New York’s Perfect Progressive Priorities No gas stoves in new buildings, and only a handful of new charter schools.
The Democratic left is running New York state these days, and Kathy Hochul appears to be largely Governor in name only. That’s the message from the $229 billion state budget that passed this week after months of haggling behind closed doors. The biggest losers are parents hoping for a good charter school for their children.
Ms. Hochul went into the talks with priorities she knew would be a hard lift in a Legislature controlled by progressives. They included modest bail reform, which passed, and her signature plan to expand housing by allowing the state to override local zoning laws, which was rejected.
Alas, she also succeeded in getting the first statewide ban on natural gas in most new construction beginning in 2025, which was also a progressive priority. When the Consumer Product Safety Commission first raised the idea of banning gas stoves, New York Sen. Chuck Schumer dismissed it as myth pushed by “shameless and desperate MAGA Republicans.” Care to revise and extend your remarks, Senator?
The Governor says the new ban doesn’t ban existing gas stoves. But it is the first step in making gas appliances more costly and difficult to replace. Consider this an echo of another infamous political promise: if you like your gas stove, you can keep it. This is part of the progressive method of denying that they favor an unpopular policy when it is first publicized, but then implementing it on the sly and gradually so current voters don’t get too upset.
Ms. Hochul’s most embarrassing loss was on charter schools. As a candidate she had called for raising the state cap on charters of 460 schools. She compromised with herself on that by proposing in her budget to keep the cap but eliminate the regional caps.
That would have allowed New York City, where charter demand is high and which hit its cap of 275 schools in 2019, to add more than 100 new charter schools. But she settled for merely allowing the licenses of 14 “zombie” charters—charters that either closed or never opened—to be transferred to new schools in New York City.
It didn’t help that the Governor gave unions what they wanted at the start of negotiations—a record 10% increase in state cash for public schools without getting anything in return. Even the 14 zombie charters came at a price. None of the charters can be located in a district that already has 55% of its students in charter schools. This logic is the opposite of the movie “Field of Dreams”: if they show they want to come, you can’t build it.
We could go on about the rest of the budget, but these lowlights are depressing enough for one day. The New York budget is a perfect expression of progressive priorities: Tell people how to cook, and where their children can go to school. If you don’t like it, move to Florida, which sounds better every day.
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