see the controversial things happen in a non-election year, the furthest from when these lawmakers have to go to the polls.

DL: Because, as we know, voters have notoriously short memories and can only remember the last 12 months and not the last 24. Marie, sticking with the environment and hard choices, what about the likelihood of raising revenue to fund some of the green initiatives that were included in the Climate Action Council? Like Jon said, because it's 2023 and not 2024 when they're all up for reelection again, is it possible that we could see some higher taxes, whether it's on corporations or polluters, to fund some of these green initiatives?

MF: Well, there's definitely a few things to keep an eye on. NY Renews, which is the big coalition that kind of pushed for the state's climate law, is backing higher taxes. They would like to see, like a lot of progressive groups, they said, raise taxes on the wealthy and use that money for a range of things including climate action.

There's also support for what is called a climate superfund that would basically tax all of the fossil fuel companies for their historic emissions in the same model of a superfund law that penalized polluters so they could clean up that damage. That's a that's an interesting proposal that has backing from Liz Krueger. So that could have legs this session.

Then the other thing to watch is that the Climate Action Plan includes cap and invest or cap and trade, which would essentially be a fee on carbon emissions across the economy. There is an understanding, at least I think from the governor’s side, that they could technically do that on the regulatory side without really needing the legislature to have total buy in.

Spending that money would be a different story.

DL: I’m already hearing this future Republican and anti cap and trade messaging, they're raising the cost of energy in New York. It's going to cost more to heat your home or to fuel your car. That has been a winning argument in terms of killing some of these efforts in the past though, right?

MF: Yes, it has absolutely been very successful in blocking any sort of carbon pricing scheme.

DL: Well Jon, more broadly, there's going to be an effort to raise taxes on wealthy New Yorkers in 2023 to pay for not just environmental programs but social programs, and in 2021, progressive and Democratic state lawmakers were successful in pushing through an income tax hike on wealthy New Yorkers. Is there a reason to think that in 2023 we will have new taxes on the wealthy, whether it is an income tax or other forms of wealth taxes?

JC: You're certainly going to see the left wing of the legislature push for that, particularly on the wealthy, but we have heard from Governor Hochul who said, now isn't the right time to raise taxes from her perspective, and she has huge sway over the state budget. She'll put out her budget proposal later this month, and she's suggested already that she does not intend to raise taxes.

Now, governors have said that before. and then you see, oh, well, we're not raising taxes. We're raising this DMV fee or that fee or while they call it something else, we'll have to keep an eye out for that. But at this point, Governor Hochul, who is certainly more moderate than the progressive wing of the legislature says she doesn't want to raise taxes.

DL: Sticking with that idea of the governor being the moderate and the legislature being a little more progressive. We're seeing that fight, that contrast play out right now over her pick to lead the state's Court of Appeals or to be the Chief Judge. She nominated Hector LaSalle, and his nomination is in jeopardy as we talk on Friday morning with more than a dozen Democratic state senators coming out against his nomination, arguing that he's too conservative to lead New York's top court.

How do you see this playing out? From my perspective, it seems like there is no clear pathway to him being confirmed and that the governor is either going to have to withdraw his nomination or watch him lose at some stage in the process.

JC: Well, there is a pathway to his nomination, but it requires Republican votes and it requires the Democratic leadership to be okay with advancing that nomination, with Republican votes.

DL: Ah the notoriously bipartisan Albany environment.

JC: That is something that would be an uphill climb, a heavy lift from the governor's perspective, but she is not giving up on this. She nominated Hector LaSalle to be the Chief Judge of the Court of Appeals, which really undersells his role because not only does it make him the Chief Judge of the top court in the state, it makes it puts him in charge of the entire court system in New York, which is this big web of state and local courts.

He’s facing a lot of pressure because of a couple of different decisions, one that went against former Attorney General Eric Schneiderman when he was investigating a crisis pregnancy center.

DL: An anti-abortion group?

JC: An anti-abortion group, exactly. And another one that went against the labor union CWA, and there's a lot of debate about what exactly those decisions did. But he's facing opposition from labor unions and from opposition from progressives who are worried that he will swing the Court of Appeals to this conservative bloc. More conservative, I should say, I mean, we're talking New York conservative, and that has existed for four judges that have banded together and been more conservative than progressives would like.

So there's this tipping point on the on the court. Hector LaSalle would be the Chief Judge and could tip that balance one way or the other. So far, progressives in the Senate who have to confirm him are really sticking to their guns and pushing back against this nomination.

DL: This is a fight unlike any other we've seen in the last four plus decades, because the state Senate, traditionally, since they've had this power, has rubber stamped whoever they've gotten the choice to nominate. So Marie, with that backdrop, with the idea that the state Senate is ready to go to war, essentially with the governor over this, is that something that will be on the minds of the governor as we head into this legislative session, potentially putting them at odds, potentially ruining their relationships or in politics like in sports, is it just move on and you just live to fight another day?

MF: I think that is really a concern as we head into this new session. How is that going to affect their relationship and is it going to make it harder for Hochul to get things done that she wants to if she’s really going to stick to her guns on this, or are they just going to come up with some compromise where the legislature gets something they really want and everybody kind of moves on?

JC: Yeah, and that's the legislature did just get something that they really wanted and that was a giant pay raise, a 29% pay raise that Governor Hochul signed into law just before the ball dropped on New Year's.

DL: That's how I always celebrate.

JC: There was there some thought that maybe the governor was trying to say, hey, you know, legislature, Senate, you approve my judge pick and I'll approve your pay raise, but she already did it. So, she doesn't have that leverage anymore.

DL: And what does that tell you, Jon, about the governor's ability to navigate Albany? Because to me, it seems like she got outplayed on that issue and is going to get outplayed on this judicial nomination. So, do you think she understands how to win, so to speak, in Albany? Do you think she's going to be able to walk away from this budget process over the next three months, walk away from the legislative session with victories, or is, sticking with the sports parlance, is the legislature going to end up on top? Are they going to be the ones who are setting the agenda?

They're the ones for football terms, who are going to be advancing the ball down the field. How do you see that playing out?

JC: I mean New York has a very strong executive office, right? So, the governor still ends up driving the agenda. That's why we listen to the governor’s state of the state., that's why we listen to the budget proposal, and the governor has really broad authority in the budget to, veto single items, things like that. So, you know, the governor still has a ton of power. That said, there is a system of checks and balances in place and the legislature is very much flexing its muscle.

But it's complicated to in that Hector LaSalle would be the first Latino to serve as the Chief Judge of New York State, and that is something that is very meaningful to a lot of Latino leaders across the state, and you're seeing them organize on his behalf.

So there are identity politics at play here. There are progressive, conservative politics at play. It is going to be really a fascinating thing to watch play out as the Senate starts to hold a hearing on this nomination.

DL: Well Marie, finally a third priority that the governor outlined was this idea of creating economic opportunities, and in 2023, we're going to begin to hopefully spend some of this environmental bond money that voters approved in November. So, what type of job opportunities could we see in 2023 and beyond in that area?

MF: Well, I think 2023 might be a little early to see some of that money really getting out the door. I mean, there are a lot of projects, that are sort of in the queue, water infrastructure and other things that are already asking for money. It would be good if they could get some of that money out the door pretty quickly.

But on other areas it might take a little while to set up some of those programs. The Department of Environmental Conservation (DEC) is going to need some more staff to actually be able to start administering some of that money. So I think that certainly is a big pool of money, and I think it will be very significant in terms of job creation. But we need to actually implement some of it first.

DL: Speaking of staff, they're also going to need to staff up DEC to implement some of the Climate Action Council regulations as well, right?

MF: Exactly, yes.

DL: Okay, well it seems like we're going to have a fun session ahead for 2023. I mean you don’t think you’re going to be bored, right?

JC: Fun is a relative term, but…

DL: I'm having fun right now.

JC: Oh, absolutely. I mean, listen, state government affects everybody's life in New York.

MF: It's a joy to be here, Dave.

DL: We've been speaking with WNYC and Gothamist’s Jon Campbell and Politico New York's Marie French.

Catch this week's show on your local PBS station, or watch on YouTube, Facebook, or using the free PBS app anytime after Friday.

On this week's edition of New York NOW:

• The new legislative session started in Albany this week, and Gov. Kathy Hochul's inauguration was last weekend.
• Guest host David Lombardo from WCNY's The Capitol Pressroom sits down with Jon Campbell from WNYC/Gothamist and Marie French from POLITICO New York for a look at what could happen during this year's legislative session.