NEW YORK’S FIRST FEMALE GOVERNOR
New York Gov. Kathy Hochul, accompanied by her husband, William J. Hochul Jr., takes the ceremonial oath of office administered by Chief Judge Janet DiFiore on Tuesday at the New York State Capitol in Albany, N.Y. Ms. Hochul becomes New York’s 57th governor and the first woman to hold the office. Story inside,
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 tackling immense problems that went unaddressed during Andrew Cuomo’s distracted final months in office.
In an afternoon speech in which she laid out her initial priorities, the Democrat promised swift action to improve COVID-19 safety in schools, a fix for broken aid programs for people hit by the pandemic and improved government ethics.
Ms. Hochul said she was directing state health officials to make masks mandatory for anyone entering public or private schools. Her administration will also work, she said, to implement a requirement that all school staff statewide either be vaccinated or undergo weekly COVID-19 testing.
“None of us want a rerun of last year’s horrors with COVID-19,” Ms. Hochul said. “Therefore, we will take proactive steps to prevent that from happening.”
Ms. Hochul 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. She promised to get the state ready to distribute vaccine booster shots, when they become widely available, including reopening mass inoculation sites that had previously closed. She also said New Yorkers “can expect new vaccine requirements,” though she didn’t specify what those might be.
“More on that soon,” she said.
Ms. Hochul, a former member of Congress from western New York, 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 swearingin later Tuesday morning at the State Capitol, Ms. Hochul promised a “fresh, collaborative approach” in state government. She said 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 Mr. Cuomo, including New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio.
“There’ll be no blindsiding; there’ll just be full cooperation,” Ms. Hochul said.
Over the next few months, Ms. Hochul, who was little known as lieutenant governor, will have an opportunity to reshape Albany, where Mr. Cuomo dominated decision-making for years before being felled in a sexual harassment scandal.
For generations, it’s been said 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 — Ms. Hochul and Senate Majority Leader Andrea StewartCousins — are women. Only the state Assembly is led by a man, Speaker Carl Heastie.
Ms. Hochul, her daughter and her daughter-in law all wore white to her ceremonial swearing-in Tuesday to honor suffragists who fought to get women the right to vote.
On her first day, Ms. Hochul said she was ordering an overhaul of state government policies on sexual harassment, including requiring all training be done live, “instead of allowing people to click their way through a class” online. And she said she would order ethics training for every state government employee.
Mr. Cuomo left office at midnight, two weeks after he announced he would resign rather than face an impeachment battle that appeared inevitable after a report by independent investigators — overseen by state Attorney General Letitia James — concluded he had sexually harassed 11 women.
On his final day in office, Mr. Cuomo released a recorded farewell address in which he said he was innocent and portrayed himself as the victim of a “media frenzy.”
Over the spring and summer, the embattled Cuomo administration struggled to get pandemic aid out the door. Little of the $2 billion set aside last winter by the federal government to help New Yorkers pay off rent debt was distributed. Thousands face the possibility of eviction after state and federal protections expire.