New York Governor Fights for Bail Overhaul, Setbacks in Climate Law Push

Dan Clark: Jon Campbell is from Gothamist and WNYC, and Zach Williams is from The New York Post. Thank you both for being here.

Jon, I want to turn to you first about this methane thing. We've explained the science so we don't have to rehash that, we’ve explained the cost savings. I'm more interested in the really big push for this at the start of the week from the Hochul administration, and then by the middle of the week, they kind of backed off and said, never mind.

Jon Campbell: Yeah, absolutely, and what happened in between? You saw environmental groups and environmental advocates really rise up against it and say it would be a way of essentially gutting this top in the nation climate law that they were so proud of just a couple of years ago. So you saw the strength of the environmental movement stand up, that said it's not dead. I mean, the Hochul administration says, well, you know, we're not going to prioritize it in the budget negotiations, but it's still going to be hanging around, there's still going to be a standalone bill, even if it doesn't find its way in here, and there will be more debate about this in the future.

DC: I'm so interested in the behind-the-scenes part of this whole thing that we're probably never going to find out where on Monday it was a very big priority, and then two days later, they had to just claw it back because of some very powerful voices at the Capitol and the environmentalists. I know the governor in particular wants climate to be part of her legacy, so I can imagine that it is a big deal. 

Zach, I saw this as kind of part of a larger pattern from this administration of kind of trying to do something and then people who might be considered more progressive have kind of stopping that because they have a growing power at the Capitol. What do you think about that?

Zach Williams: What we've seen in recent months, the governor has made a series of kind of baffling moves, you know, nominating Judge LaSalle to be the Chief Judge of the Court of Appeals, and now with this environmental proposal where she kind of put it out there, she couldn't possibly have thought that it was going to go over well, but she did it anyways, only to backtrack after, at least in this case a pretty stunning display of pressure from the environmental movement that I think makes an interesting comparison with what we've seen on bail reform.

Here we have the governor enraging the left on multiple fronts, but whereas she quickly retreated on the environmental proposal and on recalculating methane emissions, she's still sticking to her guns on this very controversial proposal to overhaul cash bail laws despite, years of pressure, and that is continuing up and through budget talks. I guess the governor in this case bit off a little bit more than she could chew and then kind of stood back and said, no, I want to fight about bail and concentrate on that.

DC: Budget negotiations are happening every day, they will be happening this weekend. It's a holiday weekend, the leaders will still be in town, presumably. Is bail reform still the sticking point in your eyes, Zach? Is that kind of where we are still compared to the early part of the week?

ZW: Bail reform has really set the tone for all the negotiations between the governor and the legislature. You know, all the talk about the delayed budget, that's mostly because of bail. There have been disagreements about housing and of course, some other proposals. But Speaker Carl Heastie earlier this week said that bail was sucking up like 90% of the political oxygen in budget talks.

Now there were hints a little bit later in the week that they were covering other topics as well, but I think everybody that's watching these negotiations closely would say that until they figure out bail and what the legislature gets and what the governor gets, it's going to be pretty hard to kind of branch out into all the other issues that they're going to solve here.

DC: Jon, can you talk about the dynamics of this for members of our audience that may not be familiar with the budget process? The governor has extraordinary power in the budget process in New York. Is this a typical move from a governor in New York to try to get what they want?

JC: Well, it was a typical move in the pre-Cuomo years. Budgets were late and very late and governors often tried to use that to their advantage, use that as leverage to get things that they wanted, in part because when the budget is late, lawmakers don't get paid. Their pay is withheld until that fall budget is in place.

That's the situation we have now. Governor Hochul has made very clear in her two years that she is willing to push the budget late in order to get what she wants. She got some bail changes last year, she got the Buffalo Bills stadium deal included in the budget last year in part by going nine days late. So, we're seeing that happen this year as well.

Whether or not she'll be successful, I mean, she is really holding out for her changes to the bail laws. She wants to remove the “least restrictive standard”, and she's making it very clear that's what she wants and that's what she's going to hold out for.

DC: You know, I did find it interesting, as you said, Zach, that by the middle of the week, they seem to be talking about other things besides bail. Probably not to a great extent, but I think the other big conflict here is the housing proposal from the governor. It's gotten a lot of pushback, particularly from people in the suburbs who don't like the requirement to build housing near transit, for example and they honestly, just don't like the requirement to build housing. They want to do it on their terms and in their own way. Jon, do you still see that as a sticking point at this point in the process?

JC: Oh, absolutely, I mean that's the other big sticking point. As Andrea Stewart-Cousins, the Senate leader, said, the idea of whether or not they’re going to go with the carrot approach or the stick approach, and whether or not their housing plan is going to be based on, “punitive measures” where the state can step in and override local control or if it's going to start with offering incentives to try to incentivize the building of housing locally.

That said, there are other big issues out there beyond those two that we have no idea where they're at right now. Charter schools is one where the governor and the legislature are diametrically opposed. The governor wants to expand charter schools in New York City, the legislature very much does not, the teachers union very much does not, and they're very powerful force in Albany. So, even after you get past bail and housing, you still have these other issues that you have to tackle.

DC: I was just going to bring up funding for the MTA to go to you Zack. It's another one of those issues, and as you said Jon, there are a lot of these… I don't want to call them smaller issues, but I think they're issues that maybe the general public might not be as familiar with. You know, charter schools are very big in New York City, not so big in areas of upstate, but MTA funding in some ways affects the entire state. 

For people in the five boroughs and the suburbs it's literally like the blood in their veins of that city. But the more money you put towards the MTA, you may have to take away money somewhere else. So I think that that's a really interesting thing to be watching right now.

What do you think that looks like right now, Zach? Do we know anything about the funding for the MTA?

ZW: Well, there's another actor in these negotiations down the Hudson in New York City, and that's Mayor Eric Adams. What's so interesting is that for a moderate Democrat, as he's often called, he's been really siding with the lawmakers on some several key issues. Now, the governor has proposed that New York City pay 500 million more into the MTA every year, and for obvious reasons, the mayor does not like this idea, and he has also been very quiet on bail reform, an issue that he's spoken quite vocally about in the past and also kind of tried to have it both ways with charter schools, something he's spoken favorably about in the past. 

So, whereas the governor maybe in the past could have leaned on Mayor Adams or at least had hope that she could lean on him to at least help with some of these proposals, he really seems to be holding out with the legislative leaders, trying to maximize funding for his own city. 

That's going to give the legislative leaders another tool in their toolbox, as we say, to kind of come back at the governor and try to get her to not only abandon that proposal for the MTA, but also her proposed increase tax on payroll, on businesses. Speaking of another group in the legislature that’s very powerful, it’s moderate suburban lawmakers. They don't like that idea, they don't like the housing plan, and they're not so keen on what the governor also wants to do on some other fronts, charter schools, for instance. 

So, the governor, if she wants to overcome this resistance, is going to have to do it seemingly unilaterally, because the mayor of New York City doesn't seem too eager to help.

DC: John, is that a challenge for the governor?

JC: Oh of course it's a challenge for the governor, this whole thing's a challenge for the governor. You know there are other issues even on top of that. She wants a ban on menthol cigarettes, that's something where the legislature is resisting. So, there's just not a lot of uniformity right now aside from maybe education funding, which is usually a big problem.

DC: Right. It’s interesting to see because, five years ago I think that we would know more by now about the budget, but because of the nature of zoom leader meetings at points, not always, we don't have all the information that we usually have. So hopefully we will know more next week.

Thank you both for your time.

Zach Williams from The New York Post and John Campbell from Gothamist and WNYC.