Dem lawmakers’ one-house bills screw NY — but can Hochul stop them?
The Legislature’s one-house budget bills this week make it frighteningly clear: Progressives in Albany are out to prove that they, not Gov. Kathy Hochul, run New York, and they’re determined to impose their radical, destructive ideas.
Hochul (and New Yorkers) can pound sand.
The bills from the Democratic-controlled Assembly and state Senate reject most of the vital changes Hochul (a fellow Dem!) seeks, and aim to force through many she opposes.
With the Dems boasting supermajorities in both chambers, the gov — who’s already been beaten down repeatedly by lawmakers — will have to fight like hell to produce anything remotely reasonable.
Most important, the Dems want to:
1. Shoot down her modest-but-positive fix to the no-bail law, which has sent crime soaring — thumbing their noses at New Yorkers, who view public safety as their top concern in basically every poll.
2. Nix Hochul’s bid to give more mostly black and Hispanic city kids a shot at attending public charter schools, which are proven to offer a better future than the rotten traditional ones they’re in. That’s low.
They slammed her mixed-blessing housing plan and pushed their own more-dubious scheme instead — all while refusing to extend the 421-a tax break for developers who provide affordable housing.
So much for the city’s “housing-affordability crisis.”
Though the budget has soared by an insane $50 billion (29%) over just the past three years, lawmakers would add yet another $10 billion this year, bringing it to a jaw-dropping $232 billion.
That’s more than the entire economy of Greece (and about 140 other countries) and $5 billion more than Hochul’s bloated plan.
As for Hochul’s no-new-taxes vow, fahgettaboudit.
Lawmakers would bump up rates for super-high earners as if the 2009 millionaire tax and the second one atop that in ’21 (making the city-state tax burden the nation’s highest) haven’t triggered enough top earners to flee. (With their tax dollars).
But they’d make everybody pay: The progs also want to take away free parking on many city streets and force residents to buy permits for as much as $360 a year.
Meanwhile, the lawmakers agree with Hochul’s nutty idea of showering $280 million more on film and TV fat cats, via production “credits,” for a total of $700 million, and with her $1-a-pack cigarette-tax hike.
Bottom line: They rejected Hochul’s best ideas, signed off on some bad ones, then added a bunch more poison.
The gov needs to rally enough moderate Dems to support her best ideas, or the state’s going to continue its downward spiral.
