Video, Audio, Photos & Rush Transcript: Governor Hochul Rallies with Leaders in Monroe County to Deliver a State Budget Agenda That Makes New York More Affordable and Fights[...]

Earlier this afternoon, Governor Hochul rallied in Monroe County with community leaders and elected officials to deliver an agenda that makes New York more affordable and fights for working families. The Governor advocated for her state budget plan that will let New York build more housing, lower the costs of auto insurance, put the state on a path to universal child care, and prioritize energy affordability by holding the line against rising utility costs that are hitting families across the state.

VIDEO: The event is available to stream on YouTube here and TV quality video is available here (h.264, mp4).

AUDIO: The Governor's remarks are available in audio form here.

PHOTOS: The Governor's Flickr page will post photos of the event here.

A rush transcript of the Governor's remarks is available below:

I think you want to get it done. I got this feeling, walking into this room I feel the energy, the excitement and it comes from all of you. But also the extraordinary leaders that are standing on this stage with me. Ladies and gentlemen, you have one of the coolest mayors in the entire country. I just want to put that out there. He's got this swagger, this cool, right? Yeah. So I just want to - like don't you just want to go hang with him all the time? And I'm not just talking about garbage plates during the day, I'm talking about a Genesee beer at night, right? And leadership matters and you are absolutely right. This city was under siege when you took office, and I had only been there a short time. But we are committed to doing everything in our power to drive down those horrible crimes and we did it. And I want you to give a huge round of applause and thank you to our mayor for making us safer.

And how do you top a cool mayor with a cool county executive, Adam Bello? Oh, and he has such a great vision - a vision of what he wants to build and to do economic development, the projects he wants to bring, the quality of life that he wants to enhance here in wonderful Monroe County. And we are so fortunate to have him and I consider him a dear, dear friend for many years. Let's give it up for our county executive, Adam Bello. And nothing like having a woman who understands what it's all about as you're president of the county legislature, County Legislator Raymond. I want to thank you for what you have done, bringing that perspective of the challenges that families are facing and talking about child care in a way that someone who knows, as I do, what it's all about when you don't have child care and you have to give up a job you love, as I had to do many years ago. So we get it, we get it, and we're here to make sure that no one else has to struggle the way we have in our lives. And so that's what this event is all about.

But it's also good to have the presence of God with us. And I'm so honored to have Pastor Frederick Johnson talking about not just what he does spiritually, lifting our hearts and our souls, but also also his belief in part of his mission on earth to is to give people the dignity of a roof over their head, and the possibility of having their own place to call their own. Yes, building generational wealth - I will be there with you to help you every inch of the way, because we need to build more housing. And I heard you're all in this fight with me, right? Your family - can you do that again.

Mayor Malik D. Evans, City of Rochester: Your family.

Audience: Your Fight.

Governor Hochul: Okay you got it, you got it. But as I begin a conversation about the Finger Lakes, I have to say two things: Go Bills and go Sabres! Whoo! But how cool is it that Rochester was ranked in the entire northeast? And I'm not just talking about this part of our state or the State of New York - the entire northeast in the top 20 best places to live for Livability. Livability. All of the northeast. Now, what they said was, and you know, it has a deep sense of deep roots and genuine community that inspires those who are born here to want to remain. You are that community that has been nationally recognized, and I applaud all of you for that spirit that defines this region. And I want to make sure that we are making the investments so people can start their lives here, get a good education here, build their families here, be able to raise their kids in the same community that they were raised in near their grandparents because grandparents have free babysitting. Okay, get my point here? You want to have the kids near the grandparents and save a lot of money. But that isn't happening for too many families. And I want to make investments here in Rochester. And so the $300 million that I put in good hands. Is an investment in not the places, but the people of this place.

And that's what I feel so strongly about and I'm so excited about. But also, when we announced that we are on a path to universal child care for the entire State of New York, we chose Rochester. Rochester is going to be our incubator, our scientific lab here. So I put $20 million because I trust these gentlemen and this legislature to get it done right. So we're going to invest in our children right here. But I'm here today to thank all of you, to thank the members from the business community. Bob Duffy's here, I want to recognize him as well. Bob Duffy, thank you for all the years of public service you had as well, leading the city as a police chief and as the mayor and also as lieutenant governor - let's give a round applause to Bob. But I'm going to say this when we're talking about building things. I want to thank the men and women of labor who are in this room, who are building, building a new future for upstate New York. I am grateful to every one of you now.

But as I mentioned, I'm not in Albany today - I'm feeling good about that. But I have to go back because it's budget time. Budget time means we have to roll up our sleeves and put together a blueprint for the future, a statement of our priorities. And I have made my priorities in this budget crystal clear. I know what I'm fighting for and I'm fighting for families like yours and focusing with a laser focus on affordability because people all across the state are really struggling. It's getting just too damn hard. Think about all the expenses - we talk about child care. There are people who say, I cannot find it or I cannot afford it, and they're not able to work when they want to be able to support their families. We have to change that. We will get that done in this budget.

But also two areas where I need a little more advocacy, meaning tune it up - crank up the noise on these. Let's talk about. We got some love - I love this, I love this thing. You can go with me all over the state, we're going to have some fun. Housing is everything, housing is everything. And I want to build more, I want all kinds of housing. I want rents for kids who are just young people who just got out of college and want to start their lives, or come out of high school and want to work in the trades and they want a place to live and get out of their parents' basement, right? The parents want you out of the basement too, so it works out great but you need to have an apartment you can afford. But then as time goes on and maybe you're getting a little bigger family, you want to have that house to call your own and to build the generational wealth that has been denied, especially communities of color for decades. And we need to right the wrongs of that path.

And how do we do that? Well, it's real simple - you build more. But there's been barriers in place for literally 50 years since there's been a law. SEQRA, it's a state environmental law, which again, environmental laws - I'm an environmentalist. I love protecting our environment. I want to fight climate change. You got me right here. But also, I spent 14 years in local government in Western New York, and I know all the ways that people can stop the projects that the community needs. When a local government says we want to build housing here, but also then on top of all the reviews that have to happen before it gets there. The water permits and the sewer lines and the transportation studies and the use all that goes on at the local level. Then guess what? Under this law that's been there since 1975 - SEQRA - you now have to go through about another two years of additional review, and it costs so much more that a lot of developers are saying, I'm just not going to build.

So we have not been able to build the scale we need to create that opportunity for homeownership for our residents. So I have to do something dramatic here and point that out. Get your support to convince the legislature that, yes we're not going to take our foot off protecting the environment, not now, not ever. But when we're trying to build housing or child care or water infrastructure for communities so they can grow, let's remove that barrier and let them build, let them build, let them build.

[...]

I want your voices to be heard all the way in Albany, so contact your legislators. Let them know that you believe in what we're talking about here, because it's the only way I can unlock all the potential that is there. We want to build more housing in every single corner of our state. So that's the number one issue, housing's biggest expense. But what's happening with your utility bills and our utility bills all across the U.S. is frightening.

We had a long, brutal winter lilac festival just around the corner. It's going to smell beautiful and look beautiful here in a few weeks. But it was a cold winter and people's utility bills went up and up and up. And I'm going to go out on a limb here and say, I bet your paychecks didn't go up and up and up and up to keep up with it, right? So you're sitting there at the end of the month like, okay, I've got to pay my mortgage or my rent. Now I've got utility bills that I never dreamed would be this high. And I still have to, oh gosh, I forgot about the war in Iran and the gas at the pumps, it's a dollar more per gallon and everything's going up. So I am working hard, working hard to drive down our utility bills,but there's a challenge we have. Back in 2019, there was a law passed in the state of New York, a climate law.

Now it was visionary, it was intended to put New York at the forefront of fighting to stop climate change in its negative effects. I believe in that, you need to hear that from me. But I also know the world is so vastly different from when this was put in place and gave us really strict targets we had to meet in reducing emissions. We had a pandemic, what happened during the pandemic? Supply chain disruptions, a lot of our renewable energy projects were stopped dead in the tracks. Literally ships coming over from Europe with wind turbines on them turned around because it was just too expensive. Then the pandemic ends. Life's good again, except then we have inflation driving up the cost of all these projects, and now we have tariffs. Tariffs are driving the costs of all these projects up. And to top it all off, we have a hostile government in Washington that has basically said they're killing all renewable subsidies for wind, solar, onshore wind, offshore wind and battery storage. So all the ways we are on a path to build this clean energy future - and I will let you know this: Since I've been Governor, $88.7 billion has been spent on this renewable energy future, creating lots and lots of good jobs alongside making sure we're in a better place for the future, but all that is coming to a screeching halt because of factors outside our control.

Now, I wish I could stop Washington. I wish I could get everything to turn back on, but I can't. So here's the deal where it affects you: if we continue on the path we're on and a judge says we have to meet all those goals, emissions goals, anyhow, regardless of what I just told you, then your utility bills are going to go up even higher, guaranteed to go up. And the cost at the pump of gasoline is also going up on average $2 more per gallon than you're already paying. I can't let that happen to you, my friends, I just can't. I am not letting that happen. So I'm just looking for a little time, right? We can lengthen the time to meet those worthy goals, but if we meet them right now, it'll be a crushing expense on top of families that are already dying under the weight of their bills.

So let's not let that happen. You need to let people know in Albany. You understand we're still on the path for a cleaner, better future. We'll create more clean energy jobs. But I need a different administration in Washington, number one. Okay, that's a different topic, different topic altogether, but I could use some allies, and I need the cost of it to come down and I will work and work and work to make that happen. So that's the second issue - how we can make sure your utility bills do not go higher and I'm fighting so hard on that front.

Lastly, thank you, thank you. Lastly, as if things weren't bad enough, has anybody paid your car insurance premiums lately? Oh my God. The bills are going up astronomically for people who've not even had an accident, driving safely and somehow in the State of New York, our average insurance premiums are $4,000 a year, $1,500 more than the next states around us, and I'm saying, "Wait, wait, wait. My drivers aren't any worse than theirs, right?" I mean, I'm going to defend my drivers. So what's going on here? Well, we have the highest number of staged crashes in the entire country. What does that mean? There are actually criminals out there who intentionally cause an accident. Then they go sue somebody like, if they bang into a delivery truck from a company, well they're going to go sue that company and they're going to get a big payout. So, there's attorneys involved in this, the doctors who are saying that the injuries are far more than they actually are. It's a scam. And who's paying for that? You are. We are.

But listen, there's another whole side of the equation. We'll deal with that. That's all bad. They're criminals. We have to shut that down. The other part is, unlike 35 other states in America, we have liability laws on the books that allow people, who are even like a drunk driver going through a red light, who causes an accident, who still can get a jackpot payout by having savvy lawyers go to court and convince a jury that they're injured. Now, that's also what you're paying for. So we have to reel this in. No other states are doing that around us. So we have to protect our residents. We have to ask for and get the changes that I'm fighting for, common sense changes to put us on par with other states and say, "I know there's a lot of people making money on this. I get it, I get it." And I'll tell you right now, there are strong special interests in Albany that are trying to stop the reforms I'm doing on your behalf. Well, we can't let that happen. I need your voices to overshadow those special interests who are making money off these schemes. So housing, utilities, car insurance, child care, if we get this all accomplished in this Budget, just in a matter of days, if not weeks, then we will be on a path. We can make all of New York be more livable, more affordable, a better place for families to start and raise their own kids and for businesses to come to.

I believe we can get this done. Are you with me? Are you with me? Are you with me to lower the cost of car insurance? Are you with me? Are you with me to lower the cost of utility bills? Are you with me to lower the cost of housing? Then let's get it done. Thank you, everybody.

Contact the Governor's Press Office