Governor Hochul Talks Budget & Other Issues on 'Inside City Hall'

Earlier today, Governor Kathy Hochul was a guest on “Inside City Hall” with Errol Louis to discuss the State budget and other issues facing New York.

AUDIO: The Governor’s remarks are available in audio form here.

A rush transcript of the Governor’s remarks is available below:

Errol Louis, NY1: Governor Hochul, thank you for joining me tonight. We have an open door policy, so we're always glad to see you.

Governor Hochul: Thank you.

Errol Louis, NY1: But, when we spoke last time, it was after the Budget was passed. Are you taking a victory lap in advance? Is this positive thinking?

Governor Hochul: No, well, I spoke to you when I first introduced the Budget in January, so I decided I'd give you a progress report.

Errol Louis, NY1: Okay.

Governor Hochul: And, you know, there's no reason we can't wrap it up in the near term, but people know what I'm holding out for — just like I had to do this with bail and significant housing reforms so you could build more housing because we have an affordability crisis — so, everyone knows what I'm standing for. And I'm not wavering on my belief that we need to make some significant reforms before we can say this Budget process is over.

I'll keep up the fight and I don't think a lot of people are worried about the time clock — maybe some reporters are, but most people aren't even aware there's a late Budget because we're continuing to fund government; it's not like Washington when the government literally shuts down. So, all services are being provided and I have to use the leverage I have to say there's policies that are important that I don't believe will get done by the Legislature because this is who I'm fighting for, the people of this State, and they know it.

Errol Louis, NY1: You know, I want to get into the substance of why this delay and why you're standing fast on this — but, I wanted to play something for you. George Pataki, the former governor, Republican. The last time there was a Republican governor, it was George Pataki. Um, and he actually praised you for holding up the Budget. I wanted to play a little bit of what he said on ABC yesterday and get your reaction.

[...]

Errol Louis, NY1: Okay, what do you make of that?

Governor Hochul: That's quite a compliment. I mean, I always am willing to stand up and take the heat to do what's right, and I have done so many events with victims of crimes whose cases were thrown out of court on technicalities that had nothing to do with anything that would've been exculpatory for a defendant, anything that would've been important in that case — stuff that doesn't matter: duplicate body cams or a piece of paper that you already have a record of and the cases are being thrown out; especially, 94 percent of domestic violence cases are being thrown out of court and those victims walk out, and they know their abuser can lie and wait and attack them again, or harm their families; 100 have been killed in the last year.

We have records for it, two years ago — 100 New Yorkers died at the hands of someone who had been an intimate partner. I'm trying to stop that. I don't want people cycling back out in the streets because of technicalities. But I support the original concept behind the changes in 2019 because I don't want people languishing in court — I am sorry, in jail waiting to go to trial. There should be a timeframe on that. That's not fair to the defendants. They're not even guilty of a crime when they're sitting in jail. And also, just the way it was skewed that prosecutors had the upper hand because they could wait till the last minute to give information to the defense.

That was all wrong and I'd say that; I'm not changing that. I'm simply saying that it swung the other way, so we're having judges believe under the law, they must dismiss these cases on technicalities. Serious dismissals? Yes. Someone hides important information? Yes, there has to be consequences, but it should be proportional to what the material is that you left behind.

Errol Louis, NY1: Well, yeah. In fact, let me explain for my viewers. In criminal cases under the current law, and these were changed in 2019, everybody has to see all of the evidence — the defense and the prosecution — all of the evidence has to be presented. If, for some reason, important evidence is not presented in time, within a certain period of time, generally about 60 days or so, the judge is legally supposed to dismiss the case, and certainly, if there was no due diligence — if the prosecution, for example, didn't even really try and go out and get all of the information that was relevant, then the case gets dismissed.

And so, the thinking now is that that has gone too far, that there are cases where, say there were five cops at a crime scene and you forgot to get the records from the fifth cop — which would've duplicated the other four cops — should the case be dismissed? And, so, the judges are, in some cases, making that decision.

What specific change would stop that from happening? Because, again, this is always a judgment call.

Governor Hochul: Right, of course it is. But you said if it's “important evidence.” We're not talking about “important evidence.” I'm talking about something, as you gave that example, a recording on someone's — a body cam of someone who came two hours after the crime and they didn't think to get that because it's not relevant.

So the question right now is, is it relevant or is it related? Okay. Is it just related to the — yeah, that's related to the case. Sure, that guy showed up later, he has a record, but is it really relevant to the guilt or innocence of that individual — and that's what's hanging a lot of this up. But also, the judges should be able to look at the severity of what has been neglected to be turned over and deal with it proportionally.

If it's really bad that they should have known and they should have turned it over, and it seems like there's something sinister, they're trying to hide it from the defense, I would definitely want those dismissed, right? You have the power to do that. But if it turns out that they worked all the way up until — you know, there's a short timeframe to turn this over, they did everything they could; they exercised the due diligence, they tried to find everything and some record was missing that was not important to the disposition of the case. That one, they should say, you don't dismiss, you let it go forward, and there should be a proportional response to what was the weight of that evidence, the proportional —

Errol Louis, NY1: You know what I think may be happening, Governor? I saw something called — it's an organization called scrutinize.org, and they went through hundreds and hundreds of unreported decisions; these are not ones you're going to find online, but they went through a lot of judicial decisions — 300 of them, they said, when there were dismissals of this kind — and what you find over and over again is not malicious behavior by prosecutors, but kind of lazy behavior, you know? What I've heard from a number of sources is that sometimes the sticking point is not even with the prosecutor, but with the NYPD because they're supposed to turn over disciplinary records of any cop that's involved in the case and the NYPD can be somewhat reluctant and somewhat slow — maybe their systems are not up to speed.

What do you want to do to fix that problem?

Governor Hochul: I want to say this: New York’s discovery laws are by far the most progressive in the nation in terms of being, I would say, skewed toward more positive outcomes for the defense. The prosecutors, since 2019, now have to go through 21 categories of materials that must be turned over. No other state has that. What I'm trying to do is make sure that the judge will actually look at what was missing, how much weight that should have against the importance of the case. Is it important? Is it relevant? Is it just related?

Let them make that decision. Let a judge be involved in that. Look at those factors from the 21 categories — I'm not saying get rid of those — but even if every one of the reforms I want changed is enacted, we will still, by far, have the most progressive discovery laws in the nation.

We're not rolling things back, and people who are mischaracterizing my motivation here — I'm just looking out for the public safety of everyday New Yorkers who are saying, “I want to be safe in my streets.” And this is not the only dynamic. People know that I fought hard to get the bail laws changed so we don't have people cycling in and out of the system who committed crimes, who never should have been let out — they should have been held on bail. We know those stories, and now I just want to stop this insanity of a huge spike in dismissals in New York City and in the rest of the State resulting from these changes. Something has gone wrong where people who otherwise would've been held and gone to trial to determine guilt or innocence are now walking the streets without us ever knowing, and they'll be back again if they've done it before.

Errrol Louis, NY1: Okay. I mean, one last point. When I spoke with an advocate for domestic violence rights not long ago, one thing she pointed out was that there's not always, in these cases, a clear line between victim and perpetrator as far as the law is concerned, meaning if there are cross complaints of domestic violence, it's not clear who you're protecting when a case is dismissed or kept in the court.

Governor Hochul: Of course there's always exceptions, and what I said, I never want to do it — I think the Legislature does a lot — we legislate to the exception and forget the vast number of people who are victims, who are turned on by someone they thought would love and take care of them. A lot of women, my mother was in a home where there was domestic violence and she grew up to be a champion and advocate. She changed laws in Albany when I was in high school. I watched my mom fight for them. We opened a home for victims of domestic violence, my family did, because I saw how this devastates people and it's so hard for them to recover.

My mom used to take women into court and sit with them, and if a case came up when they weren't able to keep the defendant held and get an order of protection, and the woman had to go home and know that person is out there still stalking her and her children — I mean, this is what I'm fighting for and I just want more people to understand why I am doing this, why this is so important. But it's not just domestic violence, it's all crimes. People need to be held accountable for what they did, and you should not have a case where the police have arrested someone, brought forth evidence, making the case with the prosecutor.

And, by the way, the prosecutor is an officer of the court; they're not supposed to be pro-defendant, pro-victim — they have to be objective, right? And they're not going to do something or they should not do something because there are consequences if they do something wrong in the first place. They can be disbarred, they can be brought up on disciplinary charges —

Errol Louis, NY1: Sure.

Governor Hochul: They can go through —

Errol Louis, NY1: They can also be voted out of office.

Governor Hochul: There’s a lot of things that can happen. I know there's a mistrust of the system, I understand that —

Errol Louis, NY1: This sounds personal for you and it doesn't sound like the kind of thing that's going to get bargained away the way so many things get sort of traded up in Albany.

Governor Hochul: I held firm on bail as well. Anything that has to do with the safety of New Yorkers who are feeling this sense that we don't care about them, we're not looking out for them; they're afraid to walk the streets, take our subways, have their kids walk home from school. I'm a mom, it is personal to me; the safety of every New Yorker is always going to be personal to me.

Errol Louis, NY1: Let me ask you about some of the other things that are happening. In the wake of last week's fatal helicopter crash in the Hudson River, Senator Schumer yesterday said he'd like to end helicopter tourism in New York City. The Mayor doesn't sound like he's inclined to go in that direction. I was wondering what your view of that is.

Governor Hochul: Yeah. I have not had a chance to process. I mean, that is a horrible tragedy. When you see those children's faces, and they're so happy and excited to be in New York, and to know that they're forever gone — it just makes your heart sink. I will look at the answers. I know there's some bills introduced in the Legislature, and again, there'll be many debates about this, but I think we need to, right now, process the sadness of that tragedy and the loss of life.

Errol Louis, NY1: Do you take the State helicopter a lot? How do you feel about it? Is it a safe form of travel?

Governor Hochul: I feel it is, but also I have the most experienced pilots probably in the nation. These people are battle-tested and they're constantly, constantly inspecting helicopters for their safety and taking this one out of commission because it's time for repairs. So, I do feel very secure.

Errol Louis, NY1: Upstate, over the weekend, a family of six perished in the crash of a small airplane. Do you have any updates on that? Do we know if there was a safety —

Governor Hochul: No. I have to say this. I want to know what's going on. In this new administration in Washington where there have been cuts, where there has been this sense that we really don't need government to be there to protect us or work for us anymore, this whole rethinking of the federal government's responsibility — one of their responsibilities is to keep our skies safe, and that has not been happening. You look at what happened in Washington, my son could hear it from his house, the crash in the Potomac.

What's happened in New York? There's been so many airplane crashes and near misses, so air traffic controllers run by the FAA, we should be looking to Washington asking questions of them. “What is going on here under your watch, Mr. Secretary of Transportation,” who's more concerned about safety in the subways then he has safety in the skies — and that's his job to make sure our skies are safe.

I'm continuing to focus on safety with the Mayor in the subways. And guess what? They're dramatically improved since they had been before the pandemic. Our numbers are still — no crime is acceptable. We're going to keep working. We're not done, but dramatically better. So I wish he'd focus on his job as well.

Errol Louis, NY1: I was going to say, those concerns that you're raising about the administration, when's the last time you spoke to President Trump?

Governor Hochul: The day he did the tariffs, I got a phone call from him. Was that two weeks ago now, the first wave of crisis? Unforced destruction of our economy? I cannot exaggerate the impact. I have Wall Street —

Errol Louis, NY1: What did he do? He called to tell you to duck? Or “Wall Street might be a little busy today?”

Governor Hochul: No, Wall Street. I have Main Street, I have farms, I have everything. But no, he actually actually talked to me about Amtrak, because we talked about this, I talked about Penn Station when I was in his office, right. We had a long meeting and I was talking about getting federal support for infrastructure projects. And I said, “We can work together. I'm trying to find some areas we can work together.”

And I said, “I've got to fight. I'm going to fight you on everything else. You know that I don't mind standing up and taking on the fights. But an area we can get some collaboration,” because I'll need federal dollars, something like Penn Station, which I was letting him know that Amtrak was a barrier to why it's taking so long. And maybe we can work together to do something about that. So he just called to let me talk about that. It was a very quick call. He goes, “I'm working on Amtrak.”

Errol Louis, NY1: There is this reputation that the President has that either you're with him and you're kissing his ring or you're a sworn enemy and he'll try and destroy you. You seem to be steering a middle course.

Governor Hochul: We’ll see how long it lasts. My job is to protect New York at all costs, and if that means standing up to someone who I think has been very destructive, who has now hurt our economy; and whether it's the North Country where the commerce with Canada is now destroyed, visitors are way down in Buffalo — those local economies count on them shopping in stores, going to our sporting events and even just that snapshot of what's happened to our State, and driving costs up.

Errol, you heard me talk about this when I was here talking about my affordability agenda. I have a plan to put $5,000 back in the pockets of families with little kids: the child tax credit, the middle class tax cut, the inflation rebate. You name it, we're finding a way to put it in your pocket. And at the same time, these tariffs are going to suck that money right out of your other pocket — anywhere from $3,000 to $6,000 more.

It's unconscionable, what he is doing. The President promised on Inauguration Day that prices would go down, and guess what? They've gone way up. And heaven help anybody who's going to use real eggs on Easter. I have an Easter egg roll at the Governor's Residence, inviting kids from the neighborhood over, but we can't use, I have to use —

Errol Louis, NY1: Yeah, don't use real eggs.

Governor Hochul: I can't, I can't afford them.

Errol Louis, NY1: Lumps of tofu or something. What's your reaction to the administration threatening to pull federal funding from Columbia University? That appears to be expanding, and now it includes the other New York Ivy, which is Cornell, which is partly a State school, as a matter of fact.

Governor Hochul: It’s despicable. It is absolutely despicable. Threatening our educational institutions because they don't teach the way you want them to — now, people who criticize the antisemitism on our campuses are not wrong. It is rampant in ways that are shocking to me, especially after October 7 and I stand with the Jewish community.

I went to Cornell after the threats and right afterward I came back from my father's funeral who passed away when I was in Israel after the attacks, and I went right to Cornell and sat with the kids in the Center for Jewish Life. And they were terrified because it was someone who was posting social media content that you should kill all the Jewish students.

Errol Louis, NY1: Sure.

Governor Hochul: And how are these kids supposed to learn and just socialize and have a normal college life when they're being threatened like that? So we have to continue focusing on that right to speech, right to protest, yes. I was a protester. You were probably a protester on campus. We all did that. But it wasn't against other students. I protested apartheid in South Africa. My parents protested the Vietnam War. But it was never hurtful to other students.

Errol Louis, NY1: Right.

Governor Hochul: And that's what we're seeing too much of. But that being said, to take away and threaten schools’ funding, which is used for research in vaccinations and cures for cancer — these institutions are also laboratories of ideas and especially in the health care space. So it's a real crisis for New York to have that money gone from our institutions. And the problem is the State can't make it up.

We have $93 billion that we get from the federal government in our Budget. I can't make up the loss of money if that goes, or with private institutions —

Errol Louis, NY1: $93 billion with a “B”?

Governor Hochul: Out of a $252 billion Budget, $93 billion covers — it’s Medicaid, it's education money, it is child care money, it is nutrition money. We rely on the federal government. It's why we pay federal taxes.

Errol Louis, NY1: Well your proposed Budget increases spending by about $10 billion. Under the circumstances, the kind of turbulence that you're talking about coming out of Washington, are you going to go to the rainy day fund or maybe make some adjustments?

Governor Hochul: So much of it is mandated. Medicaid is one of the biggest drivers. Medicaid and education, the biggest, by far the largest part of our Budget. And Medicaid costs go up, I can't stop that increase. I think it was an 11 percent or 14 percent increase this year without adding anything. That's just how it happened.

So, I've got to continue providing services. But I have been very financially smart about these budgets. When I first became Governor, we had 4 percent in reserves. We now have about 15 percent for that rainy day, which —

Errol Louis, NY1: That was your target, yes.

Governor Hochul: Could be a recession, we're at $21 billion, but I can't use it to backfill recurring expenses. What does that mean? I can do one time shot of something. I can do something to help put money in peoples' pockets, which I'm going to do with our inflation rebate, but I can't say that I'm going to invest more in a program that I need to have that money year after year, after year, after year. That's called recurring expenses. We cannot do that. It's going to be one shot only.

Errol Louis, NY1: Before I let you go, there was something that just happened today. We just heard from the attorney for a Palestinian student, believe at Columbia, a 10 year green card holder was taken into custody by DHS today. Does DHS coordinate with the State? Do you hear about any of this in advance?

Governor Hochul: No. No. And I have said this to Tom Homan, I said, “Our laws say we will work with you, State Police will work with you if you have a warrant, someone has committed crimes here, crimes in their own country, they're on a terrorism watch list. We'll cooperate with you in those circumstances easily.” We did that under Joe Biden. We did this, we've always done this.

But what you're trying to do is take — when you split up families like they did up in Sackets Harbor, if you're familiar with this case, Tom Homan’s hometown, they had masks and people walking in with guns. The ICE agents at 6:00 a.m. roused this family of a couple teenage boys, their mom and a third grader, and took them for 11 days to a detention center in Texas and I said, “They've got to come back. You've got to bring them back. They didn't do anything wrong.”

I talked to the farmer and everybody else. This community was an uproar. And this is probably a pretty red area of our State, right? And politics didn't matter. You just separated a family. And when they do that, I called and said they've got to come back. I talked to Homan a couple times. They did come back. But my God, if we hadn't put on so much pressure. And the school, my God, the principal of that school fought so hard to get this family back united again.

This is America for God's sakes. Why should we have to worry about kids getting scooped off a campus or out of their beds in Sackets Harbor? I'm the Governor, I will fight for my State, but this has gone too far.

Errol Louis, NY1: Okay. We're going to leave it there for now. I'm going to guess that because it's Holy Week and it's Passover and Easter's coming up that we may not see a Budget this week. Is that a safe bet?

Governor Hochul: I would say April gets tough because we had Eid, we had Passover, we have Easter, so this would be a tough week to get it done. But I have been driving this with a sense of urgency even a month before the Budget process started, meeting with the leaders saying, “We can get this done. There's a path. There's a path we can get on down.”

So I'm going to be pushing hard to get this done, but when we head into April, I'll be able to get a lot more of the things that I think are important for New Yorkers, that they're grateful I get in and the Legislature has the rest of Session to press their priorities.

They have something that I don't have, they introduce bills and pass them. So this is the time that I have an opportunity to talk about what I think, and I know what New Yorkers are looking for from us, and that's public safety and affordability.

Errol Louis, NY1: Okay. We'll leave it there for now. Thanks so much for coming by. Great talking with you.

Governor Hochul: Good to see you, thank you.