Governor Hochul: “I’m really optimistic. When I look at a room like this, people care enough about their communities to show up here today, share ideas, listen to their elected leaders, and you have amazing elected leaders here. You truly do. Don’t take that for granted. These are committed individuals. These are my partners. I put aside party labels. The day you’re elected, you’re a New Yorker, not a Democrat or Republican. And that’s what we need more of…I cherish the ability and the privilege to represent people from all walks of life, every corner of this State.”
Hochul: “I’m so excited that that growth is continuing right here on Long Island. We know what we have here, my friends. It’s extraordinary. Charming, charming little communities and hamlets, such personality.”
Earlier today, Governor Hochul delivered remarks at the Long Island Association’s State of the Region breakfast.
VIDEO of the event is available on YouTube here and in TV quality (h.264, mp4) format here.
AUDIO of the Governor’s remarks is available here.
PHOTOS of the event is available on the Governor’s Flickr page.
A rush transcript of the Governor’s remarks is available below:
Good morning. Good morning. Alright, I’ll answer the question. Of course, you should have seen the other guy and I still have one good arm to punch with. So don’t worry about that. I can handle anything. But next time I will not have a New Year’s resolution to go from lifting 70 pounds to 80 without warming up a little bit better.
So, I’ll be fine. I’ll be fine. I was not going to miss this event. I’m so happy to be here. I come every year. And I want to thank, Matt Cohen for the extraordinary work that he does. We’ve been working very closely together, and I appreciate his leadership and his guidance to our administration to make sure we’re focused on the priorities of the business community here on Long Island.
I know a little bit about this organization because I came here all the time with our great friend Kevin Law. Kevin, thank you for stepping up and being the Chair of Empire State Development. You think there’s a lot of – a lot of extra money coming to Long Island these days. Kevin is in the right place to make that happen.
And I’m really, really happy that someone who is my daily advisor, someone who I rely on constantly, the Secretary to the Governor, Karen Persichilli Keogh, who comes from Baldwin, who wants to be on Long Island all the time, so Karen, thank you. Peter King, you know, we served together in Congress. And you know, Peter, I miss those days seemed like the tea party was pretty calm compared to what’s going on there now. I just want to – I just want to make an observation. But I— who would have thought I’d be saying I miss the tea party? But I want to thank you for being a great leader on issues that are so important to us and what I learned with you as the Chairman of Homeland Security, I still use today. I mean, I still reference that we talked about the presence of Hezbollah in pockets in North America and all the other threats we have in ISIS and Hamas and so there’s a lot that we focused on in Congress that helps me make sure that New Yorkers are protected today. So, thank you.
And also, two of my favorite County Executives are in the room. Bruce Blakeman. I’m walking in, I hear somebody doesn’t want New York on Long Island. Like, I don’t know, should I just walk off the stage right now? You don’t want me to take all the money with me though, right? Bruce, Bruce, Long Island is here and I’m with Long Island because New York cares about Long Island immensely.
I love Long Island. How can you not love Long Island? So, nothing will keep me away from Long Island. And I continue working with all of you and Ed Romain, we had a great meeting right after he was elected and talked about our shared vision for Long Island as well. So, there’s a lot we can do together.
And I actually figured out, because I have a lot of time driving in cars – I think I’m the first elected Governor who had ever been elected to represent suburbs in the history of New York. So, I understand suburbs, okay? I understand the challenges and I used to rail against Albany about the unfunded mandates, too.
But that’s why I’ve changed our attitude toward places like Long Island and the suburbs. Because it’s in my DNA. I spent 14 years on a town board balancing budget, begging the State for money to fix the damn potholes, which I’m glad we did here on Long Island. We spent over a billion dollars to make sure that you don’t lose your dentures and your teeth every time you go on our roads anymore. So, so it’s safer now, right? A lot more fun to get out to the beaches when the roads are safer – fewer potholes. So, I understand that. And I understand that something like water and sewer lines that most people don’t really give much thought to, that really juices up elected officials. I mean, we are so excited when we can make announcements, like the $37 million we announced just a short time ago, last month, to bring water quality issues to bear and focus on our water lines and sewer lines.
And that’s just the beginning because I understand how important the environment is – clean water, clean water on our beaches and coming out of our faucets. It’s critical to Long Island. Long Island is an island after all. So, I will continue to focus on those and bring the resources we need here to ensure that this remains pristine as it always should be.
I also want to talk about a couple of other issues here. Let’s talk about housing. One of my favorite topics to talk about. But all I’m going to ask for is one thing. Can we have an honest conversation about housing? And what I mean is, no more silly ads and pictures of showing skyscrapers next to a little tiny house in your neighborhood.
You know that’s not happening. And we really shouldn’t be weaponizing important policy issues. We should just say, “You know what, what’s the objective here?” The objective is to give a home to your children, and to the firefighters, and the police officers, and our teachers, and the people who work in the building trades, and drive our subways.
They need to be able to live in the homes that right now don’t exist. You know, there’s a lot of talk about out migration, right? Why are people leaving New York? I have no idea, I think it’s a great place to live, but the people are leaving. And I study this. Do you know the five States that New Yorkers are going to when they leave?
Okay, Florida, Texas are on the list. The other three. No, there are neighbors. Connecticut, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania. Same weather, same tax rates. You know the difference? They build housing. They build housing for people, so people have a place to live. We’re losing our young people who go to great institutions like Stony Brook, one of our flagship institutions now. We declared it two years ago.
We have incredible educational resources here. People are going to come here and get those world class educations. And then, guess what? They’re going to look around, look in the newspaper, they’re going to go online, trying to find a place to live, and there won’t be anything for them.
That’s a tragedy. I wouldn’t applaud over that one. That’s actually very bad news. But why don’t we resolve to fix it? We should applaud that. Let’s make a commitment to fix that. We’ll work together. Last year we were bold. We said, “Long Island, can you grow 1 percent a year for the next three years?” 1 percent a year, where other areas have grown 5, 10, 15 percent.
We had modest objectives, but there was resistance. And having been a local official, I listened. We also had money for sewers and water to help out, because I know that’s the foundation of expanding development. This year, listening to your supervisors, I had a meeting with many of the supervisors convened by Richie Schaffer in the spring, and they said, “Well, give us some incentives and we’ll do it.”
Okay. I pooled together money, $650 million, and said, “If you want to be a pro-housing community, here’s $650 million to help you get there.” So, I’m constantly changing and adapting to the voices I’m hearing, which is important, but I will not compromise on my belief that unless we are willing to build more housing in the right places, our prosperity will be held back because we’ll lose the talent that wants to live here. And your kids and grandkids who want to live here will not be able to. So, let’s roll up our sleeves and get it done. We’ll work together. I want this to happen. I know you do as well. And I’m not talking about high rise skyscrapers and crazy buildings where they don’t belong. I’m talking about vacant lots where there’s tumbleweed blowing after hours next to a train station. Not a lot of life there.
You put up what we’ve seen in places like Wyandanch or what we’re going to do in Hicksville. I just walked the property, right walking distance to the subway or to the LIRR. First floor, retail – laundromat, coffee shops, pick up your newspaper if you’re still reading print. I do. We can give an opportunity for new businesses. Second floors, how about putting in some parking to make up for the parking you lost? You can double, triple, quadruple the amount of parking available. You can layer in some housing, market rate, affordable, whatever you want. Top floor, how about a nice restaurant? Or penthouses? It doesn’t matter to me, I don’t care.
You need to know this, when I talked about housing last year, I never said what it had to be, you could have put in all luxury if you wanted, just start building. I have a vision that allows Long Island, because of its amazing strengths and its assets, to be even better. We give people a place to live. We keep investing in education, $4 billion in education to schools on Long Island. It was three quarters of a billion-dollar increase, one year to the next. I announced that this spring, that’s a lot of money coming to Long Island schools because they’re second to none. The schools you have here are outstanding.
I want to keep focusing on our Downtown Revitalization Initiatives. Anybody here represent a community that’s received money from DRI funds? I mean, it’s transformative. When I represented a town and two villages within it, if someone had offered me $10 million to make my vision become a reality as a local official, I would have thought I died and went to heaven. I mean, this never happens. It takes years and years and years to piece together the little projects. You know, some new signage, fix up the facades, make some connections to the waterfront. But when you can do it all at once, it creates an energy. But beyond just the physical, it creates a sense of optimism in the community because this is something they created. It’s a beautiful, beautiful program. I’m going to make sure that that continues. We just announced a number of projects for that. I think we just did to Westbury, Huntington. We just announced as well in Hicksville, so I’m going to keep that going.
Also, Long Island is the epicenter of offshore wind. And I’m so excited about the tens of thousands of jobs we’re creating right here. It’s great for the environment. It’s great for the environment. But my God, I’m so excited about the jobs. Right, John Durso? Good jobs coming, right? This is what it’s all about. We’ve created 49,000 jobs on Long Island since I became Governor, unemployment dropped from 4.5 to 3.3 and we’re continuing to trend lower.
An announcement just came out as I was coming here, 200,000 jobs created across the country in the last month and I’m so excited that that growth is continuing right here on Long Island. We know what we have here, my friends. It’s extraordinary. Charming, charming little communities and hamlets, such personality.
Little businesses, I helped start a small business with my mother. I know what it’s like. I know how hard it is. When you sit there on a Sunday, and it’s a little flower and gift shop, and you’re praying that that little bell will ring on the door that someone’s coming in to buy something. It’s hard. I know it’s hard. You put your whole life into a small business. It’s your dream. We need to be able to help our individual businesses as well.
So, I have a plan. Usually, I come after the State of the State Address and announce more officially what we’re doing. We already made some announcements. Talking about literacy. Boy, I don’t like being in our rankings where we are right now. We can do so much better – investing and changing the curriculum. You know we’ve been teaching our kids an outdated curriculum that does not make sense. I said, let’s get back to basics. Let’s start teaching kids the way we were taught. Not put them in a room full of books and say you’re supposed to get it by osmosis or whatever crazy theory they’ve been working on for the last 20 years. Let's get back to basics.
Let’s make sure that our moms and babies can survive childbirth as well. We’re focusing on maternal and infant mortality. Talk about affordability – people need an extra hand sometimes. Life’s hard. Inflation, wages are going up. That’s great. We just increased the minimum wage. But all of a sudden, everything you buy at the grocery store keeps going up. How do you keep it together? It’s hard. So, that’s what we’re focused on as well.
I’m really optimistic. When I look at a room like this, people care enough about their communities to show up here today, share ideas, listen to their elected leaders, and you have amazing elected leaders here. You truly do. Don’t take that for granted. These are committed individuals. These are my partners. I put aside party labels. The day you’re elected, you’re a New Yorker, not a Democrat or Republican. And that’s what we need more of. I represent the most Republican congressional district in the State of New York as a Democrat. I know how to work across the aisle. It’s in my DNA. And I cherish the ability and the privilege to represent people from all walks of life, every corner of this State.
No matter what their background, to me they’re part of the New York family. And I’ll keep fighting like hell for every one of you because I believe in this State. I believe that we can work together to do more, creating more jobs, better quality education, healthcare, and making sure that we have homes for people to live in.
That’s my commitment to all of you. Thank you very much, everybody. And Happy New Year!