Video, Audio, Photos & Rush Transcript: Governor Hochul Discusses Future Projects and Initiatives for Long Island’s Residents at Long Island State of the Region

Video, Audio, Photos & Rush Transcript: Governor Hochul Discusses Future Projects and Initiatives for Long Island's Residents at Long Island State of the Region

Earlier today, Governor Kathy Hochul delivered remarks at the Long Island Association's 2025 State of the Region Breakfast.

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:

 Good morning, Long Island. Great to be back, again. As you know, I did come three times as Governor. I also showed up here as Lieutenant Governor, so this is a place I feel very much at home - speaking to all of you who are the real "movers and shakers" of Long Island. And I hope that you've seen - over the last few years - literally a transformation of all of Long Island, but in particular, the transformation of the psychology of the residents.

I feel it. I feel the sense of optimism and the sense of possibility, which is just so permeable throughout this beautiful, beautiful place. I do want to acknowledge, I believe our great State Comptroller, Long Island's own Tom DiNapoli, is still here. Tom, thank you. We've got a lot of work to do on our budget, but we've been great partners for many, many years, and I look forward to continuing many years into the future with you as well.

I see our County Executive, Ed Romaine, has joined us and was on the panel. That's Ed over here. Now this is a guy who knows how to get a Governor's heart. He shows up, jumped out of the car, I think it was the Mill Pond devastation. The flooding, the thousand year flooding event that I came out immediately with my team and we surveyed the damage. But before we did that, it happened to be my birthday. That's how a Governor spends her birthday with boots on and a flak jacket. He walks up with a huge bouquet of flowers and says, "Welcome to Suffolk County." So, whatever you want, County Exec.

There's no one else in the house.

I also want to acknowledge my team led by Karen Keogh. You may know her, Karen Persichilli. She is the Secretary to the Governor, which is the top job in the State after the Governor. And also, she happens to be from Baldwin - also a property owner in Suffolk County. And if you ever wonder about how you get to the ear of the Governor on Long Island issues, just call Karen. She bugs me about stuff on Long Island all day long, and she's also a graduate of Stony Brook, on the board at Stony Brook, and I want to thank her for helping chart the path forward for all of us.

And also, as an aside, she had her senior prom in this room. Now, if your senior prom was like mine, it's not good karma but for some people who had more fun at their senior prom - I should have gone alone, that's another story. But I have great, great, great friends here as well.

And Kevin Law, our chair of Empire State Development, former head of this organization. When I came out for many years as Lieutenant Governor, I came out constantly, and Kevin would convene the board and business leaders. And he's all, "We have got to get the Third Track done. We have got to get the Third Track done." You always had such a great idea of how we could be in a better place on Long Island. I want to thank you for your leadership.

Hope Knight is the entire president and CEO of Empire State Development. She is also here with us here today. Thank her. And, did I mention Rich Schaffer? Did I mention Rich Schaffer? Rich - all great job on the panel. I was listening to see if anybody said anything nice or bad about me. I have got to know, you know? And you complimented me on my housing programs. Thank you. Even as Lieutenant Governor, I went out and saw what you did in Ronkonkoma and I'm so proud of that.

But to all the supervisors here, I've met all of you - Democrat, Republican, we get together often and we talk about the challenges that lie ahead of us and how we can conquer them together because I come out of local government. I was a town board member for 14 years, and I was a county official, and I went off to a place called Washington for a few years, and now I'm back. So, I understand how important people like you are, Rich, and all the other members. I know Angie Carpenter and others, great friends are in the room as well.

I don't have all your names, sorry about that. But also, Matt Cohen. You have assumed the mantle of leadership of this organization and have done an extraordinary job. I want to thank you for making me always feel so welcome here as well. And Rob Calarco, who is an Assistant Secretary for Long Island. There's never been a title like that. You think I care about Long Island? I have a special title. Assistant Secretary for Long Island who leads a team of five individuals in addition to all the agency heads who are here.

So you just need to know that sometimes you feel like we're over here and the rest of the state's over there, no. Long Island is very much top of mind for us. As I was coming on the Long Island Rail Road this morning. And yes, it was a great ride. Great ride. I encourage everybody to do it. And, think about it - 75 percent of people who commute into the Central Business District from Suffolk County take the Long Island Rail Road, 80 percent from Nassau County.

That's why we're going to be making investments of an additional $1.5 billion into the Long Island Rail Road because we need to do this to ensure that it is there for generations to come. Invest in the tracks and new station electrification. I know we're talking about Port Jefferson. There's a lot of big plans in our capital plan as well that I want to get over the finish line that will give everyone who rides that into that magnificent Grand Central Madison station. And you come out of there, you come up the escalator.

It's just, it's heavenly compared to another station across town, which I've likened more to the seven levels of hell, but we're gonna make it better. We're gonna make it better. So, I just want to know how much I understand the connectivity, and how the businesses and the educational institutions and our whole corridor - our life sciences corridor - are really blossoming and growing and just moving so quickly in the future because the Long Island Railroad is the link to all of it. And so we're going to continue making those investments.

I also want to talk about safety on our trains and in our subways. It's very much top of mind, I know that, and I want to thank the members of the PBA who I've developed a friendship with. I don't know if he's here or not, but he said he's coming up to the State of the State, Suffolk County PBA President Lou Civello. Is Lou here? And Nassau County PBA President Tommy Shevlin. They have been great advisors to me.

And I just want to take a moment of silence. I called to check on his status yesterday, and it's stable, but Officer Brendon Gallagher's family is just suffering right now. And for someone like that who puts on the uniform, goes into harm's way every single day, we can never give enough gratitude to the men and women in uniform, whether they're police officers, emergency response personnel or the hundreds that are battling a blaze in the Bronx right now. They put their lives in danger for all of us to be able to sit here safely, and do not take that for granted. I never will. I never will.

We've also invested over $51 million of state dollars into public safety here on Long Island, because we want to make sure that you have the resources, the latest technology, to do the best you can to keep your citizens safe, because that's my top priority as well.

Housing - housing on Long Island. This is an easy one for me. We got to build, my friends. Come on, people want to be here. Your kids grew up in a great community. Phenomenal public education. Got good degrees here. And they want to stay and have you babysit their kids. I know this. This is why I went back to Buffalo, there were free babysitters. So, this is real for me.

We have to have the ambition and the courage to do more, and I know we can. I will never bet against Long Island to do the right thing. We can build more housing. And you look at a place like Station Yards in Ronkonkoma, $1.2 billion project, 1,400 units of housing that young people and families and seniors who want to downsize can finally call their home. That's what leadership is all about. And more should follow because I'm making it worth your while.

People said the first year, "We don't like your plan, we don't like your plan." Okay. I listen. How about incentives to do the right thing? We've created the pro-housing initiatives because of your advice.

I put $650 million to fund communities that are willing to say we are Pro-Housing Communities. It's not that hard. You fill out a form and you have your town board or city council pass it, it's not hard. But it also says that "we are with you, Governor. We understand the need to build more housing and we'll make commitments."

They're not high measures. They're not - you don't have to increase by 50 percent, like 1 or 2 percent. Just show some path in the right direction, and you'll have the opportunity to apply for money, I'm telling you right now, that is not available to the other communities that are not Pro-Housing Communities. Is that carrots or what?

So, we're putting more money into that. There are now 11 Long Island communities, I think Mineola was one of the first, maybe 11 more in the pipeline. Just want to tell you, there's 200 across the state. That's a lot of money going somewhere other than Long Island, okay? That's money for sewers and projects and downtown revitalization and all these other ways that you're going to want that money.

So, if you are a supervisor or know a supervisor, know a mayor, tell them this is the path forward. Get part of it. Don't have Long Island miss out, because there's a lot of money we had and we're going to increase that even more; because I believe in the Downtown Revitalization Initiative.

I have been to so many communities that have been transformed. I come from a small town, and if someone had said, "Here's $10 million to execute your vision - not Albany's - your vision for this community, and help the local businesses and help with facades and help with street improvement and pedestrian accessibility, connectivity to waterfronts," I would have died and went to heaven. $10 million? All in one shot?

And for the smaller communities, I said this when I started, I said, "Not every community has $10 million dollars worth of projects. Let's have a smaller program," the New York Forward Program, so smaller communities can get help from the state that's going to make a big difference for them.

So, we're going to continue doing it. We went to Smithtown Kings Park last year for $10 million and Brookhaven North Bellport and Mineola received money as well. But also, the housing - these products all rely on infrastructure. And one thing we know is so important, water and sewer on Long Island can be a barrier - accessibility to sewers. And this is something that our friends in Suffolk County understand, and the Suffolk County Water Quality Restoration [Act], I want to commend the County Executive Ed Romaine for getting this passed by the voters by 71 percent. Seventy one percent. I don't know any election that wins by 71 percent.

But it also says that we're ready - we're ready to make these changes, and that has been a barrier in some communities to unleashing the housing growth that makes sense. And we're not talking about low income housing either. We're not putting high rises in your neighborhood, despite the ads you may have seen. We're talking about what fits for your community. Housing that's affordable for the people who live there. So, I believe that unlocking the sewers is an important step toward that.

But also, how are we going to bring energy to these homes? Well, you are blessed. They have not just the most magnificent beaches in the world. Now, Lake Erie Beach is nice where I grew up too, but your waves are better, the surfing's better. And when I was little there were a lot of dead fish on the beach. That's because you could see the Bethlehem steel plant dumping this lava-like substance into the water, and we swam in it. I don't know what they were thinking, I'm lucky I'm still here to be honest with you, I don't know. The skies were filled with orange smoke. I didn't know there was such a thing as blue skies. I thought skies - when you're a little kid drawing a picture of orange skies - I don't know. So, I'm an environmentalist. I'll tell you right now. You don't grow up like that and not become a hardcore environmentalist.

But offshore wind, offshore wind. You should be so proud. Not just the 10,000 jobs - right, Matty Aracich? You like those jobs. And John Durso - do you like those jobs? Our friends from labor? Yes, you do. But also, now powering the South Fork Wind Project, we have the largest commercial grade offshore wind facility in America. And we're just getting started. There were some supply chain issues and COVID - a couple things went off track a little bit, but we brought them back. Don't stop believing that this is one of the many ways that we can use our ingenuity and bring power to these homes that we're trying to electrify on Long Island.

I also signed the Climate Change Superfund Act, which says to the polluters, "You did this damage all these years. Why should New Yorkers have to be paying out of their pockets to deal with the effects of climate change?" And you heard on the news this morning, and it is heartbreaking - I was just texting Gavin Newsom, sending him prayers from New York about what's happening on the West Coast - but in New York, we have our own wildfires. We had thousands of acres consumed with wildfires this summer. We never had this before. The hottest temperature on record in our state - in fact, the globe's history, the whole nation, our country, the world - was last year. And the next time was the year before.

So, we're seeing the effects with thousand-year floods here in Suffolk County, destroying some dorms and facilities at Stony Brook that I toured. We had a thousand-year flooding event in the Hudson Valley. We have wildfires. We have blizzards of scales that I've never seen - and that's from a Buffalonian. That says a lot.

So we have to be ready for this. And like I said, I mentioned visiting the collapse of the Mill Pond Dam. I mean, people are just - just walking around dazed. The road that connects them to their businesses, their lives, their kids' school was just obliterated. These are the effects of climate change, because I've said all along: We are the first generation to feel the ill effects of climate change, and we're the last generation that can do something about it. Offshore wind, renewables, bringing clean energy here to power our homes and our business is the way we must go, and I'm going to continue leading that effort.

And also, fighting for the FEMA relief to help clean up. We've worked closely with County Executive Romaine and his team and my team, to try and get the federal government to do even more for individuals. But we got the money for all the public infrastructure as well. So, we took care of Fire Island. We also helped directly there. I was with Richie Schaffer there. So we have a lot of places.

But let me just wrap up with one topic: Economic development is everything to me. Everything. Because as I mentioned, you grew up in a community where unemployment rates are 17 percent. Our greatest export, where I come from, was our kids, because all the jobs went away to foreign competition. I am still forever changed because of what I saw growing up in a tough part of our state. I don't ever want to go backwards. And that is what motivates me to focus on helping businesses, large and small. I helped my mom start a small business at a time when everything else was shuddering up and said, "Out of business," or, "Going out of business," at all the little stores I used to go to.

And my mother at that moment in time decided to start a small shop. I was like, "What are you thinking, mom?" But she had a dream. She never made money with her little flower shop, she just wanted to hire women who were displaced homemakers or had been abused women. That was her dream - to help get a job for people.

She knew the dignity of a job for people. I come out of a world where small businesses matter. No large business ever started as a large business. They all start small. And you nurture them, you cultivate them, you help them, give them that hand. And that's what this organization does. It helps people see the possibility.

I want more people to come here. I want more jobs created. We've had 53,000 jobs created on Long Island since I became Governor, 47,000 new businesses started on Long Island in 2023 alone - that's one year. People are rediscovering Long Island, and that's personal to me. Whether it's a small business in our absolutely charming downtowns - first rate, every one of them - or our innovation corridor where we're investing billions of dollars in technologies and therapies to give people a new chance at life, whether it's Brookhaven, Stony Brook, Cold Spring Harbor - I've been to all of them, and there's phenomenal amounts of state money going into them.

A lot of it comes from the $350 million I put in my budget, the Long Island Fund, to help have money available just for Long Island projects. That is my commitment. That is my commitment. And I'll continue doing everything I can. I've got a State of the State next Tuesday? I hope I get there because I'm coming to your party Monday night. Don't let me stay out too late, okay? So I always enjoy - I'll see many of you next Monday night. But, the issues of public safety and affordability may not sound flashy or brand new, but they are the bread and butter issues that everybody talks about.

I've been talking about them for years. So, just as you're talking to people you know - if I'm successful in getting this budget through, there'll be money back in people's pockets that was never there before.

Now people criticize our inflation rebate. Let me explain this to you real quick because if you don't want the money, tell me because I'll give it to somebody else. This is $500 for every family because everybody in our state paid more for everything - from sneakers and backpacks to groceries - and therefore the sales tax revenues we collected were higher. Right, Comptroller? We collected $3 billion more.

Now it's a one-off. I'm not hoping that we're going to have this again, because I don't want inflation to be that high anymore. So inflation stabilizes, we won't have it again. That's why you can't have this as a recurring expense. We have $3 billion more than we expected because every New Yorker paid more for everything to live here.

It's all across the nation. We can put it in our coffers or I'm giving it back to you. I say give it back to you. I was in shopping malls and shopping for holiday gifts and going to grocery stores. When you tell somebody, especially a person who's down on their luck or struggling trying to make ends meet, you have $500 - it may not sound like a lot to people in this room, I'm telling you right now that has an impact.

But also, if you have family trying to raise kids, we said, "The child tax credit we have is nice. Why don't we triple it?" So someone with a family of little babies and little kids, $1,000 more per child under the age of four, $500 for everyone. So one family can get $2,800 more in their pockets. My friends, for some families, that is the difference of being able to put aside for college, pay those utility bills, pay the rent. It means a lot to people.

I have a couple other ideas, I'm not previewing them right here, but if you're a middle class taxpayer, you're going to like to hear this, okay? That's all I'm saying. We have so much more to do. But I love what I do. I love the journey I'm on with all of you, to continue making all New Yorkers be proud. Proud that you do come from the Empire State.

And for our business owners, I thank you. I thank you for going through some tough times with that pandemic and supply chain disruptions and inflation. You're saying, "What else is coming?" The locust and the plague, that must be coming next. It's been hard, but you endured and you persevered, but I'm so proud to say that New York sense of the possible. Nothing can keep us down, especially here on Long Island. I'm so proud of all of you. Onward and upward into a great 2025. Thank you, everyone.

Contact the Governor's Press Office