“New York City wants this because they want cash in their pockets,” Menendez said. “We’re going to keep fighting the cash-grabbing MTA.”
The congestion tax shifts money from the Port Authority to the MTA, Menendez said, which could threaten the Port Authority’s ability to improve the PATH service and add more riders.
New York’s plan also includes no expansion of New York City subway’s seven line to Secaucus Junction, a proposed solution that would provide a commuting alternative and get cars off the road, Menendez said.
Gottheimer, who co-chairs the Congressional Anti-Congestion Tax Caucus, called the tax plan “absurd” and “anti-environment.” He said a full environmental study should be done and he intends to submit a comment during the 30-day review period demanding the Biden administration reconsider the decision.
The MTA hasn’t determined how much to charge drivers, but options include fares ranging from $9 to $23 for passenger vehicles.
Gottheimer has introduced legislation in the meantime intended to aid commuters, which includes laborers, nurses and restaurant workers who can’t afford the added costs.
“It’s not right to suddenly drop a $23 dollar-a-day, or $5,000-a-year bill, on top of the $17 dollars they pay to enter this tunnel every day, not including gas or nearly $35 dollars to park,” Gottheimer said.
The environmental assessment of the plan found that the congestion tax, if implemented this year, would increase pollutants in the Bronx, Staten Island, Nassau and Bergen Counties. It also showed there would be increases in particulate matter, nitrogen oxide and carbon monoxide in Bergen County this year.
“New York’s congestion pricing plan stands to push traffic and pollution to our communities,” Menendez said. “While New York is funding environmental mitigation in the Bronx, they refuse to do so for our communities.”
The MTA plans to spend $130 million in revenue to mitigate environmental impacts in New York, but will not do so in New Jersey.
New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy called the Biden administration’s approval of the plan “unfair and ill-advised.” Murphy said his administration is looking into legal options to fight the plan.
“Everyone in the region deserves access to more reliable mass transit, but placing an unjustified financial burden on the backs of hardworking New Jersey commuters is wrong,” Murphy said in a statement.
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( With inputs from : www.politico.com )
“If we’re going to say that New York State is at the head of social equity and inclusion, it must consist of [women] or that is not full inclusion,” said Britni Tantalo, an entrepreneur who applied for one of the state’s first retail licenses through the Conditional Adult-Use Retail Dispensary program.
New York isn’t the first state to leverage marijuana legalization as a way to bring people harmed by the war on drugs in on the financial benefits of a lucrative industry. But it has arguably taken the most aggressive approach to boost equity in the business and avoid the pitfalls of similar programs: It’s promising startup funding to entrepreneurs and even identifying and renovating real estate to help retailers.
Yet the small share of women awarded licenses so far shows how sophisticated attempts to manipulate the market to benefit a certain group of applicants can still leave others feeling snubbed.
The low share of women entrepreneurs in New York’s nascent cannabis program makes some sense since marijuana enforcement was disproportionately targeted at young men of color.
Between 1997 and 2007, 91 percent of people arrested for marijuana possession in New York City were male, according to a report from the ACLU of New York. Young Black and Latino men were overwhelmingly overrepresented in marijuana possession arrests during that time period.
New York officials say they allowed people who have immediate family members with cannabis convictions to qualify for the retail licensing program in order to open the door to more women.
“My team early on made an effort to make sure that women have a pathway to get a CAURD license,” said Damian Fagon, chief equity officer of the Office of Cannabis Management, in an interview.
But for scoring purposes, qualifying based on a conviction is weighted higher than one based on a family member, Fagon explained. That brings up some tricky issues for women seeking licenses.
“I understand that the person who actually went through [the arrest and conviction] should be awarded more points,” said Venus Rodriguez, an applicant who qualified based on her son’s arrest. “But what’s that scale? And how do we measure suffering? We’ve all suffered.”
Jillian Dragutsky can understand both sides. Her father was convicted for a cannabis offense, and Dragutsky herself was also later convicted for a similar crime.
The harms of both experiences were undeniable for Dragutsky, who was about 15 years old when her father, her primary caregiver, was arrested. She and her brother were sent to live with a friend of her father’s, she recounted.
Dragutsky’s own arrest was just as life-changing of an event. Despite being fortunate enough to be able to hire attorneys — “it was terrifying and challenging,” Dragutsky said.
She called for more transparency in the application process — particularly when it comes to awarding points for the justice-involved questions on the license application.
“Who makes that decision?” she wondered. “It’s a little frustrating not to have transparency.”
The OCM has not yet made a decision on how much information they will make public about license scoring, as the agency is still in the midst of scoring applications, Fagon explained. Regulators are giving applicants more time to cure any deficiencies on their applications, and to submit documentation to verify parts of their qualifications. Unlike other jurisdictions, “we gave everyone as much time as they needed,” Fagon said.
Slow rollout
Cannabis businesses already struggle to access capital, given the industry’s federal illegality. Many institutional investors stay away from the industry and entrepreneurs can’t access small business loans from banks.
Tantalo argued that women, particularly women of color, have even greater challenges accessing capital. That’s what makes the CAURD program attractive, as it gives licensees access to a fund for startup costs.
New York regulators have run into delays with the program. Gov. Kathy Hochul said last October that 20 dispensaries would be open by the end of 2022. But only four have opened their doors so far — one on a pop-up basis. The $200 million public-private effort to help applicants has yet to be fully funded.
“What is the plan? Do [regulators] even have conversations about it?,” said Rodriguez. “We don’t know, because we don’t hear.”
For now, women who qualified based on family members are going to continue to be at a disadvantage for licenses because of the way qualifications are weighted.
“CAURD highlighted this gender disparity that could exist in other areas of our social equity categories as well,” Fagon said. For example, he expects licensing for disabled veterans and distressed farmers to also favor men.
Fagon emphasized that his team is focused on providing opportunities to women. He expects to see a fair representation of women when the office starts licensing entrepreneurs who qualify for social equity based on living in a disproportionately impacted area.
Meanwhile, the OCM announced earlier this month that it would increase the number of initial retail licenses from 150 to 300. That decision is expected to increase the overall number of women licensees, though they will continue to be a small percentage overall.
“The structural disparities in ownership in farming, presence in the military and the disproportionate arrests of men — those are things we can’t change,” Fagon said.
With the first round of licensing underway, the agency isn’t making any immediate changes to the process.
Once the OCM finishes licensing the first applicants, “We’re going to look at the data — where we are and where we need to be,” Fagon said of licensing women entrepreneurs.
“I think we’re going to have to redouble our efforts in future licensing rounds,” he said.
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( With inputs from : www.politico.com )
Hochul, who had continued to push for LaSalle’s confirmation despite opposition, warnings and a committee rejection on Jan. 18, said she will now make a new nomination for Senate consideration from a list provided by the state’s Commission on Judicial Nomination.
“I remain committed to selecting a qualified candidate to lead the court and deliver justice,” she said in a statement. “That is what New Yorkers deserve.”
The governor painted Wednesday’s vote — though not in her favor — as “an important victory from the constitution,” but added that it was “not a vote on the merits of Justice LaSalle, who is an overwhelmingly qualified and talented jurist.”
Stewart-Cousins and her Senate counterparts expressed exasperation with the four weeks of waiting for Hochul to accept their determination after the 19-member Judiciary Committee rejected LaSalle in January. The outcome was the same, they said during floor debate on Wednesday, and both branches of government lost time and energy during weeks typically spent negotiating the $227 billion budget proposal for the fiscal year that starts April 1.
“All this did, frankly, was underscore the value of the committee process and illustrate why it makes sense,” Stewart-Cousins said.
Hochul continued to push for LaSalle’s confirmation following the Judiciary Committee’s rejection, saying that the state constitution required consideration from the full 63-member body. She threatened legal action, though never laid out any specific details.
Senate Republicans ultimately did it for her with a lawsuit in Suffolk County last week to try and force a full floor vote. So Stewart-Cousins ordered the full Senate vote on Wednesday. She maintained that the committee vetting process was the appropriate channel for the nomination, but a lawsuit would only prolong the vacancy at the top of the Court of Appeals following Janet DiFiore’s resignation last summer.
The Senate is eager to vet a new candidate, she told reporters, but her conference is looking for a “visionary leader” and has now shown that it will be rigorous in its scrutiny.
The political play highlighted for the first time the Senate supermajority’s willingness to wield its power over Hochul, who is in her first year of a four-year term after she succeeded Gov. Andrew Cuomo when he resigned in 2021. It could signal an even rockier road ahead for the governor as she searches for her stride in legislative relations.
Hochul and Stewart-Cousins had a “cordial conversation” preceding the vote, Stewart-Cousins said, though they did not discuss what the governor “learned or didn’t learn” from the experience.
“We both believe what we believe, but we also both understand the importance of being able to tackle the issue at hand, which again, is the budget, and we know that it is important that we work together, and we are committed to doing that,” she said.
No Democrats have emerged happy from the monthslong ordeal, but Senate Republicans are taking some credit for getting the process moving. The question that emerged had been whether the full Senate was required to vote on LaSalle or could the issue end with the vote in the Judiciary Committee, as Democrats contended.
“But for Senate Republicans and but for Senator (Anthony) Palumbo’s lawsuit, this doesn’t happen today. Governor Hochul didn’t do anything to make it happen,” Senate Minority Leader Rob Ortt told reporters following the vote. Ortt maintained that a full floor vote was necessary for members of his conference to have a say in the nomination that they wouldn’t otherwise get from the Judiciary Committee, where Democrats control the outcome.
“We brought a lawsuit … and I’m glad we did, because today was a victory for democracy, for the Constitution, and for the rule of law,” he said.
The lawsuit — though based on the specific circumstances surrounding getting the LaSalle nomination to a floor vote — will continue, he said. The first court date in Suffolk County is set for Friday.
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( With inputs from : www.politico.com )
It’s a silver-blue January morning with no separation between sky and water, and a diverse line up of surfers take in their ritual. The waves come choppy, clean, short, thick, fast, chest high and occasionally over my head. On this frigid day I’m encouraged to surf with a longboard, and I’ve almost forgotten to don my cap. The wind greets my face and I howl in return, grateful. I look around after finishing my ride and see people simmering in joy. These are the scenes at New York’s Rockaway Beach, a harbor for Black surfers.
Coming from the security of snow-blanketed mountain peaks to the crashing, storm propelled waves of the east coast, I’ve stumbled on a dynamic community of surfers: artists, activists, community leaders, film-makers, and creatives. Surfers mending the world through their connection to the sport.
Quest Soliman and Paul Godette, from Brooklyn and Queens respectively, are Rockaway surfers with a purpose. Stop Playin’ With ‘Em, a 2022 documentary directed by Sean Madden, captures their five-month experience with the local community while surfing in Bocas Del Toro, Panama.
A screening of the film in November allowed the audience to witness the actualization of Black and brown people in nature, in the water. “Surfing is supposed to be fun and inclusive,” Soliman tells me.
Surfing is primarily depicted as a pursuit for white men with blond hair and blue eyes. Some have turned it into a selfish sport and lean into their privilege. Yet, here at Rockaway Beach that’s far from the reality.
Kids from Harlem and Brooklyn carry their surfboards on the train heading towards the Atlantic. The walls at Rockaway are painted with vibrant street art reflecting the culture. Surfboards lean outside shops and cafes, and Black and brown skateboarders, rollerbladers, and surfers ride between the skate park and the burger spot near 84th Street. There are restaurants and bars that operate as surf clubs, and garage parties that turn into community events. Late nights sitting around a backyard fire turn into early morning sessions in the water.
“It really does take a village to raise a child and you learn so much the more you’re in the water,” Soliman says, as he talks about the welcoming nature of the beach suburb. He was raised in the Fort Greene neighborhood of Brooklyn. Growing up surrounded by people from myriad cultural backgrounds shaped his approach in connecting with new spaces.
“As we travel and show representation, we always give respect to the spaces we’re fortunate to enjoy,” he says. If Stop Playin’ With ‘Em had a mantra it would be just that. Enjoying your stoke responsibly.
In December, Fat-Tire invited Soliman and Godette to Hawaii where they were able to connect with Hawaiian locals, fully encounter the North Shore, and rip some of the best waves in the world.
“This was not our home turf, we were just visitors, but we were welcomed into the pipe house, and everyone was dapping us up – pros I’ve grown up watching. It was cool,” Godette says.
In Hawaii, they linked up with friends from New York and California, as well as Pro-Am surfer and Hawaiian local Julian Williams. These aren’t just any group of friends but haymakers, creating room for themselves and their communities through intentional collective efforts in the water.
“It was amazing to have the west coast squad, the New York squad, and even though we were newcomers [to the Vans Pipe Masters] we weren’t the only ones and we had a good time bonding,” says Godette. Despite breaking his board during the trip, he found delight in surfing with two of Africa’s top surfers, South Africa’s Joshe Faulkner and Senegal’s Cherif Fall.
“Women are getting that equal prize pay, they’re ripping just as hard as the guys. That’s really important and cool to see – the increase in representation and seeing opportunities given for different people to surf pipe and compete,” says Godette.
Soliman and Godette now have their eyes and boards set for Bali, where they’ll be for the next four months. They’re on to their next project and seeking sponsors. For Soliman and Godette, inclusive surfing includes perfect waves, clean turns, and endless laughter.
I’m back in New York. I’ve gone from snowboarding soft pillow lines to getting smacked, dumped, and rushed by the sea. The joy of being a noob. Yet occasionally when the waves start firing, I pop up and find myself in a waltz with the ocean.
“The beautiful thing about surfing, is that it chooses you,” says Nigel Louis, owner of the Rockaways community hub, surf and skate shop, Station RBNY.
Surfing can’t choose you if you never get in the water. Surfing is more than a sport here. It’s a connection to your environment, community, and self.
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( With inputs from : www.theguardian.com )
But Conner’s fledgling cannabis business is also vastly outnumbered by illicit competitors that have sprouted all over the city since the state legalized weed for adults nearly two years ago. New Yorkers are buying weed from behind the counter of bodegas, shopping in unlicensed stores and ordering from underground delivery services.
Smacked’s soft launch last week marked a milestone for New York’s uniquely interventionist marijuana program, which prioritizes dispensary licenses for entrepreneurs with past pot offenses and takes care of their real estate challenges. And while Conner is the first such entrepreneur to open his dispensary’s doors to the public, it’s unclear how the state will follow through on the promises its made to these small businesses.
The slow drip of dispensary openings — Housing Works opened one on Dec. 29 and Smacked nearly a month later — underscores the challenges the state faces in securing real estate and raising capital for entrepreneurs.
Unlike comparing prices for comparable office space, there’s no equivalent, transparent system for retail, explained Kristin Jordan, CEO of cannabis-focused brokerage firm Park Jordan.
“It’s really a wild west,” she said. “Retail is not an open book.”
Other legal weed states that have attempted social equity programs have encountered numerous problems: Entrepreneurs often struggle to raise capital or find landlords willing to rent to them, and licensees with little business experience find themselves entering a market already dominated by large cannabis companies.
But there’s nothing quite like New York’s weed experiment.
“This is the boldest and most extreme social equity program that’s ever been attempted,” said University of California, Davis economist Robin Goldstein, co-author of the book “Can Legal Weed Win?” “It’s an experiment and nobody knows how it will turn out.”
Smacked might be open, but only on a pop-up basis. After about one month of sales, the location will be closed again for construction.
Even so, Conner is undaunted by the challenges ahead.
“Sometimes, I pinch myself,” he said in an interview outside the shop ahead of the recent opening. “I just can’t believe it.”
How it works
Conner is the recipient of a Conditional Adult-Use Retail Dispensary (CAURD) license. These licenses are reserved for people who have been convicted of a marijuana offense prior to legalization or have an immediate family member who was convicted for cannabis. They must also have prior small business experience. Nonprofits that serve formerly incarcerated populations are also eligible for the first round of licenses.
The state will license 150 applicants to open up dispensaries across the state. So far, 66 licenses have been doled out, with 56 going to justice-impacted entrepreneurs and another 10 going to nonprofits.
The Dormitory Authority of the State of New York, an agency that typically provides financing and construction for schools and hospitals, is tasked with finding locations and building them out for CAURD applicants.
DASNY will sign a lease with the landlord, and sublease the location to the applicant. The agency also selected 10 firms to construct the dispensaries. Temeka Group, one of the 10 firms who won the contract with DASNY, will be working with Conner to build out Smacked. The company has constructed more than 400 dispensaries throughout the U.S., said its CEO, Mike Wilson.
Meanwhile, DASNY is raising money for a $200 million public-private fund that will go toward standing up these dispensaries and providing a variety of other services beyond real estate and construction. The funds are treated like a loan, so licensees like Conner will eventually have to pay the state back, with market-rate interest.
The fund got $50 million from the state and needs to raise another $150 million from the private sector. During a recent press conference, DASNY President Reuben McDaniel declined to say how much money the fund has raised.
“We’ve had significant conversations, significant investors, who are very interested in this program,” McDaniel said. “I’m sure we’ll have plenty of money to do what we need to do.”
CAURD licensees have been promised turnkey dispensaries. But that is taking time to implement. In DASNY’s original request for proposals, the agency anticipated raising $150 million by September 2022.
“This is an economic opportunity to give people access they wouldn’t have otherwise.” McDaniel said. “In programs like this … capital is always a problem.”
Potential pitfalls
The fastest way to launch a recreational weed market is to allow medical marijuana dispensaries to start serving adult-use customers, which is the path recently taken in nearby states such as Connecticut and Rhode Island.
For New York, where the Big Apple was already home to one of the largest illicit marijuana markets in the world, taking nearly two years to launch recreational sales has prompted a proliferation of unlicensed dispensaries, drawing a variety of public health concerns, including sales to minors and products tainted with contaminants.
New York’s two open licensed dispensaries can hardly compete with an estimated 1,400 unlicensed cannabis retailers that are getting California weed and selling the stuff without paying cannabis taxes.
Faced with delays in securing and building out real estate, regulators have made several changes to the program. Most notably, the state is now allowing CAURD applicants to find their own real estate instead of waiting for a DASNY location.
“Clearly, there’s been a lack of progress,” said Rob DiPisa, co-chair of the cannabis law group at Cole Schotz, of the changing guidance.
If applicants opt to find their own location, it will put them in competition with DASNY for a limited pool of spaces that meet state regulatory standards. For example, retail dispensaries must be located a certain distance away from houses of worship, school grounds and other dispensaries. Plus, if they sign their own leases, they risk their eligibility for the $200 million fund that was designed to help them.
That’s leaving applicants in a bit of a bind: Strike out on their own to find a location and give up state funding, or wait in line for a DASNY location without clarity on when they will be given a shop?
“That’s a tragic choice between two bad options,” Goldstein said.
A spokesperson for DASNY did not answer questions about the specifics of the process.
During a Cannabis Control Board meeting Wednesday, McDaniel acknowledged that allowing CAURD applicants to find their own locations has “added some complexity to the work that we’re doing,” he said. But “we’re very excited that the recent retail real estate component of this is actually being accelerated.”
Landlords are apprehensive about working with DASNY because the social equity fund has yet to raise the full $200 million. That’s making potential landlords wary of participating in the program.
Not only that, but many landlords have lenders to answer to — and those lenders are wary of entering into the cannabis industry due to its federal illegality.
With the growth of the state-regulated cannabis industry in the past decade, both landlords and lenders have become more sophisticated when it comes to working with the cannabis industry, said DiPisa, who is working with a landlord in negotiations with DASNY.
“[Multistate operators] understand that there’s certain language that needs to go in these lease agreements that the lenders want to see,” DiPisa said. “I think there’s a bit of a learning curve [for DASNY].”
And unlike cannabis companies that are just negotiating for their own operations, DASNY is trying to enter into a large number of leases and build out facilities in a short amount of time.
“The concept is great,” DiPisa said. “The problem is … it’s a very difficult thing to actually implement.”
Jeremy Rivera is one CAURD applicant whose company, Kush Culture Industries, is debating whether it should fund its own construction or wait for a state-leased location.
“Are you willing to wait for [DASNY] or do you want to get first to sale?” he said.
Rivera recently co-founded the CAURD Coalition, along with three other applicants, in hopes of helping other like them navigate an at-times confusing process with shifting timelines and changing regulatory guidance.
“Capitalism has ruined cannabis,” Rivera said. “We’re figuring out how we can all help each other.”
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( With inputs from : www.politico.com )
“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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( With inputs from : www.politico.com )
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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( With inputs from : www.politico.com )
Dolphins have been spotted frolicking in New York City’s Bronx River, an encouraging sign of the improving health of a waterway that was for many years befouled as a sewer for industrial waste.
A pair of dolphins was seen gliding through the river’s waters on Monday, the New York City parks department confirmed, near a small park in the city’s Bronx borough. The Bronx river rises north of New York City and cuts through the Bronx before terminating in the East River, the estuary that separates the Bronx and Manhattan from the boroughs of Queens and Brooklyn.
“It’s true – dolphins were spotted in the Bronx River this week!,” the parks department gleefully tweeted. “This is great news – it shows that the decades-long effort to restore the river as a healthy habitat is working. We believe these dolphins naturally found their way to the river in search of fish.”
Dolphins have not been seen in the river for several years, but there has been an increase in sightings of the marine mammals in the waters around New York as the industrial pollution that blighted the region has eased.
Scientists previously set up underwater microphones at aquatic locations around New York to listen for the distinctive clicking noises emitted by bottlenose dolphins and found that they are particularly active in the harbor that separates New York and New Jersey. A pair of dolphins were seen in the waters off Brooklyn last year, surprising onlookers.
The Bronx River suffered for many years as it became a natural dumping ground for waste running from nearby industrial plants. In recent decades, however, industrial activity near the river has declined and municipalities have agreed to not push sewage into the waterway. City authorities stock the Bronx river with fish, too, a lure to dolphins, who eat 20lbs of fish a day.
“We’ve come a long way across multiple decades of environmental improvement, water quality cleaning, better environmental stewardship, better relations, all of which helps the overall environment and then leads to recovery of these systems,” said Howard Rosenbaum, a dolphin expert at the Wildlife Conservation Society.
“I think it’s just great that these things are happening and hopefully the overall environmental recovery for these urban waterways continues, and we continue to see marine wildlife – their habitats, their prey – flourish.”
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#Delight #dolphins #spotted #Yorks #Bronx #River
( With inputs from : www.theguardian.com )
