Transcript
Automated transcript · uncorrectedWith us today is Governor Kathy Hockel, and so many things are happening in New York State, New York City, and we’re glad she’s joining us on a Sunday morning to give us an update. Governor Hockel, first of all, this week you had a great week with so many good amounts of great announcements of money being spent by
the MTA to extend the subway, money being spent to create the tunnel underneath the Hudson River, and we’re talking about billions and billions and billions, and that should create some jobs. Can you fill in the American people or New Yorkers what’s going on in this well?
John, thank you for the opportunity back again on your show and talk about these issues. Yes, it’s my opinion. It is all about the job creation. I remember growing up in western New York at a time when we couldn’t find jobs anywhere. My entire family had to move elsewhere because they were not good saying jobs. Today it’s
a different dynamic. I’m impatient, and I’m working closely with the Biden administration and Majority Leader Chuck Schumer to bring the money to New York to do these major investments like the Second Avenue subway. This has been talked about forever.
We’re finally getting it going. The MTA announced plans to go forward with a new contract, and that’s going to be a way to connect East Harlem with the rest of the city. It’s going to help tens of thousands of riders in a place where people don’t have cars.
It’s going to come cut commute times. But the Gateway Tunnel, John, since there was compromised by Hurricanes Sandy a decade ago, we’ve been on borrowed time and to have what is the largest transit grant in US history coming to New York.
Because of the efforts of our federal leaders and what the arrangement I worked out with New Jersey, our Governor of New Jersey and myself, we all had to come together in a way that is unprecedented to say this is too We’re going to get it done. And you’re absolutely right, John, it is about the jobs are going
to flow for decades to.
Come understood, And I mean those how many jobs do you think, I mean it’s like fifteen billion dollars between the two projects. How many jobs do you think will create? No? Ten?
You literally thousands of jobs, and these are going to be long term jobs. It’s going to take some time to build both. But these are the investments that our city has been waiting for. And the pandemic hit us hard.
But we cannot use as an excuse on why we’re not investing in our infrastructure. Because this is the greatest city on Earth and it deserves to have the best, most reliable infrastructure. And that’s another reason why John, even the leak before, we said we’re moving forward with the plans to redo Penn Station. Penn Station, it is New York.
Let’s just put the say deserves a better We’re welcoming brighter experience than people have right now when they come through Penn Station, and so I have made that a priority. I’ve detached it from all the other issues that have made it languished for so many years. And I’m impatient.
And we’re moving ahead with Penn Station as well. So these are all great developments to show the confidence that I have and the people have in the city of New York and its future.
Now then you got another major project, Penn Station. Anything else in me in the wind?
Well, yes, yes, we have many more products. We’re continuing our investments out Long Island and heading up Metro North. We’re going to be expanding there as well, and also even upstate, we have a lot of investments in repairing cities that were divided by infrastructure for decades. Buffalo, Syracuse, all the Bronx, even we’re making up for a lot
of lost time when neighborhoods were split by infrastructure products that really made no sense at the time, and we’re investing the money to fix those now. So I’m excited about this as well as just the bread and butter dealing the potholes on Long Island. If you go back two years ago, I said, one of my objectives is
to get rid of all these damn potholes that we have throughout Long Island in the Hudson Valley, and we are making progress. So these are just the quality of life issues that people care about. You just fix the roads, keep the streets safe. Just worry about myself and my family.
And then that’s what we’re doing, focusing on this in state government. So it’s a good time for New York.
You know, we talked about the good, the bad, and the ugly. Now we have Governor Murphy in New Jersey. I talked to him last week and he was thinking of suing because of the congestion pricing law, and that is going to hurt certain parts of our city, especially Manhattan, which is suffering. Have you talked to Governor Murphy at
all and what are your thoughts on that?
Yes, and Governor Murphy and I are great friends and I’ll be He’s hosting the National Governors meeting in Atlantic City just in a couple of days. And I sat with him at Dick Ravage’s funeral a few days ago, and what a loss of a giant we had in Dick Ravage. So no, we’ve talked about it, and I
understand his position. But when we look at the real number of New Jersey residents affected, over eighty percent of New Jersey residents come to New York City for their jobs by public transit. So they want us to invest, and we can’t invest in the infrastructure in keeping the capital programs on track without new sources of funding. So
from their perspective, yes, there’ll be some people effected. You have not determined the pricing yet, that’s still to be decided by the Traffic Mobility Review Board. But this is going to be so beneficial for Manhattan, which is literally John paralyzed. I walk the streets of New York all the time. I’m constantly going up and down across the borough,
and it is great to see the people that It is great to see the tourists, it’s great to see the commuters who are finding their way to their jobs. It feels so alive again. But it is also so congested that people can’t move. A bus takes forever to be able to get down the street. Cars are not moving,
Delivery trucks are not making and most of all, emergency vehicles when your family, your loved one has a heart attack and that adlance can’t get to them because they’re jammed in traffic. We’re going to be a model for the rest of the nation. We’re going to get it right here. We’re going to show people that we can
do something good for the environment. We’re going to do something good for public safety. We’re going to do something good for the people who live here, and also be generating the revenue. So I have the money years from now to make investments, and people say, we’re glad she did that, because otherwise our infrastructure would have continued to deteriorate.
And I’m not going to let that happen.
Now. We talked a few days ago, and you know, the good de bagne up the ugly. How do we make New York safer? And I understand that your hands are tied because the State Senate has put their foot down, the State Assembly has put their foot down. What can the average New Yorker do? I mean, our stores used
to be open to midnight, the Gristini stores, the Gegastinos stores. People can’t walk around at night. This scared What can we do to make it even safer?
Well, John, I understand that, and this is a real concern that people have had. And see, things really got worse after the pandemic. I don’t know the causation necessarily, what they had to do with the pandemics, but it is real. But if you look at the statistics on the serious crimes that are now plunging, I mean down
twenty five percent murders and shootings, that’s really important people to have that overall sense of safety. But what you’re talking about is something that I addressed in changing the bail laws back in twenty eighteen, before I became governor.
The laws were changed twenty nineteen to remove the discretion of judges for many serious crimes and repeat offenders, to say that you don’t even have the option to consider whether you’re going to hold someone and bepay them until their trial, or to have a bail that fits the crime.
So I had to work through the last session of the legislature and finally this time I held the budget up an entire month. It was a month late, and I was criticized for that, John, but I also said I’m.
Not leaving you, thank you, and we got it done.
And now here’s what has to happen, John, The judges now have to look at the power that then has been returned to them. Look at whether this is someone who has been a repeat offender causing harm, whether it’s been harm before put new standards, Look at past record, was there violence, was there in order for violence? Look
at the record of the person, and don’t just let them back out on the streets. My gosh, we have an opportunity here just to restore that sense of security that every single New Yorker deserves. And I’ll be doing a press event with the mayor very soon. We work closely on this. We also worked hard last fall, and
I brought state money for the first time ever, helping pay for law enforcement policing in the subway. When people here, they’re in a train and they hear the words there’s a police officer on the platform if you need help, I’m telling you that is a deterrent and may peeple feel more at ease. And I’m hearing that all over
New York, people saying I feel better on the subway now because we know there’s law enforcements there keeping an eye on things. So we’re not done yet by any stretch of the imagination, but it is nowhere what it had been before. And for people who say they’re going to leave our state because it’s not safe, I’m going
to say, my next question, tell me the city going to and I’ll guarantee I can guarantee we have a better safer crime rate than you have in those other cities Miami, Washington, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Chicago, even Salt Lake City in Austin. We are better off. But I’m not going to say that statistics should make people feel better.
Let us keep doing our job and working hard to make sure that people stop committing these crimes. I mean, get in New York back to the way it was before.
Governor. I am still concerned about the safety, and I’m not going to lie to you. I am concerned about the safety, and people are concerned. My last question, my last question, and.
I don’t want you to think I’m not concerned as well. And that is why I am later.
Some of the people, some of the people around you might not be telling you the fear that people are having.
I don’t need anyone to tell me, John, because I know it and I see it. I take the subways, I walk the streets. It is real. It is real. I’m not saying it’s not real. And that is why I am so committed to changing that and making people not just feel safer, but actually be safer.
Understood. Last question. With a lot of people moving out, I understand the number was like four hundred and eighty four thousand. We had Tom DiNapoli, the controllerron. The budget is down in collections. What do you have to do to deal with the budget being down? If they already passing a budget and I know you’re busy signing signing
bills every.
Day, Well, here’s what I did last year. My first year as governor and again this year. But I became governor in August twenty twenty one, our state only had four percent in reserves. I had worked on fourteen municipal budgets as a local official. We always made sure we had fifteen percent set aside for that rainy day. I
knew we could not survive in economic downturn if there’s a recession or any loss in revenues coming from our high network taxpayers or Wall three takes a dip. So I worked hard last year and this year, despite the strong pressure to spend all the surplus money, I said, no, this is what we’re going to put it in the bank.
So therefore we have significant, significant reserves, upwards of seventeen percent. So that is what I’m doing, is just bolstering, bulstering our resources and our finances. So if in fact, the decline in revenues continues, and I do believe we’ll be able to stop it, but right now it has been down.
If we run into a situation where we’re the loss is significant, I don’t want to have to turn to New York and say we’re going to text you more. I want to text them less. I’m going to tech them less. And now I’m in a better position because I took the effort, working with our budget departments to
stash the money away, knowing that it is never always going to be a funny day. I’m preparing for the worst.
Governor Hucke, I pray for New York. I pray for our city. I pray for our state. We both love it and i’d rather be singing a song with you. Come on back, and I hope we can sing that song together.
I’m sure we will. John great talking to you. Thanks again, Thank you so much.
Sunday, July 9, 2023
Eric Shuffler
Founding Partner, River Crossing Strategy Group
4 PM Today Charleston Dirty Birds at Staten Island FerryHawks
