The Legislature has handled Gov. Kathy Hochul roughly, Bob McManus writes.
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Kathy Hochul will get no respect, and no shock there. She hasn’t earned any.
Unintended governors — inexperienced, unelected and with a skinny unbiased energy base — begin on the surface trying in. Keep in mind David Paterson? He was the final New York governor to take workplace after an incumbent, Eliot Spitzer, was chased by a intercourse scandal — and he by no means caught traction.
Hochul, put in after Andrew Cuomo’s hurried departure, appears to be headed down that very same path. It is a worrisome prospect; a state left to the tender mercies of a rapacious legislature, which is the place New York appears to be proper now, is a mountain of harm.
Definitely, the Legislature has handled Hochul roughly, if not rudely. Meeting Speaker Carl Heastie, and his Senate counterpart, Majority Chief Andrea Stewart-Cousins, smile broadly as they pile extra billions onto Hochul’s already overstuffed new state finances. Plus they politely kick to the curb such high-profile coverage initiatives as mayoral management of New York Metropolis faculties and to-go restaurant booze gross sales.
This doesn’t should be. Constitutionally, Kathy Hochul is among the many strongest governors in America. However authority should be exercised to be efficient, and to this point she has proven no urge for food for that.
Nor does she appear outfitted to battle — actually not within the enviornment that simply chewed up and spit out the famously skilled, and notoriously combative, Andrew Cuomo.
Hochul was 14 years in town board of Hamburg, an Erie County bed room group of some 60,000 — or roughly 55% of the inhabitants of, say, Jackson Heights.
Then she spent 4 years submitting deeds and mortgages as Erie County clerk — earlier than transferring on to a single time period in Congress after which to six-plus years on the shelf as Cuomo’s lieutenant governor.
Bold? Sure. Skilled? Hardly. Allies? None to talk of, other than the particular pursuits which have pumped some $22 million into her marketing campaign accounts — and favor-seekers are infamously fickle associates.
And so there stands Kathy Hochul — the vacationer from Hamburg, wide-eyed in Occasions Sq. and keen to show a fast buck at three-card monte.
Unfair? Maybe.
By all appearances, although, she’s about to be rolled by a Legislature that desires so as to add some $6 billion in new social spending to her proposed $216 billion finances — the additional spending principally to be financed by non-recurring federal COVID dollars.
And what does she get in return? Definitely not her mayoral-control and hooch-to-go payments. Nor does she get a lot as a fig leaf to face behind on what’s positive to be the hot-button situation this election yr: crime.
That’s as a result of the uber-progressive 2022 Legislature, when not pushing new social spending, is all about legal coddling.
Reform bail “reform?” Not with out management — and proper now the one elected chief even speaking more durable anti-crime coverage is Eric Adams. Good for him, in fact, however there are limits to what even the mayor of New York Metropolis can do.
Certainly, how odd is it that Adams is the one actually vocal supporter of a full vary of points which might be usually a governor’s concern — crime and civic disruption, sure, but in addition schooling and post-COVID financial improvement.
However not almost as odd as a governor going right into a common election with out making an effort to construct a private public document that voters can acknowledge and maybe embrace. New York’s governors have been nationwide leaders over the a long time — and whereas many have made their errors, only a few have simply been alongside for the experience.
But that’s the place Hochul is for the time being: The Legislature is setting the agenda, Adams is in modest dissent — and he or she’s simply the mouse within the center.
Can that mouse roar? Will she?
New Yorkers can solely hope.
bob@bobmcmanus.nyc
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