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When I started at New York Focus just over a year ago, I was new to New York state government and the many opaque institutions and processes that comprise it.
Luckily, it’s my job to ask questions. I’ve learned a lot this year and hopefully taught you something as well, but I’m always going to approach this job with a beginner’s mind.
I started off 2024 on the climate/environment beat, often reporting with my colleague Colin Kinniburgh. My question was often — what is New York doing about the dilemmas of climate change and environmental degradation, and what gets in the way of action?
Colin and I teamed up on an investigation into the local economic development agencies that have doled out tens of millions of dollars annually to fossil fuel plants, seemingly putting localities in conflict with the state’s ambitious climate goals. “If we’ve got one level [of government] fighting the other level, that drags out the transition to renewables,” Assemblymember Al Stirpe, chair of his chamber’s economic development committee, told us about the tax breaks.
In her state budget opening salvo, Governor Kathy Hochul endorsed
a move to wean the state off natural gas. But even with the backing of
the governor, who exerts immense control over the budget process, the
measure’s momentum came to a halt. I reported
(again, with Colin) that the gas transition plan was killed by the
Assembly which, helmed by Speaker Carl Heastie, has frequently been
where climate policy has died in recent years. We reported that Assembly
leadership ignored members’ requests to debate the measure.
Another reason it may have died: The main opponent of the
measure was the gas utility National Fuel. While about three-quarters of
Democrats in the entire Assembly supported the plan, only one in six
whose districts were in National Fuel’s service territory did the same.
We also covered a bill
that promises to cause a fight in future legislative sessions. It’s an
effort to tackle a root cause of the climate crisis and one of its major
effects. The Insuring our Future Act would ban insurers from
underwriting new fossil fuel projects, and would require them to phase
out their fossil fuel investments. It would also establish new
protections against insurers refusing to provide coverage for New York
homeowners.
During the legislative session, New York Focus published a
few big budget roundups. While working on those, I noticed that both the
Senate and Assembly had proposed expanding tax credits for low-income
people with children. I had written about the expanded federal child tax
credit while covering national politics, but that measure expired
during the Biden administration, causing child poverty to spike. I wondered
— is New York, which has some of the highest child poverty rates in the
country, going to act? A small, temporary boost in tax credits to
parents with children did make it into the final budget.
Then, in recent months, both Republican and Democratic
lawmakers put forth proposals to send cash to parents of new children.
“It’s the thing to do this year,” said Pete Nabozny, policy director at
the Rochester-based advocacy organization The Children’s Agenda. Between
those proposals, an incoming federal administration promising to slash
public assistance programs, and the governor’s Child Poverty Reduction
Advisory Council’s new recommendations on how the state can cut child
poverty, I’m prepared for a legislative fight over state spending on
poverty in 2025.
The legislative session took me on a whirlwind tour of a
policymaking process that is sometimes secretive, rushed, and full of
mysteries. Who was behind a group called “New Yorkers for Local
Businesses” leading the charge against major legislation to crack down
on wage theft? (McDonald’s franchise owners.) Why were state Democrats backing a crime bill
that was too draconian for tough-on-crime then-Senator Joe Biden in
1994? Had lawmakers studied the effects of a more than $500 million
annual commercial real estate tax break before they quietly passed it at
the end of session without debate? (No.) Was Hochul’s sudden congestion pricing “pause” legal? Why did the MTA’s own union, once a major congestion pricing backer, turn against it last spring? Who was behind a new political action committee spending to boost pro-Israel Democrats in state elections?
This fall, I had time to step back and cover some bigger
picture problems at the nexus of health, social policy, and labor. I
wrote about the tens of thousands
of New Yorkers who are waiting for the state to make decisions on their
food and cash assistance benefits. I learned that child care providers
across the state have been struggling to retain workers as pandemic-era federal assistance dries up. And I asked about the role
that the state’s privately contracted Medicaid insurance plans play in
wage theft in the home care sector. I also had some time to work on an
investigation that I’m excited to publish next year.
I’m motivated to understand the systems that maintain and
exacerbate poverty and inequality, and the way economic conditions
impact health. If you have any ideas for questions I should be asking,
or how to answer them, please reach out: julia@nysfocus.com.