Kathy and Kathryn
She’s been governor just more than a week, but we have nothing but positive early reviews for Kathy Hochul. She made important moves toward transparency on COVID death numbers; tapped a competent lieutenant governor; leaped head-first into fixing an impending eviction crisis; and yesterday named the extremely talented Kathryn Garcia to be director of state operations.
Garcia, our choice in the Democratic primary for mayor, specializes in making gummed-up bureaucracies move — an especially good fit for the Albany crisis of the moment, unsticking the gears that are holding back billions in rent aid from Washington from reaching landlords. Until that money gets the hell out of Albany and into the hands of property owners, an eviction moratorium is the only way to stop renters from being thrown out of their homes en masse.
Look for Garcia to be Hochul’s go-to problem-solver. Few understand better than her that there’s no way to attack homelessness without upping the supply of supportive housing, while expanding mental-health services. On NYCHA, she smartly backed a blueprint enabling the dilapidated public housing authority to leverage far more private money using existing federal dollars to cover urgent capital needs. The plan needs a champion in Albany.
A veteran of the city’s Department of Environmental Protection, Garcia should be an asset in the state’s transition away from fossil fuels. She put climate action at the forefront of her campaign but smartly refused to sign a simplistic set of pledges pushed by advocates — because she understands energy and the environment demand a more nuts-and-bolts response.
Not least, Garcia bucked the rest of the mayoral field by urging the cap on charter schools be lifted. She should keep up the pressure.
Of course, it’s Hochul and not her newly hired Ms. Fix-It who’ll be calling the policy shots. But the enlisting of a pragmatist with smart instincts who knows the workings of city government inside and out — and is inclined to work with, not against, City Hall — bodes well.