Deaf, dumb & blind to NY woes

MARK Twain famously said that “The difference between the almost right word and the right word is really a large matter — it’s the difference between the lightning bug and the lightning.”

It’s an old and charming lesson, but one that is apparently news to Gov. Hochul.

Alarmed by census data showing New York is continuing to bleed people and led the nation in population loss last year, the Democrat has reached the curious conclusion that sky-high housing costs are the main reason.

No doubt those costs are a reason for the out-migration, but the main one? Paging Mark Twain.

To decide housing is Public Enemy No. 1, Hochul has to ignore the impact of rampant crime, the nation’s highest tax burden, failing public schools and a declining quality of life. All those problems and others are cited in various surveys of the hundreds of thousands of people who have left New York City and state or hope to.

Yet Hochul doesn’t seem to be aware of those findings. Even if she is, she’s not doing anything significant about them.

Indeed, the governor and the Legislature have actually made some of those problems worse by loosening criminal justice laws and continually raising taxes. As for schools, Albany, in a payoff to teachers unions, keeps pumping in billions of more taxpayer dollars even as student enrollment, attendance and achievement decline.

But facts be damned, Hochul is sticking to her story, telling reporters recently that “there’s a housing crisis, it’s in New York City, it’s in the suburbs, and there has to be some solution.”

Otherwise, she added, “We’re going to get 10 years down the road and New York City and its suburbs are going to be a place where only millionaires and billionaires can live.”

She has that part exactly backwards. Although residents of all income levels are fleeing, the biggest danger to the fiscal future of the state and localities comes from the loss of millionaires and billionaires. The stampede for the exits among high earners has been pronounced for several years and shows no signs of slowing down.

A city study showed that, between 2019 and 2020, the number of tax filers earning between $150,000 and $750,000 fell by about 6%. But the number of households earning more than $750,000 plunged by nearly 10% during that same time period.

When the rich leave, they take with them their large tax payments, their spending on stores and restaurants and even their philanthropy.

And for most, housing was not the problem. They more than others could afford the high costs Hochul cites as the prime mover. What drove them out were the ridiculous taxes, violent, chaotic streets and a dumbed-down public education system.

Losing the suburbs

Still, if Hochul had been just wrong about the cause of the flight, that would have been one thing. But she is following her misdiagnosis with a misguided response.

To force the cities and suburbs to build more lower-cost housing, she would give Albany the power to override local zoning and land use rules, a move that opponents argue would give many current residents yet another reason to flee.

Single-family zoning, for instance, could be changed to allow apartment houses. Each town and county would be assigned a goal for how many affordable units must be added.

One early hot button is Hochul’s demand for increased units in suburban towns that have commuter rail stations, especially in the areas close to the stations.

For once, Hochul has managed to unite members of both parties, with Dems and Republicans leery of forcing changes that residents in their districts oppose.

Republican Lee Zeldin, whose campaign against her produced the closest governor’s race in two decades and helped the GOP pick up enough House seats to give it a congressional majority, called the zoning proposal “Hochul control, not local control.”

Laura Curran, the former Democratic Nassau County executive who was defeated by a Republican in 2021, echoed the sentiment, telling Politico: “There’s a lot of resentment when the state or a regional entity tries to come in and tell people how they should make their communities. It’s not a winning strategy.”

She added that the plan could especially hurt Dems in the suburbs, saying: “It will be one in the long litany of reasons why people are mad at Democrats right now in New York.”

More broadly, the governor’s singular focus on subsidized housing as the cure-all for population loss adds to doubts about Hochul’s competency and judgment. Her decision-making process is so opaque as to be a mystery and it’s not clear who has her ear other than developers and football team owners.

Can’t control her party

Even in the cases where she has the right idea, she’s not able to deliver results, despite her party having total control of power.

Take crime. She initially vowed to work with Mayor Adams on his plan to give judges more discretion to use the common standard of dangerousness before deciding whether to release a suspect pending trial. The other 49 states and the federal government use that standard, but the Legislature said no and Hochul waved a white flag and quietly moved on.

Her stalled pick for the state’s chief judge of the Court of Appeals offers another unflattering example. Hector LaSalle is a good choice, but Hochul and her team seemed not to have done any homework among her party’s progressives to line up support for confirmation in the state Senate.

Legislative leaders certainly did their homework. They added three sure “no” votes to the judiciary committee, humiliated LaSalle, distorted his record and defeated him.

Hochul initially talked about suing to force the Senate to bring the nomination to the floor for a full vote, but has gone quiet even as Republicans filed a similar suit.

Perhaps most perplexing, Hochul approved a massive pay hike for lawmakers while the LaSalle case was developing without getting anything in return.

For eight years, she served as Andrew Cuomo’s lieutenant governor, then finished Cuomo’s third term and now has won her own. She can no longer be called a rookie and her failures explained away as a lack of experience.

Unless Hochul can improve her game, summon the grit to tackle the top problems and get the Legislature to follow, New York’s disastrous decline is certain to continue.