New York’s ethics laws – those covering the actions of public officials and lobbyists – gets an annual airing at a public hearing convened by the state’s ethics watchdog.  Last week, the Commission on Ethics and Lobbying in Government (COELIG) held its hearing to gauge public reactions to the agency’s dozens of recommendations for improvements in the law and the functioning of the oversight agency.

Among their proposals was one that surely got the interest of the state’s political establishment – greater oversight of the involvement of lobbyists in campaign fundraising.  The Commission advanced two ideas.  The first was to seek comment on a proposal to “Limit or prohibit or otherwise regulate campaign donations” from lobbyists to elected officials or candidates for public office.  The second was to “Require lobbyists and clients to report their campaign contributions to COELIG.”  

Banning campaign contributions from anyone runs into U.S. Constitutional issues, but the idea of some form of lobbyist-focused restriction is not unusual in the country.  In fact, half the country puts restrictions on that type of activity.

New York State, however, is not one of them.

Why does this matter?  Anyone even remotely involved in the state legislative process knows that campaign fundraising plays a big role in policymaking.  Last year’s January to early June legislative session, for example, saw at least 176 campaign fundraising events held in the Capital District or by leadership during 62 scheduled session days.  Do the math: for each day lawmakers were in the Albany area, multiple campaign fundraisers were held.  Who was the target audience for attendance at these fundraisers?  Do you think it was constituents from, say, Buffalo or Long Island?

Nope.  They were held for lobbyists and their clients.  And they didn’t come for the pigs ‘n blankets and watered down drinks.

Essentially, current law in New York allows lobbyists pleading for legislative favors during the day to then fork over campaign contributions in the evening, usually at a location a short walk down the street from the Capitol.

It’s not hard to see why that’s a bad practice and why so many states have placed restrictions on it.

You can almost hear the howls of complaints from elected officials and the lobbying corps over COELIG’s idea of advancing a measure to curb the status quo.  The agency deserves credit for advancing it, hopefully we’ll see a real proposal from them later this year.

While that proposal was welcome, an important topic was ignored by the Commission and will hopefully be part of its final package of reforms.

There is a glaring loophole in the state’s lobbying law.  The state law defines what is considered lobbying, such as advocacy to get the governor to take policy positions, or lawmakers to agree to legislation, or agencies’ regulatory decisions.  If a form of advocacy is not on the list, then it is exempt from disclosure.  One example is efforts to influence gubernatorial nominations that are sent to the state Senate for approval.  Those are not considered lobbying under the law and spending to influence those decisions does not need to be reported.

The problem with that is obvious.  For example, under current law, advocating to influence the Public Service Commission’s determination of utility rates is considered lobbying.  Thus, entities trying to impact those rates have to report their actions to COELIG.  However, the members of the Public Service Commission – the people who decide the rates – are nominated by the governor and approved by a majority vote of the state Senate.  Under New York’s current law, attempting to influence who sits on the PSC is not currently considered lobbying.  

In that case, advocating to influence utility rates is lobbying, but advocating to determine who makes the decision on those rates is not.  How does that make sense?

Legislation has been approved by the state Senate to close that loophole, but seemingly for no apparent reason, has failed to be approved by the state Assembly.  If COELIG weighed in with its support, perhaps that could push the state Assembly to finally do something about it.

Lobbying has the potential to contribute to democracy and the public policy formation process by providing decision makers directly with valuable insights and data.  However, without transparency and integrity, it can be used to steer public policies away from the public interest – particularly if a small group of powerful interests use their wealth, power and dominant positions to unfair advantage.

Strengthening the agency that regulates and monitors those relationships and actions is in the public’s interest.  In addition, the agency should advance its plan to place oversight of lobbyists’ role in raising money for those who they seek to influence.  If they do so, they will go a long way toward creating a policymaking environment far less susceptible to conflicts of interest.  And the public will get a more complete picture of “how the sausage is made” in Albany’s lawmaking process.  Lastly, the public should expect that COELIG embraces a plan to plug a glaring lobbying disclosure loophole.  The public has a right to know who is trying to influence government appointments.

This past weekend marked the start of Climate Week. Climate Week is an annual event dating back to 2009 and runs during the annual United Nations General Assembly meeting held in New York City. On Monday, international leaders will convene for the opening ceremony to receive updates on the damage caused by climate change and the threat it poses. The Climate Week events are designed to spur global, national and local actions and to develop plans on how to address the worsening climate catastrophe.

The Week offers hundreds of events held by various organizations that focus on new science that underscores the threats posed by an increasingly heating planet and policies to address them.

There’s no shortage of pressing topics as the climate news is bad and getting worse. Here are some:

• Earth’s temperature has increased by about 2.3°F (1.1°C) since the pre-industrial era – putting the planet close to the 2015 Paris Agreement redline of no more than 2.7°F (1.5°C).
• 2024 was the warmest year on record, surpassing the previous records set in 2016 and 2023.  The decade from 2015 to 2024 was the warmest recorded decade. 
• The rate of global warming since 1970 has been faster than at any other time in the last 2,000 years. 
• The warming is triggered by greenhouse gases emitted by the burning of oil, gas, and coal, causing atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO₂) levels to reach a record high of over 421 parts per million (ppm) in 2024. Current CO₂ levels are more than 50% higher than pre-industrial levels. The annual rate of increase in atmospheric CO₂ over the past 60 years is about 100 times faster than previous natural increases.
• The increased heat has impacted the world. Global average sea level has risen 8-9 inches since 1880. The rate of sea level rise has more than doubled since the 20th century. Contributing to that sea level rise is the melting of glaciers worldwide. Glaciers tracked globally have lost ice for 36 consecutive years. The Arctic Ocean has lost an area of sea ice equivalent to South Carolina each year between 1979 and 2021.

Climate Week is supposed to create an environment in which the world’s leaders learn and act. In fact, the theme of this year’s Climate Week is turning ambition into action.

Yet, our nation, the world’s leader and the historic leader in the emission of greenhouse gases, is not only missing in action, but actively accelerating the damage to the environment.

As part of Washington’s anti-science agenda, the Trump Administration and the Congress have taken steps to demolish what progress had been made in the United States in curbing the emissions of greenhouse gases and better preparing the nation for the more intense storms, heat, and sea level rise. Here are some examples:

• The United States has withdrawn from the Paris Climate Agreement. That agreement establishes that the world will take steps to keep the planet from heating up beyond 2.7°F (1.5°C) of pre-industrial temperatures, the level at which the world’s experts warn could lead to a devastating climate catastrophe for the planet.

• The Trump administration proposed revoking the 2009 Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) action that found that greenhouse gas emissions endanger public health and welfare. This ruling allows the EPA to regulate carbon emissions.
• The administration declared a “national energy emergency” to justify redirecting the federal government toward greater use of fossil fuels.
• The administration has cut funding for climate science research across multiple federal agencies, including the EPA and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), fired hundreds of scientists, and removed access to scientific information on climate change from government websites.
• The administration also targeted actions by states that are trying to deal with climate-related problems. Here in New York, for example, the Trump Administration has attacked New York’s landmark law that shifts some of the mounting financial costs caused by climate disasters from taxpayers to the largest oil companies.

Instead of curbing the damages done by climate change, Washington is making it worse. And we will all suffer with the consequences.

All is not lost. Europe is doing all it can to meet climate goals, for example. 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. Unfortunately, those in Washington seem dead set on making things worse, not better.

Here in New York, we must do better. New York’s goal is to reduce its GHG emissions by 40% by the year 2030, setting the bar much lower than the EU. Yet, the state has not accomplished a lot in reducing GHG. In the year 2022 (latest data available), New York reported that it had only reduced GHG by less than 10%. While there is still time, the state must start ramping up its efforts to meet its goal.

The important thing to remember is that the world’s climate is deteriorating and doing so rapidly. The oil industry and its allies in Washington and Albany are doing all they can to undermine climate science and the public policies that flow from it.

We should all know the facts and demand that our representatives follow science and not the nihilism that is pushing the world toward catastrophe. If we don’t, the planet will continue to heat up and our options will get fewer and much more expensive.

Good campaigns rely on message control. Present your points in simple, understandable, and popular terms, recruit a range of “trusted” messengers, and relentlessly hammer home your message.

We’ve seen just such a campaign directed at undermining the state’s Climate Law. The campaign is underwritten by the oil and gas industries and injected by allies into public debates. The two core messages are that New York’s Climate Law is both unaffordable and its goals unrealistic, even radical.

This effort has been effective. But the claims are false.

First some background. The Climate Leadership and Community Protection Act (a.k.a the “Climate Law”) was approved six years ago and sets 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.

Given the anti-science ideology in Washington, there is little hope for meaningful positive action by the U.S. Congress or the current administration. Thus, states must act.

New York has. Its law is anchored by climate science and its policies embrace the goals established by the world’s experts: phasing out by mid-Century the state’s reliance on power generated by fossil fuels.

In doing so, New York set interim goals designed to guide policymakers as benchmark steps to meet the goals advised by the world’s climate experts. While all agreed that these goals were ambitious, policymakers knew that in order to meet the science-based goal of weening the state off fossil fuels by the middle of the Century, they must try.

The opponents’ campaign is centered on the falsehood that the impacts of the Climate Law are already being felt and that it is significantly responsible for rising energy costs.

Which is not only untrue, but failing to meet the Climate Law’s requirements will be, in fact, be far more costly.

It is true that New York’s residential electricity rates are high, however, relative to the nation’s. 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; today they are still ranked seventh highest. Still high to be sure, but the impact of the Climate Law’s passage didn’t make a meaningful difference.

Failing to meet the Climate Law’s goals will be more costly too. After the Climate Law was passed, the state then convened a panel of “stakeholders” to develop a detailed blueprint to meet those interim goals. The panel was chosen and their work completed after a public hearing process and other ways to solicit input. That advisory group concluded “the cost of inaction in New York State exceeds the cost of action by more than $115 billion.”

And the argument that the state’s science-based goals are “unrealistic” or “radical” is also false. If New York’s goals were simply too ambitious, then other states would be in the same situation. But that is not the case.

New York ranks 16^th in the nation in its reliance on renewable energy. New York ranks 13^th in the nation in its production of solar power, behind northeast neighbor Massachusetts (ranked 5^th). Of course, differences in geography and climate can drive these rankings, but New York only generates around 5 percent of its electricity from solar, while often-just-as-overcast Germany generates 10 percent of its energy from the sun.

What is true is that implementation of New York’s Climate Law has been lackluster. Since the law was enacted six years ago, it has become clear that the state did not do enough to meet its requirements. Reviews of New York’s efforts, both inside and outside the state government found that far too little was accomplished – largely due to an anemic response by the previous and current Administrations.

Of course, the Covid epidemic didn’t help, but state leaders have not galvanized government to achieve the goals set in the Climate Law.

Like any other goals that are set, adjustments have to be made. But the central goal of the Climate Law – namely that the state, the nation, and the world, must end reliance on the burning of fossil fuels – must animate the Hochul Administration and state lawmakers.

Knuckling under to the pressure of the Law’s opponents and succumbing to their disinformation campaign will do nothing other than lead to higher costs and a dangerously weakened climate.

New York regulators have developed a draft of the state’s next energy plan and a public hearing process has begun. The Energy Law requires key state agencies to develop a plan to assess the state’s energy needs, energy supplies, climate impacts, and related issues and plan for at least the next decade. Not surprisingly, the draft energy plan is controversial: For example, the plan reflects the Hochul Administration’s embrace of the state’s aging nuclear power plants.

In addition to giving New Yorkers a chance to weigh in on the draft plan, the public hearing process is an opportunity for opponents of the state’s Climate Law to rally the troops and urge a weakening of that landmark law.

What is the Climate Law?

In 2019, the Climate Leadership and Community Protection Act (Climate Law) was signed into law. The Climate Law is among the most ambitious climate laws in the nation and requires New York to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by no less than 85 percent by 2050 from 1990 levels. On the road to the 2050 goal, the Climate Law requires that the state achieve interim goals:

• 70 percent renewable energy by 2030;
• 100 percent zero-emission electricity by 2040; and
• 40 percent reduction in statewide greenhouse gas emissions from 1990 levels by 2030.

Those interim goals were designed to ensure that the state meets the overall goal of net zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050. Where did that goal come from? It is based on the best climate science available.

The world’s climate experts are members of the United Nations’ International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). The IPCC has been putting out regular reports on the growing threats caused by a warming planet. Its April 2022 report resulted in a clarion call from the report’s co-chair: “It’s now or never, if we want to limit global warming to 1.5°C (2.7°F); without immediate and deep emissions reductions across all sectors, it will be impossible.” Seven months later, the U.N. Secretary General stated, “Greenhouse gas emissions keep growing. Global temperatures keep rising. And our planet is fast approaching tipping points that will make climate chaos irreversible. We are on a highway to climate hell with our foot on the accelerator.”

Three years later, if anything the situation is worse. Last year was the hottest on record and exceeded the 1.5°C (2.7°F) goal that the climate experts called for in 2022 and that was the basis of the worldwide climate agreement signed in Paris in 2016.

If anything, last year should have jolted policymakers into action. In Washington, the only actions undo recent progress and further accelerate the damage to the climate. Here in New York, the oil industry and its allies’ “affordability” campaign has been forcing state regulators onto their back foot.

Despite the attacks, it is quite clear that the rising costs in electricity rates have little to do with the Climate Law. It is true that New York’s residential electricity rates are high, however, relative to the nation’s. 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; today they are still ranked seventh highest. Still high to be sure, but the impact of the Climate Law’s passage didn’t make a meaningful difference.

Moreover, the amount of energy generated by wind and solar continues to be a very small percentage of the electricity generated in the state (around 10%). How could such a small percentage substantially drive increases in electricity costs? It can’t.

Yet that hasn’t stopped opponents of the Climate Law from stating otherwise. Opponents are arguing that it is the Climate Law that is making New York’s electricity rates too high, all in an effort to block – or at least slow down – action in New York. This campaign is just the latest in the decades-long efforts by the fossil fuel industry and its allies to block climate protection policies.

In terms of “affordability,” maintaining the state’s reliance on fossil fuels – or even expanding it – will make the costs of energy much worse. 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. Among its findings was that unless measures were taken, New Yorkers faced a considerable financial risk from climate-change impacts. The blueprint estimated “the cost of inaction in New York State exceed[s] the cost of action by more than $115 billion.”

There are legitimate criticisms of New York’s efforts to implement the Climate Law, mainly its too slow execution efforts and its growing ratepayer subsidies of nuclear power – both old plants and new ones – that will costs tens of billions of dollars.

But the Climate Law is not a problem. Global warming from the burning of fossil fuels and the resulting – and worsening – climate disaster is the problem. New York needs to take an even more aggressive approach to advancing renewable forms of power.

It is only through aggressive climate action that New York can show the nation and the world how to avert an even more catastrophic environmental disaster. Change is hard, but when it comes to our energy policies, the status quo is literally unsustainable.

September brings the final days of summer and with it the early days of the fall semester. The excitement of attending college is at its peak: Students are glad to see friends, the weather is great, and the work hasn’t started. Not so much for college administrators, who are laboring to keep the roll-out going while dealing with increasing financial pressures.

And there are now new pressures from Washington.

New York colleges and universities have long been dealing with financial stresses that originated from state public policies. For decades, New York offered the neediest public college students assistance that covered full tuition through the Tuition Assistance Program (TAP) at the State University of New York and the City University of New York. While the relationship between the two – SUNY tuition and the maximum TAP award – was unwritten, the promise was there for decades. However, that promise was broken in 2011. In that year, a new state law froze TAP awards and allowed for annual increases in public college tuition. Not surprisingly, raising public college tuition while keeping TAP awards unchanged strained institutional budgets, reducing tuition assistance revenue and deepening financial challenges as colleges struggled to cover the state’s shortfall.

Independent colleges were hit, too. Students attending those institutions also are eligible for TAP. Since TAP awards were frozen, those campuses also had to figure out ways to cover the financial assistance that would normally have come from the state’s TAP.

Adding to that financial hit, New York State was cutting back its direct support of colleges in the independent sector as well.

Aid to certain non-public colleges and universities, popularly known as Bundy Aid, is a program that provides direct unrestricted financial support to independent postsecondary institutions located in New York State. 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 around $20 million. If New York had merely kept pace with inflation, the amount of Bundy Aid would be around $260 million – not $20 million.

Now the Trump Administration has added new financial pressures that may push some colleges over the fiscal cliff.

The Trump Administration’s crackdown on immigrants and international students threaten another important funding stream for colleges. International students typically receive little to no financial aid when attending U.S. colleges. Thus, by paying nearly the “full freight” of attending college, they provide an important revenue stream. And one not easily filled.

Large institutions in New York could suffer. For example, New York University has nearly 25,000 international students; Columbia nearly 23,000; Cornell over 10,000; and Syracuse University has over 6,000.

While the media coverage has focused on the larger universities that have been targeted by the Trump Administration, those institutions have large endowments to help stabilize themselves financially.

Smaller colleges simply do not. International students represent at least 20% of enrollment at more than 100 colleges with endowments of less than $250,000 per student.

Of course, the impact is not only on colleges in the private sector; public institutions also face financial threats. For example, in the State University of New York, of its more than “370,000 total students, nearly 18,000 are international students from 180 nations around the globe.” At some SUNY colleges the percentage of international students is particularly large: The University at Buffalo has nearly 9,000 international students and Stony Brook University has over 5,000, for example.

This is particularly worrisome as college closures have been increasing over recent years in New York (to some extent the result of the state’s policy of cutting public assistance). In light of this trend, the new restrictions on international students will only make things worse.

New York needs a vibrant higher education system. Colleges not only educate the civic leaders of the future, but they are also dynamic “economic engines.” These economic engines create jobs that stimulate and anchor local economies. They offer a stimulus to local economies that are virtually guaranteed to succeed. For example, SUNY’s economic impact in New York State is $28.6 billion. For every $1 invested in SUNY, New York State’s economy benefits the equivalent of $8.17 and is responsible for nearly 2% of the gross state product.

The economic benefits are generated by independent colleges, as well. In fiscal year 2022-23 independent colleges and universities in New York State contributed an estimated $97 billion to the state’s economy and supported more than 407,000 jobs.

An important challenge confronting Governor Hochul as she develops her budget plan for the upcoming year is how to stabilize New York’s colleges and universities. Not only is addressing that challenge important to the state’s future workforce and civic leaders, but it is also critical to the state’s economy and jobs now. How the governor tackles that challenge we will soon see.