Gov. Hochul's 2024 State of the State

Brian Lehrer: It's The Brian Lehrer Show on WNYC. Good morning, everyone. Yesterday was State of the State Day in New York and New Jersey. Did you know that? Governor Hochul gave her annual address at proceedings that began at one o'clock. Governor Murphy gave his proceedings that began at 3:30.

Now, this might have been one of the few things that two governors could agree upon yesterday. That is not to make us poor journalism types who have to pay attention to both speeches, go back and forth on a split screen, or have to choose between one or the other. Don't ask them to cooperate on housing for asylum seekers or congestion pricing, or working together regionally rather than competing with each other, for which parts of our area might become hubs for artificial intelligence technology jobs.

There are two big things though, that we can say the people of New York and New Jersey almost universally agree on. One, we desperately need a lot more affordable housing in our area. Two, just don't put any near me. The affordable housing crisis was front and center in both State of the State addresses yesterday. Here's how I'll handle all this on this show. Our Albany reported Jon Campbell is about to join us for excerpts and your reactions to Governor Hochul's speech. Will start tomorrow's show with our New Jersey Maven Nancy Solomon for excerpts and analysis of Governor Murphy's speech.

As a program note, Nancy will have Governor Murphy live on the station tonight at seven o'clock for their monthly Ask Governor Murphy call-in. Interesting that that happens for this month, on the day right after the State of the State, so I'm sure Nancy will have a lot to ask Governor Murphy tonight as well as many of you who call in, and therefore a lot to talk about with Nancy tomorrow morning. First, it's Jon Campbell, exiled to Albany to make his living. Jon, often you know, when we get two inches of rain Downstate here like we did last night, Albany gets hit with two feet of snow. Did that happen with last night's storm?

Jon Campbell: No, we had this slushy gross cold rain, and today it's actually pretty warm. The snow we got over the weekend is melting and brown and gross, but I wouldn't say I'm exiled to Albany. I love it up here. I'm happy to be up here.

Brian Lehrer: I like living there a fair bit too when I did actually live in Albany for eight years, but when I went to college as a freshman at Albany State, I think you went there too, after me, right?

Jon Campbell: Yes, absolutely.

Brian Lehrer: One of the first things I heard from a sophomore who had been there a year, was that the weather was characterized by what she called 30/30 days, minus 30-degree wind chills and 30 inches of snow, but I guess in the climate change here, now it rains in January, gives you this gross slush you were just describing, even in Albany. Did the governor mention climate change in her speech? I didn't catch any reference in the parts I heard.

Jon Campbell: You know what, I can't recall if she mentioned it in the speech itself, but it is certainly in the 180-page book that she published alongside her speech. That's a tradition in Albany where you expand on your agenda in this written message that you actually deliver to the legislature. There were some interesting things in that in terms of, she wants to do a voluntary buyout program for people who are in perhaps coastal flooding areas and things of that nature. That's a big deal on Long Island in particular.

Brian Lehrer: It's a big deal.

Jon Campbell: We don't have a lot of details there. You're going to hear me say that a lot, because the State of the State, governors put out this broad message, and then we've learned how they pay for it, and the details in the budget address the state budget proposal, which is a week from today. That's one of those issues where we intend to hear more about that a week from today.

Brian Lehrer: Let's get to what she did talk about and yes, front and center was affordable housing. Remember, listeners, arguably the number one Kathy Hochul story last year was that she proposed a very ambitious mandatory housing construction plan, but opposition from Long Island primarily in some other suburbs, got it defeated in the legislature. She's coming back around with another approach. One part is to open up certain state-owned lands to housing development, which the governor says could create about 15,000 new units, but she acknowledged that's just a drop in the bucket. Listen.

Governor Hochul: I know it's a good start, but it's not enough to fix our affordability crisis. Let's be honest with New Yorkers. The only thing that will solve this problem is building hundreds and hundreds of thousands of homes.

[applause]

Brian Lehrer: Jon, if the governor tried to get to hundreds and hundreds of thousands of homes by mandate last year, and it failed, how is she trying to get there this year?

Jon Campbell: Well, she's going more by incentive. Up in Albany, people would say it's more of the carrot approach rather than the stick approach this year. What she's going to do is, she wants to implement a program where you say, "Hey, municipalities, local governments on Long Island, in Westchester, all across the state, if you want to be eligible for these certain state grants, these Downtown revitalization grants," basically, there's pots of state money that she would want to make contingent on municipalities growing their housing stock or proving that they recently have. That's the approach she's taking this year.

There's other stuff too. She wants to bring back the 421-a tax credit, which is the most bureaucratic name on planet Earth, but it is an important piece here. Our developers say it's an important piece to create affordable housing in New York City. It's a very lucrative tax break for housing developers who commit to keeping a certain percentage of units as affordable rate units. That expired two years ago.

The legislature didn't really like the tax credit, or at least found problems with it from their perspective. That's one of the things that the governor wants to re-up and says it's very important for building housing in New York City.

Brian Lehrer: Pause there for a second because I want to play a bit of this exchange that you had after the speech with the deputy majority leader of the State Senate, a fellow Democratic of Hochul's, Michael Gianaris of Queens. This is interesting because we'll hear you ask him a very open-ended question, and where he goes with it. Listen.

Jon Campbell: What was something that you heard that you liked, what was something that you heard that you didn't like?

Michael Gianaris: Can we start with the latter? [laughs]

Jon Campbell: Be my guest. Yes.

Michael Gianaris: The housing plan has some big holes in it. All she proposes is a developer's dream but left out protections for tenants in their existing homes. If we're not making sure that people get to stay in the homes they have, what exactly is the point of building affordable homes, that people can then get evicted from very easily? We need both things.

Brian Lehrer: Jon, for one thing, he had his talking points all queued up there, and it didn't even matter what the question was. He was going there to critique the housing part of the speech. Let's take both of the two parts that I think were in that answer. Part one was what he called a developer's dream. That is reinstating that 421-a tax break you were talking about?

Jon Campbell: Yes, I think in general. There were other proposals that the governor backed, that are also backed by Mayor Adams in terms of office conversion to residential, she wants to create incentives for that. Coupled together, that's where he's coming with the developer's dream, from his perspective. The other part of that--

Brian Lehrer: Well, wait. In theory, I think we would want developers to experience New York as a dream environment in a certain way. If the goal is to get hundreds and hundreds of thousands of new homes to be built, as the governor put it, is the catch that the tax break program 421-a has too many loopholes, so it doesn't actually result in the ratio of affordable units the state needs for various income levels, and that's why progressives in the Senate like Gianaris have turned against it?

Jon Campbell: Yes, although I would say that this year, it's pretty noticeable that progressives in the Senate and the Assembly seem to be more open to it because they're laying the groundwork, and this gets to the second point of Gianaris's point there, which is they're laying the groundwork for this kind of compromise where, "Hey, we'll re-up 421-a, we'll re-up some form of this tax credit. Maybe we make it require more affordable units rather than market-rate units in exchange for additional tenant protections," what they called good cause eviction protections in Albany, which is what we've talked about many times on this show.

Brian Lehrer: We'll get to good cause. What about Long Island housing incentives? You talked about the governor trying to provide incentives rather than mandates, which the suburban legislators rebelled against yesterday, contributing to the defeat of her big housing program last year. Incentives rather than requirements, is it clear what those might include that could actually move the needle in a density-resistant suburb?

Jon Campbell: Well, one of the things that we do know, and this is based on, the governor after she deadlocked with the legislature last year, she did do some things on her own through executive order. One of the things she did was set up what she calls the Pro-Housing Community Program, which essentially, there's different criteria. If you have created or commit to creating a certain amount of housing of new housing, then you're deemed a Pro-Housing Community. You would get basically bonus points when you're getting graded for different grants, et cetera. One of those grant programs is the-- I can't think of the exact name of it at this moment, but it's essentially the Long Island Revitalization Fund.

They set aside a few $100 million that localities on Long Island can get a piece for whatever projects they would look to to revitalize Long Island. That's one of the ones that essentially you would have to-- she wants to make it a requirement rather than just getting bonus points on the assessment. She wants to make it a requirement that you increase your housing stock in order to even be eligible for that big pot of funding, which is a considerable pot of funding for local governments.

That's one of the ways she's trying to do it. How she laid it out in her State of the State book was, this is proof of concept to see if incentives actually work. She's been skeptical, which is why she went the mandate route last year.

Brian Lehrer: Now we'll get to that other part of Senator Gianaris's critique, which was about the governor's plan, not doing anything to let people stay in their homes, the homes they have, as he was describing it. What does that refer to?

Jo Campbell: That refers to good cause eviction protections. That is a bill that's been around in Albany that would essentially cap annual rent increases. It would give you a chance to challenge a rent increase if it went over a certain percentage over a year. Maybe it's 5%, maybe it's 8%, maybe it's 10%. That's all subject to negotiation. It would also only allow landlords to evict a tenant for, "good cause." There would be a list of reasons, including non-payment of rent, including maybe you trash the place. There would be a list of reasons for why a landlord could evict you otherwise you would have a presumption of a lease renewal.

The idea behind that is to give tenants further protections to keep more people in their apartments so they can't just get booted, so the landlord can hike the rent up on the next person. That is something that the legislature says is a priority. That's something that the governor has not backed to this point, and she did not mention it in the speech. That's what Mike Gianaris couldn't wait to criticize her for. That clip that we played was literally, as the walk-off music was playing by the governor, it was Taylor Swift, if you could hear that.

Brian: Even at that moment, second one after the speech ended he was ready to key on that glaring omission. It is a glaring omission. That's definitely one of the big headlines to come out of that speech that the governor did not mention good cause eviction, which theoretically could be in this grand bargain on some kind of Housing Development Bill.

Does that mean the governor, in your opinion, is just holding out and not putting it on the table until she has to for a negotiation, or is she really just, "No, we're not doing that. It's going to hurt the landlords too much. We're not doing it?"

Jon Campbell: It remains to be seen. That is something that will almost certainly be negotiated as part of the state budget. That is a process that happens from now until-- well, from next week when the governor puts out a proposal, theoretically through the end of March, although under Governor Hochul it's extended into April or even early May. That is something that we're really going to be seeing. Is this a bargaining posture by Governor Hochul, or is she very much dead set against good cause eviction protections?

We know the real estate industry. The real estate board of New York is the big lobbying organization for the real estate industry. We know very much are dead set against it. We're not entirely sure where the governor's going with that.

Brian Lehrer: This is an area where I think it becomes fairly easy to have a conversation that paints the real estate industry as evil. Landlords feel free to call in on this, but as we discussed last week on the show, Jon, you and I, and you touched on it again a minute ago, if a good cause eviction bill does not stop landlords from evicting people, if they don't pay their rent, if a good cause eviction bill does not stop landlords from evicting people, if they engage in many kinds of bad behavior as a tenant, then what's left is when they want to evict people just so they can bring somebody in to pay more rent or what am I missing?

Jon Cambell: All of that is what's subject to negotiation here. That list of reasons why a landlord can evict a tenant for good cause, that is at the heart of what the governor and the legislature would negotiate if they are going to reach some sort of compromise. Also, the percentage increase that would be considered allowable under the law. Is it 3%? Is it 10%? That's a very big difference in your annual jump in rent. That's all what is going to be negotiated. When you say the devil's in the details, that's what you're talking about. Everybody says that in Albany all the time. This is specifically very much a devil-in-the-detail situation.

Brian Lehrer: Listeners, your comments and questions, welcome on Governor Hochul's, State of the State address or any of the policy items in it. Who read the 180-page briefing book that went along with speech? Raise your hand, call in and tell me what page you're citing from, or not. 212-433-WNYC. 212-433-9692 for our Albany Reporter, who likes living in Albany, Jon Campbell, 212-433-WNYC 433-9692. Call or text in fact. Here's a text that came in before we move off the affordable housing topic onto a bunch of other things that were in the speech. Listener writes, "Building low Cost housing is akin to addressing the symptom. The problem is a minimum wage that is far short of a living wage." I wonder if the governor is addressing, coming at affordable housing through that door at all, increasing wages rather than regulating rent.

John Campbell: If I were Governor Hochul, what I would say to that is, we did increase the minimum wage last year. That was a big part of the things that they did get through with the legislature. There was a minimum wage increase this year, next year, the year after, and then after that, it will be indexed to the rate of inflation so that future increases will automatically happen based on how much inflation goes up.

I think the governor did cite the minimum wage increase in her speech yesterday, and I think that's how she would answer that question. Not to put myself in her shoes there, but yes, they have looked at the minimum wage, and that is something that is a frequent talk topic in Albany.

Brian Lehrer: A landlord, skeptical listener texts, "Tenant harassment will always be a standard business model. Ephraim in Brooklyn is calling in, I think with the case against the tax breaks to build new affordable housing. Is that right Ephraim? Hi, you're on WNYC.

Ephraim: Hello.

Brian Lehrer: Hello.

Ephraim: I'm from the former Soviet Union, and perhaps because of that, it was easier for me to see how affordable housing is not for people, but against them. We had the system in Soviet Union when citizens were stapled to their place of living. We had so-called [unintelligible 00:18:38] it signed in in your passport with your address, and they couldn't move. Even they had bad salary, bad job. They couldn't move because they were stuck. What's going to happen if the person has no money to pay rent or to buy a house? This is a big country and mobility would allow to find a job which paying well and cheaper housing, really affordable housing, not artificially affordable.

Brian: Let me ask you a follow-up question based on your experience first. I don't know if you've heard the old joke coming from the Soviet Union as you have that in the Soviet Union, people pretended to work and the state pretended to pay them. Does that ring true?

Ephraim: That's right.

Brian: That's related to what you're talking about. That was one that--

Ephraim: No, I'm sorry. Maybe I didn't make myself clear. What I'm saying if you pay people here, you virtually giving affordable housing, you give them money, which they lack to pay for real housing. This money, it's virtually a subsidy for the business, which is not paying well to afford the housing.

Brian Lehrer: What's the alternative as you see it, if the reality is that there's such a mismatch in the capitalist market that we have in this country between what people can afford and what developers want to build in charge?

Ephraim: The question?

Brian Lehrer: Yes.

Ephraim: I'm sorry.

Brian Lehrer: You didn't understand.

Ephraim: I don't think I understood.

Brian Lehrer: I'm asking, maybe the Soviet Union, Ephraim, had one kind of excess, that Communist economy excess, that resulted in people being stapled to their apartments and no mobility, the way you're describing. Maybe our capitalist economy, unless it has these affordable housing rules or incentives, maybe our unregulated capitalist economy airs in the other direction. The developers will want to build for the wealthier people in society, and a lot of people with regular incomes that don't match what developers want to build are going to get stuck unless the government does intervene.

Ephraim: I got your question. I have an answer.

Brian Lehrer: Go.

Ephraim: In capitalist system, let's say developer get richer and poor people, low-income people are squeezed out of the city, town, place, county. They move out and we have empty work places. We have unemployment because no people to work. How it ends up in a capitalist system, the wages rise because it's a worker's market.

Brian Lehrer: I'm going to leave it there for today, Ephraim. Keep calling us. I really appreciate your call. Jon, we could get into a whole conversation about how that works in theory, but it's not enough of a worker's market to bring that into balance between what so many people in New York State can pay and what the rates are out there on the market, right?

Jon Campbell: Yes. Essentially what the governor is, her point is, and the bet that she's making is she wants to essentially not flood the market with new housing, but she wants so much new housing that it will bring down the price on its own. When she said she wants to create 800,000 new units over the next decade, she hasn't said a certain percentage of those affordable. She's taking the position that if you put new units on the market, then that will bring the price down more supply to handle the demand, and that will take care of things on its own in terms of affordability. We'll see. That's how it's going here.

Brian Lehrer: Let me take one more housing-related call. We are spending more than half our time on the one issue out of many in the State of the State. This is the issue, right,Jon? This is the number one issue. It was the number one issue in the legislature last year, and it couldn't get through. This is by so many surveys of New Yorkers, and obviously there are other things, crime, immigration, people's rights, equality, so many things, but housing, housing, housing, housing in New York State. One other raising a different aspect of it, Laura in Oyster Bay. You're on WNYC. Hello.

Laura: Hi. Thank you for taking my call. We just went through a situation with my 89-year-old mother where we had to move her because there appears to be on Long Island a monopoly of landlords that own the apartment complexes. If it was a 3% increase in rent, we would have taken that. It was 15% per year for four years, consistently. 89 years old, she's on a fixed income, and she was not the only one in her complex who was forced to move out because they just couldn't afford to live there anymore. Is anyone looking into these management monopolies and protections for seniors?

Brian Lehrer: Jon, anything on that coming from the governor?

Jon Campbell: There wasn't anything specifically on that from the governor. In terms of the percentage increases, those 15% increases, that is something that the Good Cause Eviction Bill would specifically target.

Brian Lehrer: Right, because it's got a rent stabilization, a more universal than we have currently rent stabilization provision in the way those bills tend to get drawn up. What Laura raises is a coming problem in an aging state. More and more, there's going to be a need for senior housing. People who are not in the workforce anymore, they're retired on fixed incomes and can't afford necessarily to stay where they were staying when they were in the workforce, but there aren't enough appropriate units for them to move into.

We've talked about it before on the show, and obviously, we're going to have to talk about it again. All right, we are going to take a break and come back and talk about a bunch of other things that were in Governor Hochul's State of the State address yesterday. More clips, more of your reactions, more of Jon Campbell, our Albany reporter, 212-433-WNYC, call or text. Stay with us. Taylor Swift's Welcome to New York. That's what she played, John, right? Coming off the stage?

Jon Campbell: Absolutely. She quoted Taylor Swift as well toward the end of her speech. It was all coordinated there.

Brian Lehrer: Unless you're coming from Venezuela or Ecuador or Haiti, there's not so much welcome to New York, is it?

Jon Campbell: What a transition. I liked that. Yes, we were really waiting to hear what the governor was going to say about the wave of migrants that continues in New York City. I know Mayor Adams had said repeatedly, leading up to the address, that he was looking to hear about that, too. In the end, we got nothing. Like very, very brief mention, basically saying, we'll hear more about it at the budget address next week. That 180-page book I've referred to a few times, the word migrant does not appear.

Brian Lehrer: Right. I'm told that the line from Taylor Swift was-- Let's see, was this in the speech or the briefing book? "As Taylor Swift reminds us, everybody here was someone else before." That's a Taylor Swift line. Did the governor say that? I didn't notice it from the stage yesterday.

Jon Campbell: She did.

Brian Lehrer: She did?

Jon Campbell: Yes. She said it toward the end. She called her the philosopher, Taylor Swift, I believe. Yes, she said that from-- and it was in the book. It was in both.

Brian Lehrer: Yes, I heard philosopher. One might wonder, was Mayor Eric Adams disappointed with all the help he's asking for from Albany as well as from Washington to deal with a number of asylum seekers coming to the city? Was Mayor Adams disappointed that that wasn't mentioned in the speech? Here he is.

Mayor Adams: This is something that all of us are dealing with right now, and we're going to need help from the national government to respond to this national issue. I'm not disappointed. She acknowledged the fact that she's going to be talking about the asylum issue in her budgetary address.

Brian Lehrer: Why didn't the governor go there and is holding it out for the budget address. Really, neither did Governor Murphy very much in his State of the State, which we'll talk about tomorrow.

Jon Campbell: I'm not entirely sure. The simple answer would be it is a politically fraught issue. It's an election year for all 213 state lawmakers. It is an election year for Congressional members, and that has much, much higher stakes in terms of control of Congress. People were perplexed by it as I spoke to people. Republicans pounced on it in particular and said, "Well, she didn't say anything because she doesn't have a plan."

I think that's a little premature. I am hesitant to say she doesn't have a plan because she promised we would hear about this in her budget address next week. That is where you decide where you're going to spend your money. This is a financial situation. The city is looking for more money, and we'll hear that in the budget address.

Brian Lehrer: It's at least one thing in addition to a financial situation. I wonder if you think, and I guess there's no way to know, but if you think perhaps it might be addressed in the budget speech the governor will give next week. The governor, besides whatever funding the mayor might want, isn't doing much to help the city with Adam's goal of expanding the areas of the state where asylum seekers get settled.

We know that with a few exceptions, I think Ardsley in Westchester is an example of one exception, but with a few exceptions, most places are resisting, having migrants who are coming at first to New York City wind up being sheltered in various other parts of New York State. I think one of the mayor's complaints about Hochul has been that she could be much more aggressive in saying, "Okay, we're going to set some folks up in Schenectady and we're going to set some folks up outside of Buffalo or in Buffalo, et cetera, et cetera." She's not doing it.

Jon Campbell: There are some other areas. Albany, New York, actually is one of them. There's a few hotels that have been essentially booked for the rest of the year to house migrants one of which is in downtown Albany and had been until this point used by some state lawmakers when they come up to Albany to stay.

There have been pockets where there have been migrants relocated from New York City. The governor, you're right, has not fully embraced that strategy and in part because it is politically fraud. There is severe backlash in some areas of or there would be severe backlash in some areas of the state if you were to carry it out on some sort of wide scale. I think you've seen the governor be careful in that regard. You did say this is beyond a financial situation. Yes. It's a humanitarian situation. She's facing increased pressure to expand the map, so to speak.

Brian Lehrer: Yes. I guess that distribution of migrants to various other places, what Adams calls a decompression strategy is financial too as well. Because it means fewer services have to be delivered for the moment in New York City, per se. One other thing about migration and the Taylor Swift quote that the governor used about everybody who's here was once somebody else.

She didn't mention not only the current migrants, but in general to my ear, two groups of people who traditionally moved to New York and keep rejuvenating the city and the state. Immigrants in general and young creatives who want to make it in the arts and who keep renewing New York as a cultural hub. Therefore an exciting and interesting place to be that draws then other people to New York.

The longer-term advantages of the creatives and of many migrants to our economy, despite the real cost that come with so many new arrivals in the asylum process, in the short run. I guess, did I miss something, or were those aspects of the fabric of what makes New York great, just not part of her thing?

Jon Campbell: It was not, neither were a significant part certainly of her speech and even of her broader written agenda. There was an entrepreneurship fund for immigrants who are looking at creating startups in New York. There was a proposal to spend some amount of money toward creating some sort of fund to keep them in New York. There was a nod to immigrant business people in that respect. In terms of young creatives, there wasn't a lot there.

I would also say young creatives tend to be on the very progressive side on the left to far left of the Democratic party or the political spectrum. That's not the governor's base. The governor's base is a more moderate base, so that could play into it.

Brian Lehrer: Oh, well that leads me to a political question, which is that this is a legislative election year, not the governor herself, but yes, the legislature. Does she want the super majority of her own Democratic party to continue in the legislature? Supermajority means they have the numbers to override vetoes, which are her vetoes. Governor Cuomo always seemed to prefer when Republicans had partial control. Is Hochul playing any kind of games in that respect or in that direction?

Jon Campbell: I'm glad you brought this up because it gives me the opportunity to correct something I said last week, which has been gnawing at me. Which is, the last time there was a veto override in Albany was 2006 when George Pataki was in office. I said '96 last week, so I was off by 10 years. I'm glad to have the opportunity to correct that. It illustrates the point that even with these super majorities, which two-thirds majority, which are enough to override a veto without needing any Republican support at all, they don't do it. They do not override veto.

I am of the opinion that the super majority thing kind of gets overblown. I don't think a difference of a few seats here or there really makes that much of a difference in the governor's calculation-

Brian Lehrer: Oh, I see.

Jon Campbell: -because it's going to be a strong democratic majority regardless.

Brian Lehrer: They're not going to override her on those various vetoes, some of which people are very emotional about that she casts just before the new year.

Jon Campbell: It would be shocking. Speaker Heastie, the assembly speaker, he has called the veto override, the "nuclear option." He's used those words, so that's how he views that.

Brian Lehrer: Interesting. We had so many calls when you were on last week about the no-compete clauses in many, many workers employment agreements and so many people objected to the fact that the governor vetoed the bill that would limit those. Even on that, it seems like they're not going to override, very interesting.

Next topic, and we'll talk about this tomorrow too, with Nancy Solomon on the Governor Murphy State of the State. Hochul put out a vision of making New York a leader in the emerging technology jobs field of artificial intelligence. Listen.

Governor Hochul: We have a unique and fleeting opportunity to catapult New York ahead of its competition. I propose nothing short of making New York the global leader in AI research and development, the leader for the nation, the leader for the world.

[applause]

Brian Lehrer: You could say leader for the world if you're one governor, or you could say moonshot.

Governor Murphy: Here in New Jersey, we are announcing an AI moonshot. 63 years ago, President John F. Kennedy declared that we would put a man on the moon by the end of the decade. Well, today our state is lifting off to explore the furthest reaches of science in our time.

Brian Lehrer: Jon, the first thing I thought hearing them both say that yesterday, and I wonder if other listeners thought the same thing was, wait, what? Don't we always talk about artificial intelligence, taking away jobs, destroying jobs, replacing human beings, and here are these governors touting how many jobs it could create? Can you say anything about what that potential is supposed to be?

Jon Campbell: Well, the governor is taking this on from more of a public research standpoint. The way she views it is I believe she said it's the greatest human invention since the internet. She is taking it from the standpoint of this is coming. We need to be out in the forefront here. She wants to spend $275 million in state funding to kind of buy up this supercomputer infrastructure and partner with Columbia, Cornell, NYU, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, and SUNY to come up with this partnership that is going to lead the way on research, on development, and establish New York as this hub for this emerging industry. It's a similar model to what has happened in the nanoscale science industry and semiconductors, which has a huge hub in Albany at the University of Albany our alma mater.

Brian Lehrer: At the SUNY Campus. That's right. Absolutely.

Jon Campbell: Yes, exactly.

Brian Lehrer: One of the great things. Yes.

Jon Campbell: Yes, absolutely. She wants to do something similar to that with AI and she wants the state to put up $275 million to do it that would require legislative support.

Brian Lehrer: This could potentially tie to the affordable housing issue in a way that I wonder if any of the progressives are already talking about. It made me think of the last time the city competed for a big infusion of tech jobs bidding on the Amazon HQ2 project, remember that? Then that got defeated by local opposition here because progressives were concerned that the influx of high-paid programming jobs would push housing costs up even further, more gentrification for everyone else. I don't imagine Hochul said anything about how to reconcile these two big priorities of hers housing and being an AI hub, which could possibly work against each other.

Jon Campbell: I think that would be many, many, many steps down the road. We didn't hear that at that point. To bring things full circle, the person who helped lead the opposition to Amazon was Mike Gianaris, the Deputy Senate leader who we heard from earlier today.

Brian Lehrer: That's where it was going to be, in or near his district in Northwest Queens. One more thing. I noticed that the New York Post headline on the governor's speech yesterday was "Governor Declares War on Retail Theft." Here's a little bit of that.

Governor Hochul: Thieves brazenly tear items off the shelves, and menace employees. Owners go broke replacing broken windows and stolen goods, driving many out of business. These attacks are nothing more than a breakdown of the social order. I say no more. The chaos must end.

[applause]

Brian Lehrer: Jon, why did she mention it? Does she have a proposal to end it?

Jon Campbell: Well, I think it goes to her strategy of trying to focus on quality-of-life issues. Everybody in New York City has gone to Duane Reade and seen toiletries locked behind a glass case or whatever. That is something that she's trying to key on, and she devoted a significant part of her speech to this.

Now, shoplifting has been up considerably in New York City. Nationwide it has been over-exaggerated the increase, but it has been up in New York City. That's according to the Council on Criminal Justice. She's trying to take on that issue. You'll remember back in 2022, when she ran for election, Republicans used crime against her and it was very, very effective.

She's trying to get out in front of that, at this point. She's going to have a little bit of a tough sell in the legislature because she wants to include tougher penalties for assaulting a retail worker, basically treat them like police officers or bus drivers, which comes with tougher penalties, but anytime you talk about tougher criminal penalties, that is something that the Democratic legislature is very weary to do.

She also wants to do some new task forces between state police, local police, DAs, to combat the problem from a prosecution standpoint. She devoted a huge piece of your speech to that. She's very serious about it, or at least trying to demonstrate that she's very serious about it.

Brian Lehrer: We know that Lee Zeldin, the Republican nominee for governor in 2022, came much closer to her than Republican nominees of recent years, recent cycles have done to Democrats largely because of the issue of crime, so I think she's trying to look responsive. Let me ask you one closing question. Hochul is, after all, the first woman governor of New York. Tomorrow when we talk to Nancy Solomon about Governor Murphy's address, one of the topics is going to be how he spoke about abortion rights.

Any echoes in Albany yesterday of it being a speech or especially a policy agenda, as you read through the Briefing Book, that a woman with a woman's life experience and knowledge might have been more likely to propose than say Governor Cuomo used to. The state senate majority leader Andrea Stewart-Cousins, obviously, a woman also, I wonder if she said anything or other women in the legislature. Or if they just don't want people to think of it that way.

Jon Campbell: I think there certainly are some aspects of the speech that you certainly would see how it benefits from a woman's perspective. For one, she wants to include paid family leave benefits for prenatal care. That is a big deal. That is not something that happens in New York right now. New York has a paid family leave program where you can get paid a certain percentage of your salary while you're out caring for a family member or caring for yourself, but it does not kick in until you actually have the baby. She wants to extend that to prenatal care. Maybe you've got doctor's appointments during the pregnancy, before your actual birth. She wants that to be included.

That's one where she talks about from a personal lens. She likes to say she's the first woman governor. She's the first mom governor, and that is, she often says literally the words this is personal to me. I don't believe she said exactly there, but that goes to what you're speaking about.

Brian Lehrer: There you go. Jon Campbell, our Albany reporter, who is against type acknowledges being proud and happy to live in the Capital District of New York State. Jon, thanks as always talk to you.

Jon Campbell: Thank you, Brian.

 

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