Tag: state senator tom o’mara

October 9, 2023
By State Senator Tom O’Mara

The following lead paragraph in one news story last week speaks volumes about where things have been and where we’re headed in New York government: ”After two years of record spending by her administration, Gov. Kathy Hochul has ordered a budget freeze at state agencies.”
That was the word out of Albany last week, that the governor was ordering state agencies to keep spending flat in the coming year because New York, as I’ve noted here in recent weeks, faces mounting state budget deficits of up to $40 billion cumulatively over the next three years.
“That is not the path that we can continue on,” the governor declared last week, adding that it’s time to “stabilize and be realistic.”

Now we need to be realistic? Now we need spending restraint? Where has she been? Let’s be clear, it’s been far more than “two years of record spending” under Governor Hochul. As I’ve said many times over the past several years, her tenure has been defined (and will always be defined) as an era when Albany Democrats went ahead and spent the roof off the state Capitol. It’s been an alarming, out-of-control, irresponsible spending binge the likes of which we have never seen in this state.

Remember some of the details: Their final, $230-million state budget this year is the largest-ever state spending plan. It’s merely the latest chapter, though, under all-Democrat control when Governor Hochul and the Legislature’s Democrat majorities have carelessly thrown taxpayer dollars to the wind. They added $8 billion this year alone. New York State’s budget in 2018, the last year that Republicans held the majority in the state Senate, totaled $170 billion. Following this year’s budget, state spending has increased nearly $60 billion, or approaching 40%, over the last five years. This outrageous growth in spending alone is larger than the entire budgets of 35 states. This year’s total budget is larger than the combined budgets of Texas and Florida (each of which has more population than New York State) and it spends more than 1½ times per capita than California (which is twice the population of New York State).

There has been zero restraint on their part despite the warnings from many of us that the bill would come due sooner or later and when it does, it’s going to be yet another hard hit for taxpayers, local economies, and communities in every corner of this state.

The bill is coming due sooner, not later. And the alarming fact is that even if Governor Hochul freezes state spending at current levels, it would only save approximately $1 billion, not nearly enough to even begin closing what’s anticipated to be a $9.1-billion deficit next year. What about the year after that, when we’re projected to face an almost $14-billion budget gap? And the following year when projections show another shortfall of upwards of $13 billion?

And that’s all before having to address the migrant crisis, the cost of far-reaching energy mandates, a multi-billion-dollar Unemployment Insurance debt, rising Medicaid costs, and all the other new spending commitments we’re locked into thanks to the Albany Democrat spending spree.

The point is that Governor Hochul’s nod to the need for spending restraint won’t begin to cut it now. She and her Democrat allies knew it and ignored their responsibility to stop spending all along like there would be no tomorrow. As many of us warned, it has set up a future, beginning next year, of depleting state reserve funds, spending cuts, higher taxes, more fees, and skyrocketing debt for every New Yorker.

It’s a fiscal and economic mess and the Albany Democrats are surely going to want to make you pay for it. That is not acceptable.

July 29, 2023
By State Senator Tom O’Mara

It’s no secret that the crisis at the nation’s southern border has established an epicenter right here in New York State — with no end in sight. In fact, it’s just beginning.

Since last spring, New York City has received an influx of more than 90,000 migrants. The numbers continue to grow. It has overwhelmed the city’s ability to find housing and provide services.

“It’s going to get worse before it gets better,” New York City Mayor Eric Adams said last week, after having already declared the situation out of control and projecting it will cost the city at least $4 billion.

That’s just for starters – not only in New York City but across this state, including right here in the Southern Tier and Finger Lakes regions as Governor Kathy Hochul eyes locations throughout New York for housing shelters to relocate migrants and ease the city’s burden.

I’ll remind you that, long ago, New York City declared itself a sanctuary city. They opened their arms to shelter undocumented immigrants. They asked for it and they should not, now, push their self-created problem to areas of the state that did not. Nor should we be footing the bill for it and, believe me, we are.

The latest comes from an Albany Times Union report that the Hochul administration, after securing at least $1 billion in the new state budget to come to New York City’s rescue, has also approved an $800 million contract with two Texas companies and, apparently, an unidentified third company, to build temporary shelters to house migrants.

The details on the new contract remain sketchy. Why? Because on May 9, shortly after this year’s budget was enacted, Governor Hochul issued an executive order formally declaring a “State Disaster Emergency” surrounding the fact that the “arrival of increased numbers of migrants seeking shelter in the City and State of New York is expected to exacerbate an already large-scale humanitarian crisis and create a disaster emergency to which local governments are unable to adequately respond, creating a threat to health and safety, which could result in the loss of life or property.”

The troubling significance of this executive order is that it allows the governor to unilaterally authorize “emergency appropriations” that also, incidentally, permit the administration to bypass not only legislative approval but normal competitive bidding requirements and auditing by the state comptroller as well.

In other words, government by emergency executive order has become standard operating procedure for New York’s governor, one that allows for the skirting of what would otherwise be fundamental checks and balances in the awarding of state tax dollars.

It continues to echo practices that became commonplace during the COVID-19 pandemic and that led to abuses which, it appears, continue to occur. According to the Times Union story, one of the Texas companies made a $5,000 contribution to the governor’s campaign just a week prior to being awarded the migrant housing contract.

Back in May, in a letter to Governor Hochul, our Senate Republican conference wrote, “We are gravely concerned by the lack of transparency around the placement of migrants throughout our state…Specifically, we would like to know how long migrants will be housed for, where specifically they will be housed, how much is being paid for their housing, and what services they are receiving and for how long. We also request that information about potentially moving migrants is communicated from you or your administration directly to the municipalities.”

We continue to be gravely concerned by the ongoing lack of accountability and transparency, not to mention the enormous amount of reckless state spending that this governor and her Democrat allies in the Legislature appear willing to dump on taxpayers.

In its own examination of the newly revealed migrant housing contract, one fiscal watchdog, the Empire Center for Public Policy, states, “This is just the beginning—and the Hochul administration’s response to the migrant ‘emergency’ is already raising big questions surrounded by bigger dollar signs… In the absence of a fuller, ongoing accounting of just what the state is up to, this much seems clear: Hochul’s response to the migrant influx emergency is serving as cover for a potentially very costly mess, with no end in sight.”

Crisis at Southern Border Tom O’Mara

July 23, 2023

There’s nothing like a summer heat wave to focus attention on the need for reliable sources of energy.

Unfortunately, according to a recent analysis from the New York State Independent System Operator (NSYIO), which essentially functions as the overseer of a reliable energy supply for all New Yorkers, the current rush by Governor Hochul and legislative Democrats to ensure the state’s energy supply goes zero-emissions in the very near future is not dependable.

In its latest “Short Term Reliability Analysis,” NYSIO finds that New York City, for example, will likely find itself woefully short on power in just two years. The report finds that “factors driving New York City’s reliability need in 2025 include increased electrification of the transportation and building sectors, continued economic growth following the pandemic, and the unavailability or retirement of select generators (emphasis mine) under the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation’s (DEC) emissions limits.”

In other words, the state’s rapid disavowal of any and all fossil fuel-related sources of power in this state, coupled with the continued shutdown of nuclear energy facilities, spells trouble for keeping New Yorkers, in cities and elsewhere, warm in the winter and cool in the summer.

This looming shortfall in the state’s supply of electricity is the report’s key warning. New York is leaping into the energy unknown and the consequences are not just alarming, they could be catastrophic. As noted by the Empire Center for Public Policy in its own assessment of the latest NYSIO report, the mistakes being made here are not in setting goals for a clean energy future – most of us agree on this overarching goal – but in trying to grasp at that future “before developing reliable replacement sources of power.”

We should be opening the door to anything and everything that will reduce emissions, especially those things that can become real right away. It is greener to actually reduce emissions using natural gas and other lower emission technologies than it is to make an unfulfillable promise about being renewable in 2040 and not doing all we can now to reduce emissions. Perfect is the enemy of the better in the meantime under the Albany Democrats’ climate agenda.

New York’s climate plan has the cart before the horse indeed. In the two years following the state’s closure of the Indian Point nuclear plant, greenhouse gas emissions in Zone J, the New York City electric grid, went up 47% due to the increased use of oil burning peaker plants. Nobody has been properly held to account for that (not Andrew Cuomo, the state Public Service Commission (PSC) and DEC, the climate zealots, or RFK, Jr.). If it were a corporation that discharged such emissions and you used DEC’s own impact-based enforcement guidelines, the closure of Indian Point would be the worst environmental crime in state history.

The Empire Center concludes in its own recent analysis, “This ‘shutdown first, replace later’ model was a major cause of rolling blackouts on the West Coast, but New York authorities didn’t bother to learn from California’s experience. Simple common sense would indicate that the wise approach would be to find assured sources of reliable and dispatchable electricity production before taking critical power plants offline. Sadly, common sense was the first victim of New York energy policy. Even more sadly, it won’t be the last.”

It echoes what our Senate and Assembly Republican conferences have been saying all along, especially once we saw Governor Hochul moving full speed ahead without any idea of what the consequences would truly be for affordability, feasibility, and reliability.

Last week I joined my Republican colleagues on the Senate Energy Committee to urge the PSC include additional energy sources and innovative technologies in the definition of “zero emissions sources” when it comes to the state meeting its far-reaching mandates under the current “Climate Leadership and Community Protection Act (CLCPA). We should not turn our collective back on the reasonable utilization of hydrogen, nuclear, renewable natural gas, bioenergy, and other new and emerging technologies to ensure the most effective, affordable, and reliable transition for all New Yorkers.

We wrote, “As a Conference, we have advocated for a comprehensive reliability study to ensure the State’s electricity grid can handle the mandates under the CLCPA and recommendations made in the Climate Action Council’s Scoping Plan for transitioning to a zero-emissions electricity grid by 2040. We have also advocated for an approach of using any energy source which will help the State reduce emissions.”

New York State has been a leader in clean energy and reducing emissions and we should continue our advancement. The trouble has been that Governor Hochul took the reins from former Governor Cuomo on a plan that has certainly been politically driven but has never included a straightforward cost-benefit analysis of its feasibility, affordability, or reliability.

New Yorkers are left facing mountainous costs and dire consequences.