Hidin’ Hochul’s Secrets
Gov. Hochul is using the Hidin’ Biden strategy (sans the basement): She’s not only ducking reporters; she’s also keeping critical info — like the state’s fiscal situation — under wraps. Voters can safely assume she’s burying bad budget news until after the election.
Hochul shrugged off an Oct. 30 deadline for a budget report, though last year, she made a big show of releasing it on time, calling it a major change after Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s repeated missed deadlines.
Yet New Yorkers by law are supposed to see this info (how in the red is the state?) before they vote. The market downturn and sharp interest-rate hikes have slashed Wall Street profits, also slashing state tax revenue for Albany, notes the Empire Center’s Peter Warren. New York’s about to face “a painful withdrawal from the rush of Wall Streetsourced revenue and emergency federal pandemic aid,” he warns.
And Hochul & Co. have boosted baseline spending through the roof: These last three years, state outlays mushroomed by $37 billion, 20%, to $224 billion. That “trajectory” “is unsustainable,” warns Hochul challenger Rep. Lee Zeldin. Damn right.
Yet keeping vital info under wraps is part of the Hochul playbook. She’s also refusing to disclose her position on 420 bills the Legislature passed this year. Will she sign the Grieving Families Act, expanding the wrongful-death law and rewarding lawyers at the expense of businesses and their customers? The bill to restore the comptroller’s full powers in vetting contracts before they’re inked — to head off Hochulesque pay-to-play corruption?
Most important: Will she ever take any meaningful action to fix the state’s disastrous criminal-justice “reforms”? Her answer: We’ll continue to look at the data.
Thursday, she even dodged reporters asking about her blaming “the system” (her system) for the murder of Keaira Bennefield, allegedly slain by her ex, who’d been released without bail just hours after beating her.
When it comes to keeping voters in the dark, Hidin’ Biden’s got nothing on our gov.