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

Governor Kathy Hochul today rallied in the Southern Tier 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:

 Sounds like a party in the Southern Tier. Oh, I know I'm in the right place - a lot more fun than Albany right now. But I have to get back there, and I just took a little break to come out here and talk to the people who really are the ones I think about when I'm sitting in Albany and negotiating this Budget. Because the Budget is not about what happens in our State Capitol, it's about what's happening in diners, and gas stations, and in family homes and small businesses all across the State of New York.

So I want to come out here with all of you, and I thank the leaders we have in this room. I want to thank our extraordinary County Executive, Jason Garnar. I'm sorry about those teenage drivers - I had them too. But he's an example of how leadership really makes a difference and his commitment to building more and to seizing opportunities. And I only picked three places in all of Upstate New York to run an experimental program on how we could open up child care to more families. You know who I trusted with $20 million to get that done? It was Jason Garnar. So I'm proud of our relationship.

Christina Charuk, I want to thank the Mayor of Johnson City for welcoming us here. What an incredible place this is. We've been here before and everyone associated with the Goodwill Theater and Firehouse Stage - this is a great, great location for a lot of entertainment. Also all the way over from the City of Ithaca, Mayor Cantelmo. I want to thank him for sharing his experiences, but also his vision for that great city a little bit further. But also, it centers on housing, right? It centers on housing, and we'll talk more about that in a couple minutes. I know that Mayor Kraham is here as well from the City of Binghamton - I want to thank him for his efforts to build more housing here in the city.

Also, Dr. Bailey, Dr. Anne Bailey, you are a treasure. And I may have told you the story when I was a little girl, about eight years old, my favorite book was the story of Harriet Tubman. I could tell you, I had to borrow it so many times from the local library, they finally said, "You can just keep it, darling," because I was so inspired by her story of perseverance and strength. And also, she was a tiny woman, so I thought maybe short women can do something in life too. So, thank you. Thank you.

And Stacey Duncan, our President and CEO of The Leadership Alliance. Thank you for also just championing so many important causes.

You've heard about why I'm here. I am here to build support for something that is not hard to build support for: Driving down the cost of living in a state that is known to be - is this on or off? Are we on? On? Off?

[...]

Okay. Okay. Okay.

I am a mom, I'm now a grandma and I know what families are going through personally. I know what it's like when I had to leave a job I love because I couldn't find affordable child care. That was a long time ago, and those babies are now having babies and they're struggling just as much. That's on my mind.

I also know what the cost of gas does to a family. When I was trying to fill up my minivan and hoping it would last during some previous crises, I know what every single penny and every dollar means when you have to put more than you expected. That credit card is like, "How did that go up so high?" So people are struggling right now because of wars thousands of miles away, and I can't do anything else that's going to drive that higher.

I also know that we as a state - as ambitious as New York is and we'd like to be - we did not have the ambition to build enough housing to support our families. So something that was an expectation when I was younger, and everybody with little gray hair in this room knows what I'm talking about, the expectation was you work hard, you learn a trade, or you get an education, you get that first apartment - it's tiny, mine was about 500 square feet when I was first married - had a couple of bikes in the living room, not a lot of space. But I knew that through hard work, the expectation was, "We're going to do better than that." And the apartment got a little bigger the next time, got a little tiny house.

That was always the American Dream. Your success was judged by the home you lived in oftentimes. My parents started married life in a trailer park living near the steel plant where my dad and grandpa worked. But then, over time, after an education, more opportunities, the houses got bigger and bigger. It is heartbreaking to me to know that the promise of home ownership has become a nightmare for so many because they have that in their heart and their dreams - it's something they want, and it's so far out of reach, it's impossible. That's because we did not build enough. We let barriers get in the way, and there's no reason why.

Just a few short years ago, the average age of a first time homebuyer was 30 years. Now it's 40? I mean, you're starting to get little gray hair at 40. I don't want to offend any 40-year-olds, but it starts to happen, right? Why do you have to defer these dreams so long because your government didn't break down the barriers that were in the way to allow the opening of the floodgates to build more housing like other states have?

When people leave our state and go elsewhere, many are just going to neighboring states that had more housing because here's something you learned at Binghamton University or anywhere else you go: Economics 101, you build more supply, the prices go down. Build more supply, the prices go down. We're going to build that supply because here's what I want to do in this Budget: I want to take a law known as SEQR, okay? An important environmental law back in the seventies when no one was caring about the environment - didn't give a damn. Smoke stacks everywhere, pollution, the lakes were so contaminated where I lived, the dead fish were all over the beach. They got killed the second they came to life. And we swam in that lake. I don't know why they let us swim in that lake, but we did. I'm still okay - fish are not.

But we needed it then, but today, the local governments do all those reviews. They don't need the state after the local government, the zoning board, the planning board, the local environmental review board - everybody that does the review of a project to build a few more housing units in this city or elsewhere. On top of that, then you have to have the state come in and do about another two years of review? Come on. And it costs more money, so developers are saying, "It's just not worth it to build in New York. I'll go over to Pennsylvania and do it." And that's why we're suffering today. And you have leaders - you've heard from our mayors and our County Executive, they're with me on this, but they can't do anything until we change this law in Albany.

Are you with me to change that law? Let's get that done. Let's get that done. And I'm committed.

Next. You heard County Executive Garnar talk about his environmental soul, how he cares so deeply about the environment, as do I. You do not grow up in the place I grew up in, when we used to think the skies are supposed to be orange because we never saw blue skies because of the emissions, the smoke, the industries that created thousands of jobs, but we didn't know what it was doing to our environment and our own health. We have learned so much more.

So I'm an environmentalist to my core, but I cannot change everything you just heard from him. I can't reverse the clock on a pandemic that killed our supply chain. The costs went up, then inflation. Now we have tariffs. Now we have a war with Iran. Now we have a President who has shut down all the tax incentives that were used to build the wind farms and the solar farms, and to build a battery storage. All the areas I want to invest in and want to continue investing in - all those reasons have made it almost impossible. Now I am committed to getting it done. I will meet those energy goals, but I just need a longer runway to deal with the realities of life. Are you with me to give me that time? Are you with me? We can do this. We can do this.

And lastly, let me just talk about giving our County Executive a little relief here for his car insurance bills - and all of you. I stopped in the Clinton Street Cafe this morning. Anybody been over there? It's a great place. Nora and Steve, they just got back from a well deserved two-week vacation. They thought it was April Fools when someone told them I was coming. So I actually did show up. But I was in there, and the most common issue that I heard speaking with people at the tables was the car insurance, because the bills just keep going up.

But why does New York State have the highest car insurance premium bills in America? Now, I don't think you're worse drivers than anybody. Right? I have faith in you. You're not worse drivers. So what has happened? Why are we paying $4,000 a year on average, $1,500 more than other states other than our laws? What we're allowing people to do is stage crashes. People are making money off of staged crashes and the penalties are not severe enough to stop. There's a whole ring going on.

You get some unscrupulous lawyers to find somebody who slams on the brakes of their car in front of a bus and they go sue them, then the premiums go up for everybody else. And then there's a doctor who's going to say, "Oh my God, your injuries are going to debilitate you forever," so you need to get a multimillion dollar award so [there are] these jackpot payouts - it's all being paid for by you. We have to put an end to that. And, separately, we have tort laws. We have laws on the book that no other states have. The vast majority do not have the same laws we have that allow for these jackpot payouts in courtrooms. Those are the reasons why our costs are higher than everyone else. Are you with me to get those laws fixed because they're driving down the cost of car insurance?

Well, I say we can get this done. So your voices here need to be transported to Albany. I need to create the momentum so people understand what I'm asking for is not that hard. Just open up your minds and stop listening to the special interest groups who are spending millions of dollars to stop what I'm trying to do on behalf of all of you.

Now, I want them to know I am a mother. I'm actually one tough mother, okay? Okay? So deal with it. Deal with it. I know who I'm fighting for. I'm fighting for all of you. And together, we can get this done. So let's get this done, everybody. Let's get this Budget done. Thank you very much. Thank you. Thank you.

Contact the Governor's Press Office