ALBANY – Gov. Kathy Hochul is crying for relief from Democrats’ own hallmark climate laws by now formally asking to delay crippling green policies about to take effect as voters start feeling the heat from soaring utility prices.
Hochul, who is up for re-election in November, wrote in an op-ed Friday putting it on the record that she will push to delay the implementation date for an environmental scheme that could cause gas prices to explode by 2030.
“Put simply, something has to give,” Hochul wrote in the piece published on the Empire Report.
“We cannot meet the Climate Act’s 2030 targets without imposing new and additional crushing costs on New York businesses and residents,” Hochul said of the law’s requirement that New York reduce emissions by 40% by 2030.
Hochul’s administration released a memo late last month showing that the current plan to meet the 2030 mandate would sack New York households with an additional $4,000 a pop in costs between gasoline and utilities by that year.
Under Hochul’s new proposal, the plan’s deadline would effectively be bumped back to 2040. Additional emissions goals for 2050 would be unchanged.
It would also rejigger the methodology used to calculate New York’s emissions, bringing it in line with other states and significantly relaxing the current, more stringent, method.
Hochul puzzlingly swears that current utility cost increases have nothing to do with implementation of the climate law mandates.
Hochul’s proposal was first reported by Politico on Friday morning.
The governor had been planning on possibly inserting a debate over the climate law into closed door state budget negotiations with the legislature for months – leading to fury from lefty lawmakers, including a letter from 29 Democrats furious at the governor for even teasing the proposal earlier this month.
The state budget is due before April 1, though Hochul has regularly presided over weeks-late fiscal plans in recent years.
Environmentalists have been once again left fuming at Hochul.
“The Governor’s reported … changes are unacceptable. We can’t afford to wait for stronger action. The Legislature must keep fighting to protect the climate law,” wrote Julie Tighe, president of the New York League of Conservation Voters, on X.
Republicans are using the opportunity to say “I told you so”– having spent years railing against the climate law.
“Delaying the pain doesn’t make it disappear—it just makes New Yorkers pay later. I won’t delay it—I’ll kill it for good and cut your utility bill in half,” said Nassau County Executive Bruce Blakeman, Hochul’s likely GOP contender this November, in a statement.
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