Governor Hochul presented her State of the State address last week. The State of the State is an effort by governors to set the policy priorities of the upcoming legislative session. Usually, the speech focuses on topics that are sure to resonate with the voting public and with this year being one in which the governor faces the voters, it did not disappoint.

The governor highlighted her proposals to tackle the “affordability” crisis facing New York. In her address she focused on two specific areas: the cost of energy and the cost of insurance. Like all other State of the State addresses, her speech tended to be long on rhetoric and short on the details of how she will accomplish those goals.

When it came to auto insurance “reforms,” however, the governor did offer some detailed plans. The governor announced a series of measures that she says will bring down auto insurance rates. Her proposals focused mainly on measures to combat fraud: The governor alleged that “increasingly sophisticated actors stage elaborate accidents, designed to allow for ‘jackpot’ payouts from insurance companies or jury awards.” The governor proposed to crack down through coordination among relevant state and local agencies, as well as increasing criminal penalties. The governor also said that she would offer a plan to “take on medical providers who participate in fraud by signing off on phony medical diagnoses.”

The governor also proposed to “increase the timeframe insurers have to report fraud and reduce barriers to alleging fraud in court, giving insurers more time to investigate claims and avoid paying fraudulent ones.” She said that she would balance this “increased flexibility” with consumer protections, such as allowing policyholders to “collect 2 percent interest on any payment insurers hold back as an incentive to ensure insurers continue to move quickly.”

There is no doubt that New York has had among the highest auto insurance premiums in the nation for many years. The rate charged by insurers is subject to oversight by New York state government and what was most notable about the governor’s proposals was how little was offered to bolster regulation or reform the industry’s practices.

If New York has long had high auto insurance premiums, among the questions that must be asked is why is the governor advancing her measures in 2026? The argument is that auto rates are skyrocketing, in a manner that is different than in years past.

While it is true that premiums have been going up in New York, that is the case nationwide. What is also true is that New York’s recent increases are not among the highest in the nation. That sad award goes to the states of Arkansas, California, Colorado, Florida, Minnesota, New Jersey, North Carolina, and Washington.

Louisiana and Florida are often listed among the top states when it comes to auto coverage. Those states “share similar risk characteristics. Both have high vehicle theft rates, frequent extreme weather losses and high rates of insurance fraud. These risk factors are inherently costly to insurance carriers and reinsurance companies, which could explain why both states tend to have high premiums.”

This is one issue that cries out for a detailed examination of the root causes of the problem. Let’s start off with the observations that auto insurance coverage is mandatory in New York – you can’t register or drive your car lawfully without it. As a result, drivers are a captive market and despite the barrage of television and social media ads, insurers make it hard to comparison shop.

For car owners in New York, one obvious problem is that so much of the information collected by the state is not easily obtained by the public. As mentioned above, Louisiana and Florida have seen high auto rates due to some extent as the result of more frequent bad weather. Perhaps the reinsurance industry – the behind-the-scenes insurers who insure retail insurance companies to protect them from unforeseen risks – is jacking up costs for their coverage and that’s driving some of the increase.

Legislation has been offered that would help the public better understand the underlying expenses of the insurance industry. But that effort has been blocked for many years. This legislation started with a basic premise: require an independent government report on the expenses of the auto insurance industry.  A fair review should provide policymakers with a basis for policy changes, if needed. Only when the full data set is publicly available can there be an evidence-based discussion of insurers’ claim experience and costs with respect to auto insurance.

Of course, waiting for legislation – even the governor’s proposals – takes time and may never happen. But the governor can take steps to help New York drivers to comparison shop for the best insurance deals. Drivers should not be paying hundreds of dollars – if not thousands of dollars – more for their insurance coverage when they easily could be comparison shopping on their home computer, laptop or smart phone.

For almost two decades, New York State produced an annual guide to passenger auto insurance premiums in the state. That publication was recently halted. Other states, however, offer this useful information through modern technology. For example, the state of California provides rate quotes through the Internet. Thus, there is no technological barrier to furnishing personalized auto insurance rate quotes to help consumers comparison shop. The obstacles purely are political.

While the governor has offered her recommendations that purport to curb auto premiums, the Legislature now has the authority – and the responsibility – to hold public hearings specifically on her plans – what she left in and what she left out. Meanwhile, the governor should use her executive authority to help drivers to shop smart and possibly save big bucks.

Reporting to New Yorkers on the “State of the State” is a job requirement for every governor. The state Constitution commands that “The governor shall communicate by message to the legislature at every session the condition of the state and recommend such matters to it as he or she shall judge expedient.”

This year is Governor Hochul’s fifth address. A major component of last year’s address was the governor’s emphasis on making New York more affordable. She was on to something: Making the nation more “affordable” was one of the key planks in President Trump’s successful campaign in 2024. Governor Hochul wanted to be on the right side of that issue.

The failures of the President and the Republican-controlled Congress to adequately deal with the issue – (at least the public perception) of rising expenses – fueled Democratic victories in 2025, most notably in New Jersey and Virgina, where Democratic candidates for governor were elected on pledges to tackle the rising costs of electricity rates.

Governor Hochul and state lawmakers are expected to tackle the issue of “affordability” this session. But what will they actually do and will it make a difference for most New Yorkers? It’s best to ignore the buzzword and to look at the underlying causes of spiraling costs.

Take electricity rates for example. New Yorkers are definitely feeling the pinch from rising rates. Utility rates are set at the state level. But as mentioned, the problem is one that is at least partly national in scope. Democrats won the governor’s mansions in New Jersey and Virginia on planks pledging to deal with the problems in their states.

Big Oil and its allies are working hard to promote the view that New York’s affordability crisis is due to measures designed to combat the worsening climate, in particular the Climate Leadership and Community Protection Act, the “Climate Law” for shorthand.

Take for example, New York’s electricity rates. New York’s residential electricity rates are high relative to the rest of the nation.  But that has been true for years.  For example in 2018 – the year before the Climate Law was signed – New York’s residential electricity rates were ranked the seventh-highest in the nation.  Recently, New York was ranked eighth highest.  Still high to be sure, but the impact of climate change measures didn’t make a meaningful difference.

Indeed, the Public Service Commission, the state’s utility regulator, recently reported that the state’s Climate Law impacted residential ratepayers’ electric bills by less than 10 percent (with a much smaller impact on gas bills).

The primary culprit? As the head of the Public Service Commission recently stated, “What we see … is the biggest drivers, is not batteries, is not wind, it’s not solar, it’s the aging infrastructure in our system.” By the way, regulators are arguing that modernizing the grid is also needed to protect it from worsening storms and heat waves that are the result of a climate change.

The same is true for insurance costs. Those too are regulated by the state. While these rates are subject to state regulation, costs from one part of the nation can impact companies’ bottom lines and thus impact rates in another.

The costs of the rapidly worsening climate are a good example. In California, the mounting losses from communities being burned to the ground and the resulting financial losses to insurers have resulted in the market drying up for homeowners looking for coverage. The insurance market has gotten so bad that California’s insurance companies have dropped hundreds of thousands of policyholders across the state in recent years citing the increasing risk and severity of wind-driven wildfires attributed to climate change.

It has been reported that those losses will impact New York’s insurance premiums. The reason is the result of the arcane way the insurance industry operates. Insurance companies themselves also buy insurance to help them cover the costs of unexpectedly large claims they’re obligated to pay. That coverage – called reinsurance – has been getting more and more expensive as climate disasters have increased across the nation. As disasters mount, the cost of reinsurance goes up too, and that in turn drives up premiums in states that are not directly impacted by a specific disaster. So what happens in California and Florida, for example, can impact homeowners in New York.

Climate catastrophes will make electricity rates and insurance more costly – costs these industries will look to pass on to consumers. As a result, New Yorkers have to hunker down, demand that the state move away from burning fossil fuels – which is driving the climate disasters – and prepare for higher costs. Remember, when it comes to climate, energy and insurance “unaffordability” is not solely the result of state government, it is the result of the malignant advocacy of Big Oil and its stooges. And the longer that we delay meaningful responses to the heating planet, the more expensive action will get for us all.

New York should strive to be more affordable. Tackling the climate crisis is an important way to do it.

As New Yorkers rang in the New Year, Albany’s budgeteers were developing a fiscal proposal for Governor Hochul. As directed by the state Constitution, the governor must unveil her budget plan within a few weeks and with it her policy priorities for the upcoming legislative session.

“Affordability” will be the buzzword of the session and the big-ticket items, like spending on health care and education, will dominate the budget debate. The impact of the federal budget put together by President Trump and the Republican-majority Congress will also impact budget decisions.

For example, how does the federal budget impact higher education? A recent opinion piece jointly authored by New York State Comptroller DiNapoli and the head of the Commission on Independent Colleges and Universities (CICU) highlighted key issues.

In their commentary, they wrote that the “One Big Beautiful Bill Act” represented the most significant overhaul of federal student lending in decades. They opined that “the new law sharply restricts access to higher education based on wealth.”

They concluded, “The consequences go far beyond college campuses. When students can’t afford to attend college, entire communities feel the loss” and “The financial effects will be immediate: reductions in student and visitor spending, lower revenues for local businesses, and thousands of campus and spillover jobs lost.”

They were quite right to look at the economic losses from a weakened higher education system, beyond the obvious impacts on college students themselves. They are also correct that the Trump Administration and its allies in Congress have enacted measures that will harm colleges and universities in New York and the communities where they are located.

Yet federal harms are just the latest hits to higher education. Over the past decades, state policies have undermined both public and private institutions. The biggest impacts have been on private colleges.

For example, state policymakers have hammered public support for private colleges found in the Unrestricted Aid to Independent Colleges and Universities (known as “Bundy Aid”). Bundy Aid directs financial support to independent colleges. The program was established in 1968 with the goal of providing an answer to the question “how the State can help preserve the strength and vitality of our private and independent institutions of higher education and at the same time, keep them free.” In response, the state decided that “the moderate but real level of need calls for direct assistance from New York to private colleges and universities.”

Once a vital component of independent colleges’ finances, the program has been decimated by cuts over the past four decades. The peak state support occurred during the 1989-90 fiscal year, when nearly $114 million was appropriated. During the current fiscal year, that amount has been reduced to under $20 million. If New York had merely kept pace with inflation, the amount of Bundy Aid would be around $260 million – not less than $20 million.

The result? Not surprisingly, many colleges – usually small ones – have seen their finances become damaged or worse. According to New York education officials, over the last 18 years, New York has lost seventeen independent colleges, universities, and other degree-granting institutions. Ten of those seventeen shut their doors in only the last few years, throwing their students into educational uncertainty and potentially, entire communities into economic insecurity. One example was the closure of the College of St. Rose in Albany, N.Y. Another more recent controversy surrounding the financial stability of Siena College in the Albany suburbs.

Those campuses are, unfortunately, not alone when it comes to financial concerns. In a recent review of colleges conducted by Forbes, nineteen of New York’s 72 colleges and universities (26%) scored poor financial grades (C- or D).

Why should we care?

The answer is that colleges not only educate the adult leaders of the future, but they are also dynamic “economic engines.” These economic engines create jobs that stimulate and anchor local economies. Independent colleges and universities in New York State contributed an estimated $97 billion to the state’s economy and supported more than 400,000 jobs. These institutions also provide cultural and educational resources to the larger community, contributing to the quality of life in the area.

New York’s elected leadership hasn’t considered the independent sector of higher education an important component of the budget. But as independent campuses close and others struggle, New York’s decisions are costing jobs and economic activity. Here’s hoping the governor’s upcoming budget reverses this not-so-benign neglect.

Planning is an important component of success in life. The same is true for government. Developing a plan that relies on broad input, is based on the most recent science and best practices, and recommends specific actions is the hallmark of high functioning government.

New York often follows that blueprint when it comes to planning, but too frequently falls short when it comes to acting on its own plans.

Attacking the problem of the worsening climate is one example. The planet is heating up and 2024 was the world’s hottest year in recorded history. The world’s climate scientists have agreed that “Human activities, principally through emissions of greenhouse gases, have unequivocally caused global warming” and that “limiting human-caused global warming requires net zero CO₂ emissions.”

The Climate Leadership and Community Protection Act (“Climate Law”) was approved six years ago and was designed to set the state on a path toward “net zero” greenhouse gas emissions by the middle of this Century. The “net zero” goal is consistent with the standard set by the world’s climate scientists – who have warned that in order to avoid the worst consequences of global heating, all nations need to adhere to the net zero goal.

New York’s Climate Law set interim goals designed to guide policymakers as benchmark steps to meet the targets advised by the world’s climate experts. Those interim goals commit the state to generate 70 percent of its electricity from renewable power sources and achieve a 40 percent reduction in greenhouse gas emissions by 2030 – just five years from now.

After the Climate Law was passed the state convened a panel of “stakeholders” to develop a detailed blueprint to meet the law’s milestone goals. That blueprint was released at the end of 2022. Yet, once the fanfare of signing the bill passed and the rollout of the blueprint was over, little was done to meet the challenges set in the Climate Law.

Since so little was accomplished, the oil industry, its allies, and other opponents have pounced and argued that the Law needs to be rolled back. They contend the Climate Law not only increased energy costs, but also has goals that are too ambitious.

Both of these arguments are not backed up by the facts. The European Union recently reported that it will have reduced greenhouse gas emissions by more than 50% by the year 2030. That goal was set as a midpoint measure to meet the science-based goal of virtually eliminating all greenhouse gas emissions by 2050. If the EU can do it, we in the United States can, too.

New York’s residential electricity rates are high, however, relative to the nation’s. But that has been true for years. For example in 2018 – the year before the state climate law was signed – New York’s residential electricity rates were ranked the seventh-highest in the nation. Now they are ranked eighth highest. Still high to be sure, but the impact of the Climate Law’s passage didn’t make a meaningful difference.

Unfortunately, as a result of the oil industry’s expensive propaganda campaign, the Hochul Administration is in retreat on the state’s climate-fighting initiatives.

Another example of the failure to aggressively implement its own blueprint is New York’s mounting garbage crisis. Two years ago this week, the state Department of Environmental Conservation issued its “New York State Solid Waste Management Plan” to tackle that emerging problem. Among its recommendations, the DEC argued that the state should reduce or recycle its solid wastes at the rate of 85 percent and do so by embracing a “circular economy” approach, one that relies on ensuring that the producer of the waste is responsible for it – not the taxpayers. The plan urged action to, among other things, expand the state’s bottle deposit law and reduce packaging wastes.

Right now, the number one place that residential trash goes to is a landfill; number two is export for disposal; number three is burning; and the last is to be recycled. There is no evidence that the problem is getting better. In fact, the state’s residential recycling rate has been dropping over the past decade.

The state’s capacity to tackle this problem is dwindling. According to the DEC, “New York’s 25 municipal solid waste landfills have a combined landfill capacity of between 16 and 25 years.” If the state’s landfills are filled to capacity in a decade or so, what will happen?

Instead of implementing an aggressive “producer responsibility” program as recommended in its own plan, the Administration is instead working on allowing the existing landfills to expand. For example, it was recently announced that the Administration is considering an expansion of the Seneca Falls landfill.

But as their own solid waste management plan has made clear, landfilling is not the most important solution, reducing the amount of waste, maximizing reuse and recycling, and then disposing of the rest should be the order of priority.

Good planning is essential. But we expect government to follow through in tackling the tough issues, not kicking the can down the road and moving the goal posts. As lawmakers return next month and the governor unveils her budget plan, following New York’s plans to address both the climate and trash crises should be at the top of the agenda.

While many New Yorkers are enjoying the holidays, members of the Hochul Administration are busying themselves for the upcoming session. The first week of January is when lawmakers return for the beginning of the 2026 legislative session. The following week, Governor Hochul will release her “State of the State” address and the week after that, she will release her executive budget.

The State of the State is an annual message delivered by the governor as required under the state Constitution. It leans to the poetry of governing, long on goals, short on the details of achieving them.

It is really the budget that provides the governor’s blueprint for how she will achieve her goals.

So, a lot is happening right now to develop the massive state budget and fashion it to meet the outcomes that the governor will propose in her annual message.

Next year’s budget plan is being developed under the large shadow cast by the changes enacted by the President and the Congress. The state will have to figure out, for example, how to provide health coverage for the tens of thousands of New Yorkers who are facing a complete loss of coverage or huge increases in the costs of providing that coverage. The Trump Administration and its allies in Congress are doing all that they can to reduce Americans’ access to health insurance, a decision that will result in misery and physical harm to millions of Americans.

Proposals that can raise revenues, therefore, will get a closer look as the state budget makers try to address shortfalls resulting from Congressional action.

One idea that has been considered over the years pertains to the use of and addiction resulting from tobacco and other nicotine products.

We all know the score on that front. Tobacco products, when used as directed, addict and kill. Lung cancer is most often caused by tobacco use. But lung cancer is not the only cancer that can be caused by tobacco use. According to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), tobacco use results in cancers of the mouth and throat, voice box, esophagus, stomach, kidney, pancreas, liver, bladder, cervix, colon and rectum, and a type of leukemia. And tobacco users aren’t the only ones at risk; exposure to tobacco smoke by those who are non-smokers raises their risk of cancer.

While past actions taken by New York (and much of the rest of the nation) have dramatically reduced the cigarette smoking rate, flavored products, new forms of nicotine use, and the use of other non-cigarette tobacco products are still dangerous.

Flavored tobacco products are designed to entice youth to a deadly addiction. It is still legal to sell menthol-flavored cigarettes and other flavored tobacco products. While New York now prohibits the sale of flavored vaping products, it has not banned the sale of flavored tobacco. Experts that evaluate the state’s tobacco program have urged a ban on the sale of these flavored tobacco products.

New York policy fails in a key area of the fight to combat nicotine addiction: tax policy. And it is this area that budget makers may be looking at.

New York State currently has the highest cigarette tax in the nation, at $5.35 per pack. There is irrefutable evidence that increasing the cost of cigarettes has been a key component in the state’s tobacco control success.

Yet New York taxes non-cigarette tobacco products and other nicotine delivery products (like vaping) at a different, and lower, rate. In doing so, it essentially drives smokers and would-be smokers to these products, undermining the impact of the increase in cigarette taxes and deprives the state of revenue. Additional revenues that could add tens of millions of dollars to the state coffers.

And that may be the “hook” to get budget makers interested.

Increasing the price of non-cigarette tobacco products by raising tax rates reduces the demand for those products, which, in turn, leads to significant reductions in their use. Those reductions help lower health costs while increasing state revenue.

It makes sense from a public health perspective and makes sense from a state revenue perspective. Let’s see whether and how the Hochul Administration handles it.