New York Post. May 4, 2024.
Editorial: New Yorkers are still paying for closing Indian Point
Among the many ways New York is still paying for the erratic-but-forceful leadership of ex-Gov. Andrew Cuomo, the soaring expense and growing unreliability of the electric grid likely tops the list.
Cuomo forced the shutdown of the Indian Point nuclear plant even as he rammed through the insane 2019 “Climate Leadership” law that demands an impossibly radical and expensive shift to wind and solar to produce most of the state’s power.
Fully embraced by Gov. Hochul, the climate law insists the state get 70% of its energy from non-carbon-fuels by 2030 — and 100% by 2040.
Yet the Indian Point shutdown pushed it farther from that goal: Those nuke plants had provided 25% of New York City’s power.
Yes, the plant’s owners “voluntary” agreed to close them, but Cuomo greeted that news by bragging, “I have personally been trying to close it down for 15 years,” as state attorney general and then gov.
And while Cuomo’s team had predicted the shutdown would add less than $50 a year to electric bills, the jump proved closer to $500, notes a new report from The Foundation for Research on Equal Opportunity.
Meanwhile, the state’s need for electricity keeps growing: Modern tech ups power demands all by itself, and moves to implement the climate (pushing us all toward electric heat, electric stoves and electric cars) add greatly to it.
And Hochul keeps bragging about the huge Micron chip factory going up (with billions in taxpayer subsidies) without addressing where its electricity will come from.
Oh, and companies keep canceling contracts to build off-shore wind power plants for New York.
“It is very clear that New York will not meet the goals that are required under the statute when it comes to climate change,” Paul Zuber, senior vice president at the NYS Business Council, warned recently.
Worse, absent changes to the climate laws, Zuber predicts more residents and businesses will leave New York because of skyrocketing energy costs, including the cost to build new transmission lines for renewal projects, not to mention the vast subsidies needed to build those solar and wind plants.
In 2023, New York utilities sought over a billion dollars in rate hikes to fund state-mandated work to deliver more power from renewable energy sources and other “modernization” of transmission lines.
And the unreliability of wind and solar (and even hydropower) means New York cities will soon face “nearly daylong blackouts” each year as weather-related risks to the electric grid grow, warns a new Public Library of Science study.
By the way, the shift to electric heat means those outages will come in deep winter as much or more than in high summer.
New Yorkers already pay nearly the highest electric bills in the country, and it’s only going to grow worse until public outrage over the costs forces the state to back off its climate crusade.
Sadly, even that inevitable about-face won’t let us get Indian Point back.
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Jamestown Post-Journal. May 8, 2024.
Editorial: Legislature Should Increase Penalties For Child Manslaughter Cases
Society cannot prevent the maltreatment of children no matter how hard it tries.
Not even a veritable army of Child Protective Services workers would be enough to be able to prevent the abuse inflicted on some children by the adults in their lives.
Knowing that we cannot prevent adults from shirking their responsibility to care for the children in their care, we agree with Assemblyman Angelo Santabarbara, D-Schenectady, that those who cause the death of a child should face a tougher penalty.
Last week – only weeks after a Jamestown man allegedly caused the death of an 16-month-old child in his care – Santabarbara introduced A.10066. The bill will increase manslaughter crimes that result in the death of a child from a Class B or Class C felony to a class A-1 felony, ensuring such cases receive the maximum sentence under state sentencing guidelines.
“This bill ensures that those responsible for neglect or abuse leading to the death of a child must face the toughest penalties and full accountability under the law,” Santabarbara wrote in his legislative justification.
Children can be challenging. Parenting or caring for young children is stressful and difficult at times. But there should be no acceptable display of frustration or stress that results in the death of a child. Adults who break the bond of trust with a child placed under their care should face a higher level of criminal charge.
With all that said, we hope there is something missing in our society. Too often new parents or caregivers find themselves in over their heads with little idea or training on how to handle a child properly. Part of prenatal care or post-birth care has to be to help parents protect their children.
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Oneonta Daily Star. May 3, 2024.
Editorial: Half measures not enough for housing crisis
Living in America is more expensive than it’s ever been, especially the ‘living’ part.
Housing prices are skyrocketing everywhere, urban and rural, and New York in particular has become a hotspot of the current housing crisis.
Lawmakers are taking steps to address the issue; last week, a deal was reached consisting of a series of measures created to deal with the state’s housing crisis. These include tax credits, tenant protections and zoning changes.
It’s a part of Gov. Kathy Hochul’s Housing Compact, a proposal intended to double the rate of housing construction in the state and create hundreds of thousands of new homes in the next decade.
Hochul saw last week’s announcement as a victory in the housing crisis fight. But while the plan will create many new homes, the numbers will likely be in the tens of thousands, figures far short of the ambitious goals of the Housing Compact.
It led to general apathy and unhappiness among tenants and landlords, with the general consensus that it was a mere drop in the bucket of what’s necessary to achieve true success.
Housing is an urgent need throughout the state, but there is no one single solution that will alleviate it. While most of the focus is on New York City, something that works for that specific area might not work for smaller population centers and vice versa.
Different types of communities — urban, rural, suburban — have different housing needs. But the undeniable truth is that they all need help and they all need to be more affordable.
In 2022, almost 40% of New York households were paying 30% or more of their income for housing according to the Office of the State Comptroller. That represents the third highest rate of housing burden in the country. A whopping 20% of households were paying more than 50% of their income for housing.
New York has consistently ranked as one of the states with the highest cost burdens for owners and renters.
In the last decade, the state added more than 460,000 housing units. That may seem like a lot at first glance, but as an increase of less than 6% it is far below other states, ranking 32nd out of 50.
And while these numbers are obviously skewed by the astronomical cost of living in New York City and its surrounding areas, things aren’t that much better in the rest of the state.
In the Southern Tier and Mohawk Valley, 16% of owners and more than 40% of renters live in cost-burdened households, meaning they spend more than a third of their income on rent and utilities.
One of the downsides of the recently announced plan is that the housing growth in question will largely be limited to New York City, leaving out other parts of the state being similarly affected by the affordability crisis. Employing incentives to spur new housing is a half-measure considering its poor track record in other states.
So what are the solutions? As noted earlier, there isn’t an all-encompassing cure for the state’s housing woes, but there are steps that can be taken.
Getting relevant stakeholders to help increase supply is a first step, while proposals for a more comprehensive and expansive agenda of reform can help move things forward.
This is easier said than done, but by empowering specific localities to implement their own solutions, it may help New Yorkers combat the growing sense of housing insecurity.
Whatever legislation is in the works needs to be able to protect low-income tenants who literally live under the shadow of eviction. It needs to encourage the production of more affordable units. And it needs to realistically offer up the promise of home ownership to those it has long denied.
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Albany Times Union. May 8, 2024.
Editorial: From the SLA, more bad service
New York’s liquor license application process is still a mess, and a fix is long overdue.
It sometimes seems like the State Liquor Authority is akin to a bad bartender, the kind who ignores the guy standing at the bar with cash in his hand, hoping to buy a drink. Maybe the poor soul eventually gets to make a purchase. Or maybe he walks away in frustration.
Unfortunately for New York’s restaurant and bar owners, walking away is not an option. They have to deal with the SLA, no matter how time-consuming and frustrating the experience is.
We’ve written before about how long it often takes to get a liquor license in New York, with the SLA’s bureaucratic delays often costing restaurant owners valuable time and untold revenue. Now comes a story, via the Times Union’s Steve Barnes, of how exasperating it can be to renew a liquor license in New York.
The restaurant 15 Church, an upscale Saratoga Springs joint where cocktails cost $18 and a bottle of wine will run you at least $80, says it was forced to cancel a Kentucky Derby party after waiting months for a liquor license renewal that didn’t arrive. The eatery says it was told one day before the party that it could not sell alcohol over the weekend. That cost 15 Church as much as $70,000 in lost revenue.
The restaurant’s owner, Tom Burke, said he called the agency early in February to inquire about renewal advisories, which he had not received, and was told they would be sent. When they arrived, he applied for renewal, but weeks later he was told he needed to submit everything again because the agency said it did not have the application, according to Mr. Burke.
The restaurateur said he pleaded with agency representatives, asking if he could come in to the SLA offices on Friday to address the matter in person. According to Mr. Burke, the response was, “We’ll see you Monday.”
On Monday, an SLA representative said the restaurant had satisfied the terms for renewing its license, meaning they were back in the business of mixing drinks by Monday afternoon. Two days after the Derby.
The SLA has not countered Mr. Burke’s version of events. Though there could be more to the story, it is hard to give the SLA the benefit of the doubt given that long delays and grim backlogs have long been an unpleasant feature of dealing with the agency. Mr. Barnes has previously reported that the process for a new license can take more than 11 months, though renewals are generally faster.
That sort of delay is intolerable. It is also flatly unacceptable for the SLA to give 15 Church one day’s notice of its license expiration. There is no reason it can’t work with existing restaurants and give them a little leeway when needed, especially given the backlogs the agency is experiencing. After all, small businesses and livelihoods are at stake. And it’s not only owners who are harmed by delays: At 15 Church, dozens of staff members scheduled to work the weekend were affected by reduced or eliminated hours, Mr. Burke said.
That should not have happened. The SLA must provide better service.
END