State Senate gets praise from environmental group, while Assembly gets faulted

On the heels of President Donald Trump once again freezing major offshore wind projects around the country and in New York, the New York League of Conservation voters is out with its annual scorecard on the state Legislature’s performance on environmental issues.

The state Senate majority conference overall achieved a grade of 94%, with 15 members gaining individual perfect scores according to the advocates’ rubric. That’s nearly half the Democrats in the chamber. Unsurprisingly, the Assembly Democrats fared worse overall, with a conference score of 79%. 

Environmental activists have criticized the lower chamber in recent years for failing to advance legislative priorities that the upper chamber has passed. This year, the Package Reduction and Recycling Infrastructure Act gained significant attention near the end of the legislative session as the Assembly appeared poised to approve the measure before negotiations fell apart. In addition to that bill, the League of Conservation Voters scorecard made note of the Clean Fuel Standard, Find Lead Pipes Faster Act and the Road Salt Task Force bill as additional measures that passed in the state Senate but failed to receive a vote in the Assembly.

Still, the scorecard cited a number of “important victories” in the past year, including the passage and signing of a bill to repeal a subsidy for gas companies to install new hookups within 100 feet of an existing one. That came about as an incredibly pared back version of the NY HEAT Act, which has passed in the Senate in the past, but never the Assembly. The League also celebrated the inclusion of $1 billion included in the state budget for climate mitigation projects, as well as investing a record amount in the Environmental Protection Fund. “With a federal administration hostile to clean energy and determined to roll back decades of environmental protections, what we do in New York matters more than ever,” NYLCV President Julie Tighe said in a statement.

The League of Conservation Voters gave special recognition to state Sen. Liz Krueger and Assembly Member Jo Anne Simon as “environmental champions” for their longtime support of the group’s priorities, and most recently sponsoring the repeal of the 100-foot rule. The scorecard also named state Sen. Nathalia Fernandez and Assembly Member MaryJane Shimsky as “rising stars.”

New York City’s incoming mayor Zohran Mamdani, however, got a failing score of 38% in part thanks to several missed votes. He notably had the worst attendance record among Assembly Democrats while he ran for mayor. The scorecard had a caveat for legislators running for local office that the scores don’t “reflect their full environmental record” since primary campaigning overlapped with session. But state Sen. Brad Hoylman-Sigal, who was running for Manhattan borough president, got a perfect score. And state fellow Assembly Member Harvey Epstein, who was running for a New York City Council seat, received 82%.