Hochul blames activists’ lawsuit for climate budget standstill

Gov. Kathy Hochul knows just who to blame for her bid to weaken the state's 2019 climate law: the climate advocates who had the temerity to sue her when she violated it. 

State leaders have been embroiled in deep budget talks for weeks – stuck on the details of proposed car insurance reform and a fierce debate over rolling back the state’s landmark Climate Leadership and Community Protection Act. And on Tuesday, Hochul said the very advocates protesting her plan now are the same ones who forced her hand.

“I’m not excited about having to do this,” the governor told reporters at an unrelated event in Troy. “We are forced to because of advocates who took us to court not satisfied with the pace that we were on despite all the headwinds that I’ve described many times.”

The law required the state to release rules for a cap-and-invest program by 2024. When the governor blew past that deadline, environmental advocates filed a lawsuit against the state. Last year, a judge ruled that Hochul needed to release the rules for a cap-and-invest program, or some other regulations required by law to reach its climate goals. The ruling said the state needed to release those rules by February of this year. Hochul’s administration appealed the ruling, prolonging the legal battle.

“So they take us to court, we lose, and now I have no alternative but to change the law or be in violation of the law,” Hochul said, without mentioning the possibility of following the judge’s order. “That’s why we’re having a conversation about this and the leaders understand that, so we’ll get to the right place.”

Hochul brought up the need to change the law late in this year’s budget process – drawing strong blowback from progressive lawmakers and activists alike. The governor said she has hesitated to implement cap-and-invest and other parts of the law to avoid the state’s high energy prices surging even higher.

“Gov. Hochul is eager to blame the lawsuit and climate activists for her decision to gut the climate law, but there’s no one else for her to point the finger at here,” Earthjustice New York Policy Advocate Liz Moran told City & State.

Environmental lobbyists and advocates argue the governor should issue the cap-and-invest regulations as required by state law, or seek to settle the lawsuit, instead of trying to change the original statute. But Hochul maintains that a host of factors – including the pandemic, supply chain disruptions, inflation and a lack of federal support for clean energy projects – have made it impossible to keep to the original timeline.

Some lawmakers have expressed a willingness to compromise with the governor on the release of cap-and-invest rules, or delay the timeline for their release and implementation. But Hochul has not publicly released the details of her proposal to tweak the climate law, or its reporting mechanisms. The pivotal talks to change the state’s climate law have advanced little, if at all, in the last two weeks since the initial April 1 deadline to finish the state budget. It’s one of several policy issues the governor, state Senate and Assembly are plodding through in efforts to achieve a compromise, which likely won’t be resolved before the Legislature is set to pass a fourth budget extender Thursday.

Senate Deputy Majority Leader Michael Gianaris on Monday said Hochul needs to be more flexible in negotiations for true progress, and the Legislature is growing frustrated. The state Senate canceled its scheduled conference Tuesday as Hochul and leaders reached a tense impasse over the governor’s controversial proposals to reform car insurance in efforts to lower rates. 

Hochul said there’s been a lot of give-and-take and productive conversations during the ongoing talks. She said her office is open to compromise, and the Second Floor isn’t solely responsible for the lack of movement on the budget.

“We’re not immovable on issues,” Hochul said. “But there are just some core values that I have and I’m not going to stop fighting to have an affordability agenda that people in this state deserve to have. 

“I’m on a path,” she added. “We’re having good conversations, we really are. We meet often, and I would say we’re getting to the right places, we really are.”