Albany, NY — Governor Hochul’s executive budget mentioned little on the Climate Act — the most far-reaching, expensive and misrepresented public policy in the state, according to the testimony of James Hanley, senior policy analyst at the Empire Center for Public Policy. 

Hanley is invited to testify before the Joint Legislative Fiscal Committees on the governor’s proposed budget later this afternoon. “This act shapes nearly all other state actions by making them subsidiary to reducing carbon emissions statewide,” Hanley said in part of his submitted written testimony, which addresses Albany’s far-reaching climate proposals—and the lack of any hard cost data on these policies. 

Stream the full budget hearing here. 

“The authors of the state’s Climate Act assumed the people of New York are solidly behind the goal of reducing greenhouse gas emissions. If they are, then they will express that goal through the market. It is far less certain that a government-directed timetable can be economically or technologically realistic. But even if New Yorkers want the government to give them a push, there’s no reason to believe they don’t want to know how this will be paid for, or by whom.” 

“Ideally, the governor should reject this costly burden on New York’s residents” Hanley concluded. 

The full submitted testimony can be read here. 

The Empire Center, based in Albany, is an independent, not-for-profit, non-partisan think tank dedicated to promoting policies that can make New York a better place to live, work and raise a family.