Governor Hochul May Face Legal Challenge on Caitlin Halligan Confirmation
Dan Clark: Some news on New York's top court. Rowan Wilson was confirmed this week by the state Senate to be New York's new Chief Judge.
That was just round one of this week's judicial confirmations. Since Wilson was chosen for Chief Judge his old seat on the court was left open and the Senate confirmed Caitlin Halligan again this week to fill that spot. She's the state's former solicitor general who's had a huge career in the private sector and was once up for a federal judgeship. Even a handful of Republicans crossed party lines to support her.
DC: Democrats and Governor Hochul could be facing some legal trouble over Halligan nomination. Let's start there with this week's panel. Joe Spector is from Politico and Michael Gormley is from Newsday, thank you all so much. So, Mike, on this potential lawsuit from the GOP as of Friday morning, as we're talking, it has not been filed yet, but we did hear some comments from Senate Minority Leader Rob Ortt and Senate Judiciary Ranker Anthony Palumbo on the potential for a lawsuit. So where are we headed here? What do you think?
Michael Gormley: Well, it's hard to tell because there's a lot of lawsuits threatened in Albany that don't happen, but what the Republicans concern is, is that Governor Hochul and the Democratic Senate really did an unconstitutional movement. They had two candidates, they elevated one candidate to chief of the court, and Caitlin Halligan, who is an associate to that position. That a might be unconstitutional because they used the same list of candidates.
DC: Right, they passed a law to make this possible.
MG: I mean, we're not legal scholars, so we don't know for sure, but the other side of this is that the Republicans may not pursue this, even though they might have a good case because maybe they'd get a worse candidate. So, in New York State, there's very few things that are more political than picking judges. Both parties do this. So, one side claiming the other being political is just the way it goes. You know, it's political picking judges from the town and village level on up. So, we'll have to see what they do, but the calculus is going to be whether they think they can win, maybe they could, and then whether they want to win.
DC: I wonder what happens if they do win. I would have no idea because it would be up to the judge. Would it be that if they do win that lawsuit that Caitlin Halligan is pulled off the Court of Appeals then and they have to restart that process? We just don't know.
MG: Yeah, there's a lot, as you know because this is your background, but there could be a stay that everything would continue as status quo until there was another list of potential candidates and then a choice made, which is something that the governor would make the same choice. So that's the other thing, is it moot? That's what the Republicans have to consider.
DC: So up in the air on that right now, I don't want to get any more into that because we have to see what happens. There's plenty to talk about with the budget. Joe, on Thursday evening, Politico and New York Focus, a couple outlets reported that housing is just being taken out of the budget altogether. So, we're talking about the governor’s housing compact, tenant protections, good cause eviction, that type of stuff. What's going on there? They just couldn't get to a place where it made sense, I guess.
Joe Spector: Yeah, here we are three weeks, approaching a month for a late budget, and here were two big priorities for the governor, bail, more changes to the bail law, and then the housing piece. She wanted to have 800,000 new homes built over a decade, and the real controversy in this was to mandate the suburbs, outer boroughs, upstate, the whole state, to add new housing every single year, mandated, and if they didn't do it, then the state would have the ability to override local zoning laws. Really, that is like one of the third rails of politics, right, is to try to override local government control. You saw it right from the onset, lawmakers, suburban lawmakers, and it wasn't just suburban lawmakers, I think it became one of the suburbs versus city fights, but if you talk to outer borough lawmakers, Brooklyn, Queens, there was a lot of opposition among Democrats there too, because obviously there's a lot of residential housing there. So, the long and short of it is Hochul pushed this proposal, it was met with resistance right from the beginning. She wouldn't move off the mandate piece it seemed, and Democrats did put forth in their one-house budget, a proposal that would be an opt-in with incentives to try to build new housing, and that wasn't enough. So, like you said, a lot of the other stuff with it, tenant rights, sort of a rent control piece, the good cause, all of that seems to be off the table now.
DC: Does that mean that it's all dead or would they like to address it, I guess for the rest of session?
JS: Yeah, there's a couple of things, right? I mean, one, there's still talk of some housing pieces. Mayor Eric Adams has a lot that he wants for the city. Maybe that’s something that gets included, there’s talk about housing vouchers that would help people who are struggling to pay their rent, NYCHA (New York City Housing Authority) has a big deficit, and so there might be some money for that. So, there's still some money pieces in there, but Hochul’s big housing proposal, yeah, that seems scrapped.
DC: Mike, what do you think this says about politics and dynamics at the Capitol right now? This is another situation where the governor has a major priority that she cannot get through with the legislature. Is that trouble?
MG: Well a little political background here, as you know, the state legislators have a synergy with local officials, they all help each other get reelected. So, there's a real responsiveness in Albany to local government, but it's important to note that independent studies and other states have all found that Hochul’s position is the right one. In fact, the only one that makes it work, because you're not dealing with communities that are not approving housing because they don't have enough money for infrastructure, which is what the incentive is from the from the legislature. Many of these are doing it because they don't want to change the character of their neighborhoods, and unfortunately, that sometimes means the racial character makeup of a neighborhood. That's why other states and independent studies have said Hochul way of going about this, to have an ultimate state board that could overrule local zoning decisions is essential.
DC: Yeah, and especially when we talk about, I think, Long Island and the suburbs, it's very much NIMBY neighborhoods, not in my backyard people. We see that on other issues, too. Some people on Long Island really don't like the concept of wind turbines off the coast to produce wind energy that way. Do you see that as the part where it broke down, just the local control or was there other stuff?
MG: I agree with Joe. This has always been a third-rail type of thing. It was a very ambitious thing for the governor to take on, and you can look at that two ways. One, that it was the kind of bold vision that you want to see from leaders, and the other view might be that it was a mistake, a political mistake, should have seen that this was going to end up this way.
DC: I think that she's had some trouble with pre-selling things to people. You know, she comes out with a lot of surprises for rank-and-file lawmakers at least, I don't know how much legislative leaders know, but she seems to have this trend of having these big things and putting it out there before she sells it to people to get support. Something that I think Andrew Cuomo did a very effective job at was really lining up everything before he puts forward a major policy initiative or a Chief Judge nominee or things like that, so that when it did become public, there was more likelihood for it to get forward. We don't really see that with Kathy Hochul.
JS: Yeah, it just wasn't like ready-made, you know, you didn't have the unions behind it, for example, you didn't have the real estate interests behind this, there were no rallies at the Capitol in support of this proposal. To the points that Mike made about why a mandate is a better way to go than an opt-in, because an opt-in might not lead to any results, but at the same time, you just felt that there might have been a compromise in some way. Maybe you do an opt-in with a lot of money to encourage municipalities and then have a commission, like some lawmakers said, where you come back in a couple of years and see if it worked, and if not, then you could maybe force it upon local governments a little more, but then you started it and other pieces into it right? You know, 421-A, revisiting that or some tenant protections, and you start adding all these other pieces into it and it just all kind of crumbled.
DC: Now, is there anything else that seems to be a major impasse? I think we saw some rumors about a deal on bail this week, and Andrea Stewart-Cousins, the majority leader, said they were very, very close. I think that probably means that there is a 99% deal and maybe they were waiting for housing to come together to make it a full package or something like that. But what do you think there Joe? Are we done with bail finally?
JS: Yeah, they seemed like they had been for a for a couple of weeks. So, then they moved on to housing, that proved problematic so now they move on to many other pieces, which will take some time. So maybe there's a deal next week, but you hear a lot of maybes around the Capitol rather than reality. But yeah, there’s other pieces like charter schools, whether they're going to move forward with allowing more charter schools in New York City, raising the minimum wage. Democrats want to raise taxes on the rich, there's a $500 million tab that the governor has for the MTA for the city to pay, who's going to pay for that, because clearly the city doesn't want to be hit with that baby. So, there are still a lot of issues, but yeah housing, bail, those were no question the two big ones.
MG: Watch for a lot of these to drop off, that would make the budget possible. Watch a lot of those big ideas that the governor had go into the legislative session where the governor has less leverage to push her stuff, and that's why a lot of this is in the state budget.
DC: I was also thinking of what's left for session. We have about a minute left, Mike, kind of give us a preview of what we should expect… I don't know, I think it just depends when the budget passes, but about five weeks for the end of session. Are we expecting anything?
MG: Well, I think you can definitely see some progressive victories come out of this. Whether that gets through the governor's vetoes later on is yet to be seen, but this last part of the legislative session is going to be filled with trying to get some headlines. Perhaps it's the increase in millionaire's tax. If that doesn't get into the budget, there's a lot of other progressive ideas that could get through, but also there's a whole bunch of local laws that have to be passed. Again, getting back to what we talked about before, this synergy that local communities need the state to sign off on.
DC: It is a lot to consider the housing part after the budget. I'm just fascinated to see if parts of it can be in it, like the incentives, because if you're going to put money towards it, you should really do it in the budget, lawmakers would say, but we're out of time, unfortunately. Joe Spector from Politico, Michael Gormley from Newsday. Thank you both.