Hochul Caves to Local Pressure It must be an election year because the people spoke, and the Governor answered.
Hochul withdrew two of her misguided and bullheaded proposals from the state budget. The most irksome proposal would have effectively ended home-rule by green lighting accessory dwelling units (ADUs).
By overriding the zoning code of every municipality on Long Island, Hochul would have declared war on the suburbs.
What the Governor failed to realize from Albany is that Long Island is already charting a course towards transit-oriented development and higher density development. However, we are doing it our own way and at our own pace.
Transplants and lifelong residents live here for what we currently offer: idyllic suburbia. People live here to avoid the crowds and congestion of the city, have a safe place to raise their children, and enjoy what our island has to offer.
Had her proposals been allowed to stand – overnight – Long Island’s population would have been permitted to grow exponentially without an adequate increase in infrastructure spending.
We lack the sewage and transportation infrastructure to facilitate such a rapid transformation – not that such spending was included in the budget.
As our elected leaders have firmly stated, we are committed to affordable housing and increasing the housing stock both in terms of variety and quantity, but we will do so keeping in mind the economic and environmental limitations placed upon us. We have vested interests in preserving open space and protecting our aquifer that were openly ignored through a backdoor plan to up our population.
These are decisions best left to the localities directly responsible to their constituencies that have invested in living in their communities. At the end of the day, Long Islanders should be the ones to make decisions for the future of the island.
Furthermore, each town should continue to retain its right to approach local zoning with its own tact.
This was a win for home rule.
That is the message. This is The Messenger.
…to Most Local Pressure
The Governor’s supporters in the Senate voted down a Republican-led bill to officially end the mask mandate in schools.
Despite outrage amongst parents and students in the state, the Governor has stood firm in her resolve on the matter. So firm, that she has not even provided a metric or threshold for when the mask mandate could be lifted.
In New York State, follow the science has officially become follow the whim of your Governor and her allies. Without a threshold, such as those provided by former Governor Andrew Cuomo, New Yorkers lack the ability to hold Hochul to account on the issue like we were with Cuomo.
The inability to pass this or any legislation on the matter represents a tremendous failure by the state legislature to assert itself as a co-equal branch of government permitted by Democrats.
Students are the largest stakeholders in their education. But under this administration, that does not appear to be the case with educational and developmental standards seen as yet another casualty of the “new normal.” The decision to keep masking the least vulnerable amongst us, more often than not with ineffective cloth and surgical masks, even puzzles the children who see their friends and shop in stores without a mask.
Hochul is treating the endurance of students and parents as a renewable resource, scared into coercion with the outbreak of every new variant, instead of as a finite ready to expire. If a day ever comes when New Yorkers sincerely need to mask and take precautions again, we should all worry. People will reflect on the end days of our current pandemic when unnecessary precautions were taken under duress and decide to not undergo the extra burden as we all did at the start of the pandemic.
Hochul is setting us up for another health crisis.
That is the message. This is The Messenger.
