The city and the state are preparing for another wave of migrants when the federal Title 42 immigration policy lifts.
“It is a crisis situation, especially with the suspension of Title 42 on Thursday,” Hochul told reporters Tuesday on Long Island. “It’s no surprise that there will literally be thousands of more individuals coming across the border and ultimately finding their way to the state of New York.”
Hochul’s order might also seek to quell frustration in the suburbs after Adams’ announcement Friday that he would look to move some migrants to other counties to alleviate overcrowding and strained city resources.
The Republican county executives in Orange and Rockland issued state of emergency orders that will try to bar hotels from contracting with the city to house migrants, setting up a showdown among local governments.
Hochul seemed Tuesday to try to calm the fervor, suggesting she would work to find new locations, perhaps state-owned facilities, for the asylum-seekers in the city or with municipalities willing to accept them.
“We are in communication with the mayor’s team and also helping him find locations within the city limits, opening up state property and talking to other counties that are interested in having people come,” she told reporters when asked about the counties’ concerns.
The state budget approved last week included $1 billion to help the city with the surge as Adams has urged more outside resources, criticizing the federal government for not doing more.
Hochul said that the state had already deployed about 1,000 members of the National Guard to help the city, and the executive order will allow the state more easily buy food and supplies for the migrants.
She said one of the main obstacles is getting the migrants the approvals necessary to start working legally. She noted that farmers in New York, in particular, need about 5,000 more workers.
“The number one priority for those here is to be able to get a job,” Hochul said. “We want them to get employment, but there’s constraint at the federal level as far as their designation.”
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Hochul framed the deal as a win for affordability in the state, but recognized she didn’t get one of her top priorities: A housing deal to force municipalities to build 800,000 new homes over the next decade. The budget will include $391 million in rental assistance, which will largely help the troubled New York City Housing Authority.
“Did we accomplish what this moment called for?” she said in an evening briefing in the Capitol. “Did we make a difference in the lives of New Yorkers? We’re going to be able to answer that question yes.”
When the budget will be finalized and passed by the Legislature is unclear.; legislative leaders did not attend her briefing. Lawmakers have mostly returned to their districts, and no bills were printed at the time of Hochul’s announcement. It will thus likely be several days until the passage of the spending plan that was due to pass by March 31.
“There’s obviously fine tuning that has to be done. That’ll be worked out over the weekend,” Hochul said.
While details will not be known until the bills are printed, Hochul outlined some of the highlights, many of which have been expected and reported.
Those include the third set of changes to the state’s bail reform laws since they were enacted in 2019. This round includes language that gives judges more discretion to hold individuals accused of certain violent crimes.
But a proposal to change the laws on discovery to avoid cases being tossed on procedural grounds failed at the last minute. Hochul placed the blame on district attorneys, who have said that the requirements to quickly share evidence with arrestees is unmanageable. Instead, the courts are getting more money to increase staff and resources, she said.
“We thought we had a plan that met the needs, and the district attorneys decided that was not the path they wanted to go on despite saying so initially,” the Democratic governor said.
The budget will also include language designed to crack down on illegal marijuana retailers, which was one of the final sticking points in the budget. It will be “aggressive” and attempt to penalize those sellers who aren’t paying taxes, but there appears to be more fine-tuning required.
“We’re working on the details of that,” said Hochul’s counsel Liz Fine.
The deal will also include a plan to raise the minimum wage to $17 an hour, starting with $16 an hour next year in New York City, and then indexing it to inflation within a few years.
On transit, the budget will create a pilot program for free service on five MTA bus lines, and the city will be on the hook for $165 million to fund the transit system — rather than $500 million as Hochul originally proposed, as well as limiting a payroll mobility tax only to the city, not the suburbs.
It will also include the largest Medicaid rate increase in two decades, Hochul said, who added the budget “makes critical policy changes” in the area of mental health and funds 1,000 new in-patient psychiatric beds as well as 3,500 units of supportive housing.
The budget includes $400 million for utility relief as well as a requirement that homes constructed after 2025 meet zero emission standard.
As expected, the budget includes minimal language on housing, she noted.
“I believe major action is required to meet the scale of this crisis. The legislature saw it differently,” Hochul said.
But she promised to continue “working hard and fighting” on the topic and teased executive actions which will be announced “in the coming weeks.”
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Senate Democrats rejected Hochul’s initial pick for chief judge, Hector LaSalle, in a floor vote in February, saying he was too moderate and had several decisions that were anti-abortion rights or anti-labor — positions he disputed during his hourslong testimony in January.
But Democrats were on board with Wilson, who is deemed as part of the more liberal side of the court. They said it is important to pick a candidate that will defend abortion rights in the face of last year’s U.S. Supreme Court decision to overturn Roe v. Wade and the recent Texas case to ban the abortion pill mifepristone.
“I am particularly excited about the prospect of Judge Wilson leading our state’s highest court as chief judge,” Senate Deputy Majority Leader Mike Gianaris said in a statement. “He is exactly the type of person who can restore the integrity and reputation of the Court of Appeals after the damaging tenure of the previous administration.”
Hochul is able to nominate both Wilson and Halligan from the same pool of candidates after lawmakers approved a law change earlier this month. Previously, each pick to the Court of Appeals required a separate list from the Commission on Judicial Nomination.
Hochul said Wilson has also agreed to recommend Joseph Zayas, an appellate court judge in New York City, as chief administrative judge to oversee the entire court system.
The Democratic governor began her year with a rocky start when the Senate Judiciary Committee, for the first time since governors nominated chief judges in the 1970s, rejected LaSalle. After a GOP lawsuit pushed Democrats for a full floor vote, LaSalle was then voted down on the Senate floor.
Several others expressed their support for Hochul’s latest picks, including Senate Judiciary Chair Brad Hoylman-Sigal. The Senate will need to soon take up confirmation hearings on both judicial nominees.
“The importance of these nominees to New York’s highest court cannot be overstated, especially given recent decisions by federal courts on issues such as abortion, gun safety, labor and the environment,” Hoylman-Sigal said in a statement. “I look forward to working with my colleagues to conduct fair and thorough hearings to examine the extensive records of Associate Judge Rowan and Ms. Halligan.”
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“You would see a suburban uprising, the likes of which you’ve never seen before, if the state tried to impose land-use regulations on communities that have had local control for over a 100 years,” Bruce Blakeman, the Republican county executive in Nassau County, said in an interview.
Voters on Long Island and in much of the Hudson Valley went overwhelmingly for Republicans in the midterms, putting Rep. Lee Zeldin within striking distance of the Democratic governor and losing her party multiple seats in the House.
But Hochul seems undaunted by the political risk, arguing the suburbs have failed to do their part to add housing supply, with a “potentially catastrophic” impact on the state’s ability to compete for jobs and residents.
Her plan would compel every municipality to grow their housing stock and require those downstate to allow more housing near rail stations, contributing to her goal of reaching 800,000 new homes over the next decade. Similar efforts have been tried in other states, including Massachusetts and California, to varying results, while pitting bucolic suburbs against the needs of pricey metro areas.
“The whole objective is so families can stay in New York, kids can raise their own families where they grew up, employers don’t have to worry about whether or not there’s going to be employees in a community because they’ll have a place to live,” Hochul told state lawmakers Feb. 1 as she outlined her proposed budget.
Even some Democrats are concerned that Hochul’s initiative goes too far and could have political ramifications. The governor is looking to get it approved by the Democratic-led Legislature as part of a budget deal for the fiscal year that starts April 1.
“There’s a lot of resentment when the state or a regional entity tries to come in and tell people how they should make their communities. It’s not a winning strategy,” said Laura Curran, the former Democratic Nassau County executive who was defeated by Blakeman in 2021.
A push for new housing in New York
Hochul, who took over the governor’s office in 2021 after Andrew Cuomo resigned, has faced similar backlash before. A year ago, she sought to legalize apartments on single-family lots — meeting immediate opposition from politicians in the suburbs. With an eye toward her upcoming election, Hochul swiftly abandoned the proposal.
Her rhetoric since November, however — including a keynote speech at a housing group’s annual luncheon, and her own State of the State address in January — suggests that she’s not afraid of the impending fight.
“We’ve failed so far. No longer is failure an option,” she said this month.
There could be political consequences for the governor proposing such a controversial measure after Democrats lost all four House seats on Long Island and three in the Hudson Valley, Curran and others said. The losses were in sharp contrast to what happened elsewhere, with Democrats bucking expectations in other states to hold the Senate and keep GOP control of the House to 10 seats. Hochul won by just six points, the closest New York governor’s race since 1994.
“I am concerned if this is done in a clumsy way that it will continue to hurt Democrats in the suburbs,” Curran said. “It will be one in the long litany of reasons why people are mad at Democrats right now in New York.”
Republicans are already pouncing. Zeldin was in Albany on Monday to rip the proposal, calling it “Hochul control, not local control.”
“The idea that you’re just going to micromanage all of that up in Albany is making a lot of New Yorkers in these communities feel like they’re being deliberately targeted because of how last year’s election turned out,” he told reporters.
Republicans and Democrats questioned Hochul’s political calculus, with some wondering whether she has written off Long Island as entirely lost to Republicans. One Democratic consultant, who requested anonymity to speak freely about the governor, contended Hochul wouldn’t have pursued the measure if there were more Democratic legislators from the area.
“She ignores what’s going on on the ground on Long Island to her own peril,” said Chapin Fay, a Republican consultant. “It’s a very important part of the statewide puzzle.”
Slow housing growth in New York’s suburbs
Hochul is pleading with local leaders to embrace her housing push for the greater good, saying it still gives towns and villages flexibility in how they choose to meet her goals.
New York had the largest population loss in the nation last year, according to Census data, which the governor has attributed to housing unaffordability. Her administration argues the suburbs are not immune to strains on the housing market — a point echoed by housing and business groups and even some local leaders opposed to the scale of the push.
“When you talk to people in the Hudson Valley, if you talk to people in Nassau and Suffolk, the number one issue people have is the housing affordability,” RuthAnne Visnauskas, the state housing commissioner, said in an interview. “Part of quality of life is having availability of housing, having choice in where you live.”
New York is unusual in how much leeway it gives local governments to resist new housing. A 2020 report from New York University characterized the state as “stand[ing] nearly alone” among its peers in how much power suburban leaders have had to restrict growth. Nearly every similar state — Massachusetts, Connecticut, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Illinois, California, Oregon, Washington and Florida — “have adopted state-level reforms to promote housing development in high-cost suburban areas.”
Visnauskas said Hochul’s approach was driven in part by seeing other states that initially tried an incentive-based approach to spur housing shifting towards mandates because the earlier policies were failing.
She has dismissed the political risk.
“There’s a housing crisis, it’s in New York City, it’s in the suburbs, and we need a solution,” she told reporters. “And if it isn’t this one, then what is it? There has to be some solution to it or else we’re going to get 10 years down the road and New York City and its suburbs are going to be a place where only millionaires and billionaires can live.”
Hochul faces challenges with housing plan
Hochul’s effort is being celebrated by housing groups who have long called for New York to pursue the kind of substantive state action seen in other parts of the country — and implement it in a way that includes sticks and carrots.
The suburbs have “lost credibility” to produce enough housing without a state mandate, said Andrew Fine, policy director of the group Open New York, which is part of a coalition of housing, transit and climate groups formed to support the governor’s plan.
Proponents point to projects like Matinecock Court, which was first proposed in affluent Huntington on Long Island in 1978, but after multiple legal fights is just now starting development.
“For our region, not being able to provide diverse housing options makes it much more difficult to attract and retain a young vibrant workforce,” said Kyle Strober, executive director of the Association for a Better Long Island. “The lack of housing on Long Island is a dire economic issue.”
Hochul said in January the state has produced just 400,000 new homes over the last decade, while adding 1.2 million new jobs.
Her proposal would impose a 3 percent growth target for New York City and surrounding suburbs to be met every three years. By comparison, over the last three years, Long Island increased its housing stock by just 0.6 percent, while the lower Hudson Valley grew by 1.7 percent.
If the targets aren’t met or new zoning changes aren’t made, a state appeals process would allow certain projects to circumvent local zoning restrictions. Another measure would require municipalities to permit a minimum level of housing density within a half mile of train stations.
Fierce pushback from local officials
The hamlet of Manhasset, in one of the wealthiest parts of Nassau County, is about a 30-minute train ride from Midtown Manhattan. A quaint downtown area surrounding the local Long Island Rail Road station has scarcely a building above two stories.
It’s also home to the town hall of North Hempstead. Local leaders have not made it easy to make changes to area building rules, to put it mildly: The Board of Zoning Appeals recently mulled whether to grant a variance for an air conditioning unit that was located too close to the street and “not properly screened from view.”
North Hempstead supervisor Jennifer DeSena, a registered Democrat who ran as a Republican, said the governor’s proposed requirements “sounds like a parent talking to a teenager.” Residents, she said, are “concerned about losing the quality of life they paid for.”
Republican Donald Clavin, the supervisor of neighboring Hempstead, meanwhile, said his constituents “don’t need bureaucrats in Albany telling them how they’re going to live.”
Hochul’s proposal left some Long Island political strategists perplexed.
“There’s hardly a word that you can poll that polls worse on Long Island than state mandates,” said Michael Dawidziak, who is based in Suffolk County and has worked with both Republicans and Democrats. “To me, this is not good politics for the governor.”
Asked whether she’s targeting Long Island for political reasons through her housing proposal, Hochul said this month she’s “guided by what is best for New Yorkers.”
“Just so all New Yorkers understand, nothing I do in a budget is driven by politics, elections, outcomes,” Hochul told reporters.
State Sen. Kevin Thomas, one of two remaining Democrats representing Long Island in the chamber, cited a “great need for housing out in the suburbs” and expressed openness to Hochul’s proposal, but still raised concerns around the prospect of overriding local zoning.
“Out on Long Island, we pride ourselves on our autonomous villages and towns, so to say, ‘Hey, the state should come in and override what they want,’ is a bit problematic,” he said in an interview.
Westchester County Executive George Latimer, a Democrat, said the county needs housing and sees a willingness there to support development. But he, too, expressed reservations about the prospect of overriding local rules.
“I’d rather not override zoning,” Latimer, a former state senator, said. “But I think it’s important to disconnect the narrative that exists out there, which is, the city wants to develop housing and the suburbs don’t. The suburbs are not monolithic.”
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“This is a pivotal moment for our state,” Hochul said. “We can’t just sit on the sidelines and wish things were different. If we want to make real progress for our people, we can.”
She described the nuts and bolts of a series of proposals aimed at achieving the New York Dream that were broadly outlined in her State of the State address last month. And she’s benefiting from an $8.7 billion surplus thanks to higher-than-expected tax revenue to fund projects and programs to appease a wide variety of constituencies.
Hochul wants record increases in education and Medicaid spending — to $34.4 billion and $27.8 billion respectively. Hochul’s plan would set aside more than $1 billion to help New York City pay some costs of providing social services to new asylum seekers.
She proposed new funding streams for the beleaguered Metropolitan Transportation Authority, including raising payroll taxes on downstate businesses, using revenue from planned casinos and setting aside $300 million in one-time aid. She also rejected any income tax increases.
She laid out various provisions of her plan for 800,000 new homes over the next decade, which would require municipalities around the state to meet housing production targets or make zoning changes.
And she announced a four-year extension for completing projects covered by the expired 421-a tax break, but did not suggest a specific replacement for the incentive program that builders say will be necessary for the kind of housing growth she is seeking.
Many of Hochul’s ideas carry broad conceptual support among Democrats looking to expand opportunities for communities that have historically been passed over, and Hochul will spend the next two months attempting to build consensus among members of the state Legislature for the fiscal year that starts April 1.
But she begins that process on rocky terms, at least in the Senate, where she’s threatened legal action after a Senate panel rejected her pick for chief judge last month. Leaders are downplaying any potential stalemates amid the acrimony. Hochul made a point to greet just two people — both Senate Majority Leader Andrea Stewart-Cousins and Assembly Speaker Carl Heastie — before taking the podium Wednesday.
She also cracked open the door to some historically contentious debates in the Legislature, including permitting more charter schools across the state by lifting a regional cap in state law and expanding the amount of discretion that judges would have to set bail for more serious offenses.
She characterized both bail and charter school expansion as measures to provide clarity in otherwise odd implementations of the current status quo, rather than the political grenades they’ve become. Much of her election battle last year centered on rising crime and criticism of the state’s bail laws.
“Let’s just simply provide clarity,” she said of her bail law proposal. “Let’s ensure judges consider factors for serious offenders. And let’s leave the law where it is for low level offense and move forward to focus on two other public safety challenges.”
Assembly Speaker Carl Heastie, during an availability with reporters following Hochul’s address, said he was briefed the previous evening but was still, “wrapping his arms around” Hochul’s proposals.
He did note that charter school expansion has typically been “tough” for his conference; the powerful teachers unions oppose an expansion. And he’s skeptical of any suggestion that the state’s bail laws are the solution to increases in crime, instead suggesting that the Legislature should take a more holistic approach.
“We’ve got to get off that focus on those four letters [B.A.I.L] and start looking at the entire totality of public safety,” he said.
The state is on sound financial footing this year, and officials project the $8.7 billion surplus can be used to help the state build its reserves to 15 percent of state operating funds by 2025.
Progressive groups analyzing Hochul’s proposal were quick to point out what they saw as missed opportunities when the state has the cash to take aggressive action, including affordable housing advocates who say tenants rights should take precedence in trying to make New York more affordable.
“Governor Hochul’s plan prioritizes deregulation and luxury housing production. It is for real estate moguls, not working families,” tenants rights activist Cea Weaver said in a response from the Housing Justice for All coalition she represents.
Hochul said that political dynamics surrounding her election and legislative relationships did not play into how she chose to craft the budget proposal when asked about a proposed expansion of an MTA payroll tax that would affect suburban counties. She did not largely do well in the suburbs last November.
“Nothing I do in the budget is driven by politics, elections, outcomes,” she said. “I’m guided by what is best for New Yorkers.”
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The troubles were most evident in her choice for chief judge, Hector LaSalle — who she picked after warnings from political behemoths like labor and state Senate leadership that he would not be approved. She has continued to back LaSalle despite the Senate’s rejection on Jan. 18 , leaving many wondering whose advice Hochul is choosing over input from longstanding power players.
“I don’t know who they’re talking to,” Senate Labor Chair Jessica Ramos (D-Queens), a vocal opponent to LaSalle’s nomination, said in an interview. “But I do think that before making major decisions, such as choosing a chief judge, that they should speak to stakeholders, especially those who protect the most vulnerable in New York, who really are at the mercy of whoever the chief judge in the state is.”
There appears to be a dichotomy, however, between the rancor at the Capitol and with the public: Hochul hit record popularity in January with voters, a Siena College poll found last week.
And she’ll have an opportunity Wednesday to introduce her budget plan to reset the conversation in Albany on her fiscal priorities rather than the fallout from the LaSalle case, even as she threatens to sue over it.
The turmoil with lawmakers — Senate Majority Leader Andrea Stewart-Cousins said Tuesday she and the governor haven’t spoken since LaSalle’s rejection — tops off a series of perceived miscalculations in strategic relationship building that even her supporters have described as unforced errors.
There’s still the residual effect from last November’s election, which Hochul won but by the narrowest margin in decades that led to down-ballot losses. Even though Democrats were able to narrowly retain their supermajorities in the Senate and Assembly, the state party lost ground in a year when Republicans underperformed across the country.
Hochul’s election campaign, which raised and spent nearly $60 million, lacked the outreach to key demographics that strategists considered standard practice for running a New York campaign.
Democratic advisers and legislators say they were ignored or turned down when they offered strategies to target boroughs and communities where she lacked support. She failed to rally labor and progressive movements until the final days of her campaign, when those groups became concerned her Republican opponent Lee Zeldin might have a real chance at beating her.
Now some top union leaders said they felt spurned when she tapped LaSalle for chief judge after they publicly logged their opposition, arguing a few of his decisions were anti-labor and anti-abortion rights, which he and Hochul deny.
Critics also point to her struggles in a first major decision in 2021: Her initial pick for lieutenant governor, Brian Benjamin, resigned shortly after being indicted on federal bribery charges, the result of previously reported connections that should have set off alarm bells during the vetting process.
“People make the analogy of ‘they’re playing checkers while everyone else is playing chess,’ said one Democratic strategist and legislative veteran. “No. They’re playing tic-tac-toe, and it’s just embarrassing.”
But Hochul’s office is quick to tout her accomplishments since taking office, and her ability to win over the Legislature — including getting lawmakers to approve a deal to fund the Buffalo Bills stadium, tweak controversial bail reform laws and remove Benjamin from the 2022 ballot in a messy workaround to state election law.
“Governor Hochul’s senior staff bring decades of experience at the highest levels of local, federal, and state government and records of results, and it should not go unnoticed that they are predominantly women,” Hochul spokesperson Hazel Crampton-Hays said when asked for comment.
Some of Hochul’s Democratic detractors begrudgingly note Andrew Cuomo, despite his scandal-plagued tenure, was masterful at manipulating Albany to his whims after 40 years in the Capitol.
When Hochul took over, she promised to purge the state government of the individuals who’d fostered Cuomo’s culture of harassment and intimidation. That clean house effort — led by her then-chief of staff, Jeff Lewis — was aimed at reinvention, but in the process may have stripped away layers of institutional knowledge vital for navigating certain parts in state government, three longtime administration officials have noted.
Some who did remain, such as budget director Robert Mujica, have since departed. Top adviser and special counsel Jeff Pearlman, who also aided David Paterson’s transition from lieutenant governor to governor and was one of Hochul’s first appointees, left her office late last summer to resume his role as director of the state Authorities Budget Office.
Pearlman, when reached for comment last week, said that he felt he fulfilled his transitional role and wanted to complete his work at the Authorities Budget Office.
“There just came a point in time where you become the Maytag repairman,” Pearlman said. “The problems don’t come to you. They come to the people that got hired to solve the problems.”
Hochul, in an October interview with POLITICO, described her inner circle as including six people: State operations director Kathryn Garcia, secretary to the governor Karen Persichilli Keogh, policy head Micah Lasher, counsel Liz Fine, deputy chief of staff Melissa Bochenski and current chief of staff in Stacy Lynch.
Lewis moved to Hochul’s reelection campaign in March 2022, and post-election has not yet returned to the governor’s office in any official capacity.
It’s easy to characterize a mostly female staff as inexperienced or weak, but that’s not the narrative Hochul’s Democratic critics have pushed. They continue to praise those members of her team as brilliant experts in their fields with proven track records of success.
Garcia, the former New York City Sanitation Department commissioner, came in close second to New York City Mayor Eric Adams in the 2021 mayoral race. Persichilli Keogh was Hillary Clinton’s former New York state director and is well known as a savvy New York operative. Lasher worked as former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s chief Albany lobbyist and chief of staff to former attorney general Eric Schneiderman.
But that experience doesn’t always translate to running a cohesive Albany operation.
Some of the procedures and traditions — those do not include intimidation and harassment — are there for a reason, past and current officials say. And there are specific aspects of working in Albany that aren’t transferable from working in other New York political realms — like knowing that Stewart-Cousins would never tell Hochul she didn’t have the votes to approve LaSalle unless she had personally spoken to each of her members.
“That sounds so simple. But if you haven’t been through it before, and you’re doing it for the first time? This is New York. This is ‘punch you in the nose’ politics,” said an administration official who has worked in Albany for more than three decades. “You have to experience walking through and working in the Capitol — and it takes a couple of years to live it before you can do it.”
Hochul and her team are also facing a new Albany that more recently stymied her predecessor as well — one controlled completely by Democrats, where the old executive playbook pitting warring Senate and Assembly majorities against one another is defunct.
The factions to court aren’t as simple as Democrats versus Republicans, or even moderates versus progressives anymore.
Hochul’s chief judge pick, for example, would have been the first Latino person to hold the position. That was not enough to persuade several further left Latino elected officials, who said the top seat on the Court of Appeals would mean nothing if LaSalle’s judicial track record didn’t align with their progressive values.
There are new layers emerging in the Democratic party that require acknowledgment, if not full political realignment. The Working Families Party brought in necessary votes for Hochul in November, but it did not get so much as a shout out in the governor’s victory speech.
“It is hard to pinpoint, but I think it’s more than one thing and it’s all coming together at once,” the official said of the “frustration” of watching Hochul’s administration navigate the Capitol. “I think it’s the new political class. I think it’s a little bit of Cuomo PTSD, and I think it’s a little bit of the chamber not having the strength of the institutional people to guide them away from what we would think of as rookie mistakes.”
Others in Albany with a longtime vantage that includes a host of unpredictable executives say there’s no reason to be tied to how things “should be.”
“I’ve been around a long time,” said Sen. Liz Krueger (D-Manhattan). “So I can tell you there’s never been normal in Albany.”
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“You’re jumping ahead in your own analysis,” Hochul said after an unrelated event in Albany. “You’re making an assumption that I have not stated to be factual that we’re going down a certain path. I recommend you don’t do that because you will all know everything you need to know in due process and due time.”
But as time ticks, Hochul appears to be facing a likely losing battle against progressives and unions who quashed LaSalle’s potential ascension as the state’s first Latino chief judge. Opponents said he issued some decisions as a judge that were anti-labor and anti-abortion. LaSalle said that’s not true.
After the Senate Judiciary Committee rejected her pick, Hochul argued that LaSalle needed a full vote in the 63-member Senate. Senators have said no: The Judiciary Committee’s vote is where the issue ends.
Legal experts are split on whether Hochul would win a lawsuit over the matter.
Jerry Goldfeder, a preeminent Democratic election lawyer, wrote Monday that the state constitution indicates a governor’s nominee for the Court of Appeals needs a Senate vote, saying it “requires advice and consent by ‘the Senate,’ not one of its committees.”
Others have suggested “advice and consent” can end with the committee.
Even a successful lawsuit to bring LaSalle’s nomination to the floor would put Hochul back in the same place: She is not expected to have enough votes among Senate Democrats to confirm him, meaning he would simply be rejected again.
Hochul wouldn’t indulge that scenario.
“As the governor, it is my prerogative to do what’s best for the people of the state of New York after a thoughtful analysis and in consultation — and I assure you, that is my guiding star,” she said.
Sen. Jamaal Bailey was the only Democrat on the Judiciary Committee who voted to move LaSalle’s nomination without recommendation — meaning he was willing to have it come to the floor, but also didn’t vote in favor of him. Bailey said he remains “comfortable” with his vote, but did not weigh in on what the future holds.
“The committee decided what it decided. I think that ultimately the next decisions need to be determined by the governor and the leadership about what takes place,” Bailey, a Bronx Democrat, said.
LaSalle’s supporters, including former chief judge Jonathan Lippman, have made several arguments challenging the legitimacy of the committee decision, including asserting that the formal letter of rejection from Senate Democrats signed by Majority Leader Andrea Stewart-Cousins should have been signed by Lt. Gov. Antonio Delgado, who is the Senate president, per the constitution.
Stewart-Cousins dismissed that argument, along with the notion LaSalle deserved additional Senate consideration following his five-hour hearing last Wednesday.
“I’m not arguing about who signed the letter or not,” she told reporters Tuesday. “What happened was that there were not enough votes to bring the nominee to the floor. So therefore the nominee did not go through.”
Stewart-Cousins said she was “not concerned” a stand off over a potential lawsuit would derail coming budget negotiations between the governor and Legislature, saying both parties have shown they “continue to interact on a professional level.”
“I have a good relationship with the governor,” she said. “We all do. So we can disagree, but that doesn’t mean we can’t do the work that people sent us to do.”
But asked whether she’d talked to Hochul personally since LaSalle’s rejection and its fallout, Stewart-Cousins said she has not.
There are other options for Hochul.
She could simply withdraw LaSalle’s nomination and pick from among the other six candidates recommended by the state Commission on Judicial Nomination — giving her a new shot at winning Senate approval after a number of lawmakers indicated support for a few others on the list.
Or the Court of Appeals could rule it doesn’t have a chief judge and ask the commission to go through a monthslong process of selecting new candidates for Hochul to consider. Right now, the court has six members, which for a prolonged period could hurt its ability to reach consensus.
Again, Hochul dismissed the turmoil and stuck by LaSalle: “I chose the best person from the list of seven.”
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( With inputs from : www.politico.com )
And it came off to many as a clear, though not irreparable, miscalculation that was an embarrassing loss to start her term and one that could weaken the moderate governor’s standing at the state Capitol with an emboldened Legislature that has increasingly moved to the left.
How both sides react next could set the tone for the next six months as the governor and Democrats in the Senate and Assembly negotiate a $220 billion state budget. After narrowly winning election last year, she’s also looking at proposals to reinvigorate New York City and the state with a massive housing plan and make further changes to the state’s controversial bail laws.
“Governing is about compromise, but it’s also about understanding when you have leverage, how you use it, and never forfeiting it needlessly, which is what she’s appeared to do in the last few weeks,” said Bob Bellafiore, an Albany-based communications consultant and a former press secretary for Republican Gov. George Pataki.
For example, a bargaining chip could have been to refuse to sign off on lawmakers’ pay raise in December until they could assure LaSalle would be approved, but she approved the raise and didn’t appear to offer any other enticement to get him over the finish line, two people close to the Senate and familiar with the negotiations said.
Hochul also erred by not lining up support early for LaSalle, who would have been the first Latino chief judge, or perhaps pulling the nomination when it was likely to fail. Instead, she set herself up for defeat by trying to force it through the Senate when powerful unions — including CWA and the AFL-CIO — had already opposed him because they viewed a few of his court decisions as anti-abortion and anti-labor, which he refuted.
“There was a lot of energy around this,” Sharon Cromwell, deputy state director for the Working Families Party, which opposed the nomination, said Thursday. “We understood the stakes of what it means to have a chief judge that has a track record of not standing with unions and working people — and a track record to make some anti-abortion decisions.”
How does Hochul respond after the loss? She didn’t rule out a lawsuit to try to force a full Senate vote, but also vowed not to let it derail her agenda.
“I did not say what course we’re taking,” Hochul told reporters Thursday. “I just said we’re weighing all of our options. But I put forth an ambitious plan for the people of New York. And I believe that there’s a lot of common interest between the executive and the legislative branch.”
Senators who opposed LaSalle early on framed the historic rejection as the right and responsibility of the Senate, perhaps a nod to confirmations with governors past that have been nothing more than a rubber stamp, including the last one, Janet DiFiore in 2016 who was widely panned for her leadership and left under an ethics cloud last summer.
LaSalle’s rejection is the first for a New York governor under the current nomination system that dates to the 1970s.
“The Senate has now set a new standard in thorough, detailed hearings — an achievement for our democracy and a harbinger of future proceedings,” Deputy Senate Majority Leader Mike Gianaris said in a statement. LaSalle didn’t fit the wish list for a new chief judge that he and his colleagues had sent to the nominating commission months earlier, he said.
Bronx Democrat Sen. Gustavo Rivera said in a statement he hoped everyone could move forward in round two. Hochul would have to select from a new list of candidates from the Commission on Judicial Nomination.
“It is unfortunate that this process has become so acrimonious, and I implore the governor to work collaboratively with the Senate so that we may approve the nominee she selects next,” he said.
While the state Constitution says a judge to the Court of Appeals nominated by a governor has to be confirmed with the “advice and consent” of the Senate, it’s not explicit about whether the committee membership adequately represents the chamber. Senate Majority Leader Andrea Stewart-Cousins says it does. Hochul says it does not.
Richard Briffault, a Columbia Law School professor who specializes in constitutional law, said it is unclear whether Hochul would win a lawsuit to force a full Senate vote.
“The Constitution speaks about the Senate taking up the matter, but it doesn’t say what it means ‘by the Senate,’ and another provision of the constitution says the Senate can determine its own rules or proceeding,” Briffault said.
Former Gov. David Paterson — a Hochul supporter who is also a former Senate minority leader — said he would have expected senators to bring the matter to a full Senate vote as Hochul wished as a way to avoid any legal uncertainty. The nomination was likely to fail on the Senate floor anyway — and would still if Hochul were to win a lawsuit.
But Paterson noted that leaders in Albany have long memories.
“It was a bad day for the governor,” Paterson said, but added, “The governor has four more years of days to establish who she is. Sooner or later, you know what they say: What goes around comes around. They are going to need her for something, and they are going to find out.”
The former executive doesn’t see Hochul’s adherence to her pick as an error.
“She picked a candidate that she knew they didn’t like. But she’s not supposed to be political here,” he said. “She’s supposed to be picking who she thinks would be the best judge at this time.”
In the aftermath of the hearing, several senators said that despite the clash, they could easily maintain a working relationship with Hochul, who came into office after years of adversarial relations between the Legislature and her predecessor, Andrew Cuomo.
She agreed. When asked Thursday if the LaSalle denial — and a potential legal battle — would hurt her housing, mental health and public safety priorities in the budget this year, she responded: “Nothing like this could detract from that.”
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( With inputs from : www.politico.com )
