Like many of New York State\u2019s budget deals, this year\u2019s is late. How late is anyone\u2019s guess, but if recent history is any guide, an agreement will come soon. Among the major contributing factors to the missed budget deadline are the governor\u2019s last minute demands for changes to the state\u2019s criminal justice law and her agreement to use hundreds of millions of tax dollars to pick up the lion\u2019s share of costs for a new stadium for the Buffalo Bills NFL franchise.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Assuming that the state\u2019s political leaders come to an agreement within the next few days, it looks like the deal will end up spending more than Governor Hochul\u2019s proposed $216 billion, maybe even a lot more. Yet, given that the state is flush with cash \u2013 thanks to federal bailouts and better-than-expected state tax revenues \u2013 it\u2019s not surprising that a lot will get spent. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
A bigger question is what policies will go along with the budget agreement?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Usually a state budget is a mix of spending plans and policy changes that often go along with those plans. Often the budget agreement includes policies that have little to do with the state spending, but are included as another piece of the budget puzzle that the governor and legislative leaders piece together to forge an agreement.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
One example of such an issue is the state\u2019s climate change plans. Of course, the state has spent \u2013 and will continue to do so for decades to come \u2013 monies for the mitigation and adaptation costs of reacting to a rapidly heating planet. Under the best of circumstances, the state will spend billions<\/em> annually to confront climate change.<\/p>\n\n\n\n So addressing the worsening climate catastrophe has budget implications, but not all climate plans are directly attributable to state spending. For example, in her budget the governor proposes that the state\u2019s housing code drastically restrict the use of gas (or other fossil fuels) in new building construction. Her plan is modeled on a new law in New York City \u2013 likely the building capital of the world \u2013 which bans the use of gas power for cooking and heating in new buildings as of 2024.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Hochul\u2019s plan is similar, but goes into effect in 2027. Environmentalists are pushing back, arguing for a 2024 deadline that tracked New York City.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Opponents, led by the American Petroleum Institute, have launched a campaign of misinformation to confuse lawmakers. As we all know, the oil, coal, and gas companies have been very successful in undermining environmental legislation that would have reduced the likelihood of climate catastrophe. The fossil fuel industry also worked to install political toadies in federal, state, and local elected offices to stop climate protection legislation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n As a result, sea levels are rising, ice caps are melting, famine is spreading, wildfires are huge, and storms are staggeringly \u2013 and unprecedentedly \u2013 dangerous.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The oil lobby and their allies are using the same playbook in New York. One argument that they have been using to great effect is to attack the science behind \u201cheat pumps.\u201d Heat pumps offer an energy-efficient alternative to furnaces and air conditioners for all climates. Like your refrigerator, heat pumps use electricity to transfer heat from a cool space to a warm space, making the cool space cooler and the warm space warmer. During the heating season, heat pumps move heat from the cool outdoors into your warm house. During the cooling season, heat pumps move heat from your house into the outdoors.<\/p>\n\n\n\n You would think that on its face, lawmakers would understand that \u201cheat pumps\u201d have that name for a reason \u2013 they heat homes. But the smokescreen that the oil industry and their pals are arguing is that heat pumps don\u2019t work in really cold places, like upstate New York. <\/p>\n\n\n\n You\u2019d understand why opponents would ignore the facts, but why would lawmakers ignore the fact that heat pumps operate at more than double the efficiency of gas systems below zero and have been successfully field tested in Minnesota and the Arctic Circle. More than 60% of Norwegian households use heat pumps as their primary source of heat. Heat pumps now dominate the market in Europe for both new and existing buildings. They\u2019re also working well in cold places in the U.S. like Minnesota and Maine \u2013 and yes \u2013 New York.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Another of the opponents\u2019 arguments has been that New York doesn\u2019t have the electrical capacity to produce the power needed if new construction (and cars) rely on electricity. The legislation doesn\u2019t go into effect right away, so the additional power needed in the short-term is small. <\/p>\n\n\n\n The New York Independent System Operator recently concluded that the state \u201cwill meet all currently applicable reliability criteria from 2021 through 2030 for forecasted system demand,\u201d which means that they believe that the state has sufficient power to cover its energy needs through the end of the decade. <\/p>\n\n\n\n We all know that the world has to kick the fossil fuel \u201chabit\u201d and that power will come to our homes from either the electrical grid or personal alternative energy sources. Requiring that all future building construction rely on electricity for power makes sense and over the long haul will save money. Constructing buildings in that manner is far cheaper than retrofitting them later.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Inaction has its own costs beyond the cost of housing. Failure to aggressively respond to the ongoing and growing threat of global warming will have far worse costs than anything imagined for New York\u2019s housing stock. <\/p>\n\n\n\n The oil companies have bamboozled lawmakers before, this budget (and this session) will reveal if they have done it again.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Like many of New York State\u2019s budget deals, this year\u2019s is late. How late is anyone\u2019s guess, but if recent history is any guide, an agreement will come soon. Among the major contributing factors to the missed budget deadline are the governor\u2019s last minute demands for changes to the state\u2019s criminal justice law and her […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2716","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nypirg.org\/capitolperspective\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2716","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nypirg.org\/capitolperspective\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nypirg.org\/capitolperspective\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nypirg.org\/capitolperspective\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nypirg.org\/capitolperspective\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2716"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.nypirg.org\/capitolperspective\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2716\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2720,"href":"https:\/\/www.nypirg.org\/capitolperspective\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2716\/revisions\/2720"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nypirg.org\/capitolperspective\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2716"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nypirg.org\/capitolperspective\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2716"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nypirg.org\/capitolperspective\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2716"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}