Hochul vows swift action as she takes helm in New York
ALBANY, N.Y. — Kathy Hochul became the first female governor of New York on Tuesday and in her first hours on the job sought to bring a new sense of urgency to immense problems that went unaddressed during Andrew Cuomo’s distracted final months in office.
In an afternoon address, she said she would make masks mandatory for anyone entering public schools and wanted to implement a requirement that all school staff either be vaccinated or undergo weekly COVID-19 testing.
“None of us want a rerun of last year’s horrors with COVID-19,” Hochul said. “Therefore, we will take proactive steps to prevent that from happening.”
She also pledged quick action to unstick an application bottleneck that has kept federal aid money from flowing to renters who suffered financially because of the pandemic.
Hochul, a Democrat and former member of Congress from western New York before she became lieutenant governor, took the oath of office just after midnight in a brief, private event overseen by the state’s chief judge, Janet Difiore.
At a ceremonial swearing-in later Tuesday morning at the State Capitol, Hochul promised a “fresh, collaborative approach” in state government.
“I want people to believe in their government again,” she said. “It’s important to me that people have faith.”
She noted that she had already begun speaking with other Democratic leaders who have, for years, complained about being shut out of key decisions and of being bullied by Cuomo, including New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio.
“There’ll be no blindsiding; there’ll just be full cooperation,” Hochul said.
For generations, it’s been said that all of the real decisions in the state government were made by “three men in a room” — the governor and the leaders of the state Senate and Assembly.
Now, for the first time, two of those three — Hochul and Senate Majority Leader Andrea Stewart-cousins — are women. Only the state Assembly is led by a man, Speaker Carl Heastie.
And there are now nine women serving as governor in the country, which ties a record that was set in 2004 and matched in 2007 and 2019.
Cuomo left office just before midnight Monday, two weeks after he announced he would resign rather than face an impeachment battle that appeared inevitable after a report by independent investigators concluded he had sexually harassed 11 women.
On his final day in office, Cuomo released a recorded farewell address in which he again said he was innocent and portrayed himself as the victim of a “media frenzy.”
Hochul takes over a state still dealing with the coronavirus pandemic.
She will be under pressure to get federal rent relief money into the hands of tenants. Little of the $2 billion set aside by the federal government to help New Yorkers pay off rent debt has been distributed. Thousands face the possibility of eviction after state and federal protections expire.
Hochul promised Tuesday to make getting that money out a top priority, saying people shouldn’t have to “wait one second longer.”
She also pledged quick action to distribute money from a new $2 billion state fund intended to benefit unauthorized immigrants who didn’t qualify for other types of federal pandemic relief aid.
Former Gov. David Paterson, who, like Hochul, unexpectedly became governor when his predecessor resigned, said she will need to restore faith.
She’ll also have to work quickly. Hochul has already said she intends to run for a full term next year and will have just months before a spring Democratic primary.