Video, Audio, Photos & Rush Transcript: Governor Hochul Highlights Budget Investments to Support Workers and Make New York More Affordable

Earlier today, Governor Kathy Hochul highlighted FY 2024 Budget investments to support Western New York workers and make the state more affordable. The Budget includes investments and initiatives to address the affordability crisis by raising the upstate minimum wage to $15-per-hour in 2024, followed by $0.50 annual increases in 2025 and 2026 and tying future increases to the Consumer Price Index, expanding the Emergency Rental Assistance Program to support thousands more renters, including public housing residents and Section 8 voucher recipients; enhancing the Empire State Child Credit to cover children under the age of four; and supporting New York's green economy workers. Governor Hochul was joined by leaders of organized labor and local elected officials at today's announcement.

VIDEO of the event is available on YouTube here and in TV quality (h.264, mp4) format here.

AUDIO of the event is available here.

PHOTOS of the event are available on the Governor's Flickr page.

A rush transcript of the Governor's remarks are available below:

Sam, you never ceased to amaze me. I've never heard the, "Buff Gov," but I'll embrace it. Sounds like a t-shirt was just made, wasn't it? I want to thank you for hosting us here and to make me feel so at home in a place that is my home. And I want to thank you. I want to thank all the members of Local 210, the men and women who are out there building back our state every single day.

Let's hear it for labor. Because I know that we have labor in the house. There's nothing better than when we have labor in the house. Thank you everybody. Very fortunate to have some of our elected leaders from the state level who obviously supported this and pushed hard for a minimum wage increase.

Starting with our Senator, Sean Ryan. Let's give round applause to Sean Ryan. Assemblymember Monica Wallace has joined us. Thank you for your support. Assemblymember Karen McMahon has joined us. Thank you, and to all the supervisors from Amherst and Hamburg, everywhere in between. I want to thank them and some of our other partners in government.

We also have a hometown favorite as well, who has to spend some of his week in Albany because he is my Commissioner of Civil Service, and that is Tim Hogues right there. Thank you, Tim.

I want to thank James Briggs for being here, the President of the Niagara-Orleans Labor Council. Jimmy's in the house. Paul Brown is here. The president of the Buffalo Building Trades Council is here. Give a shout out to Paul Brown.

And you're going to be hearing from a young woman who has a compelling story to tell, to remind us that behind the legislation, behind the language of a law, behind numbers, there's real people's lives affected every day. And that's why we are so proud to do what we do every single day. And again, I mentioned, this is home court for me.

Literally my grandparents left a very small island known as Ireland. A little cold there. And they came here over a century ago in search of the American dream, like thousands of people who found their way to these shores. But my grandparents started out in an unlikely place. My grandpa was a migrant farm worker in the wheat fields of South Dakota, because that's all he could find.

And then they thought they found good jobs in Chicago where they worked as domestic servants. But the people who owned the home were very cruel to them, and they finally fled one night. And they heard about the promised land of Buffalo, New York. And they came here to work as my grandpa did in the steel plant.

And once grandpa had that union card, my family never looked back. My dad worked there for a while. My uncles worked there, my neighbors worked there, and they're making steel. And my next-door neighbor worked in the Ford plant, another worked at the Chevy plant. We worked hard and members of the union, always fighting to lift up the wages.

You never stopped. And because of that, we have a middle class and people have lived the American dream for the next two and three generations. So, that is why coming here to talk about this accomplishment was important to me personally, because this is where it all began for my family.

And this is a union town. New York State is the most unionized state in America, except for Hawaii. I don't know how to explain that one. But number two, you try harder, right? We'll try to catch it up with Hawaii someday, but this is the most unionized part of the most unionized state in America right here. This is the epicenter of the union movement.

So, that's why we come and talk about how we lift people up, how we lift families up. And my God, we know the cost of everything has gone up so much. You think about just that grocery bill, you just still look at it. It's like, "Oh my God, when's it going to ever start going down again?" And we're seeing some progress. The cost of gas is down a lot from what it was a year ago. And even eggs aren't out outrageously expensive as they were, but it's still really expensive to pay the monthly mortgage or to pay for your monthly rent and to pay for your utility bills. It is still really hard to get by.

And we can never be tone deaf and forget the people who really are struggling day to day, especially young families. And maybe I've had a little more experience seeing young families as a new grandma. I actually happen to know how much it costs for diapers and formula once again. And I remember when my kids, who are now in their thirties, I said, "Once they stop being in diapers and drinking formula, I'm going to feel rich." Because those are such expensive commodities when you think about it. And they keep outgrowing their clothes seems like every other week. So, families are under stress.

So, anything we can do to help them, and that is why working with our legislators here, we said, "Why is it that there's a tax credit for families, which is very nice, for families with children over age five. What about the infants to four-year-old's, because they're probably among the most expensive." So, we changed that in our law and let's give round applause to our legislators who are here for making that happen as well.

Also, the Ford Foundation said that 50 percent of people in our country are struggling - 50 percent. That's every other person literally is struggling. We're trying to find ways to lift them up and hearing from voices like Vanessa Hall, who's going to be joining us. She's a single mother who knows how hard it has been, but how the minimum wage meant a lot to her at one time, but now she has surpassed that, and she is a voice for others — reminding us of the families and the struggles, particularly for young women who're just trying to get that fair shot in life.

So, I'm looking forward to hearing your remarks, Vanessa, as well. So, part of it is, child tax credits; part of it is assistance for utility bills. We've accomplished that as well because that's something that we know very well in Upstate New York, especially here in Buffalo.

But starting with our minimum wage. Yes, Sam, you're correct. There are other states that are far worse than ours, but I'm not going to ever judge myself at what they're doing in a red state. Let's get that out there. We are the model. We're going to continue lifting people up. And so, the basic premise of this — let's give New Yorkers a pay increase.

Let's give them a raise and Upstate here it'll be $16 in a couple of years. But here's the first thing that's ever happened in history. Been talked about a long time. We all know what inflation did. Even if you thought you were getting in a better place with your own wages going up, inflation pushed them right down.

So, your purchasing power was crushed. After the wage goes fully into effect in 2027, from this day forward, it'll be indexed to inflation, so when prices go up, your wages will go up, and that's what we accomplished here. That'll help 900,000 New Yorkers get a pay increase, and I'm really proud of that.

As I mentioned, housing costs are so high. We put in almost $400 million to help people who are behind on their rent. A lot of it started during the pandemic when people lost their jobs, but a lot of people in public housing weren't eligible, so we fixed that as well.

We also made sure that we're focusing on making sure that we talk about our energy costs and climate resiliency and climate changes, that we help offset the cost for New Yorkers because the transition to clean energy is going to be expensive, but it is essential. It is essential. We are not turning backwards.

We have to find ways to make it more affordable for people. But the other part is we made sure that we talked about all of our clean energy initiatives, that we have project labor agreements. So, labor is at the table and making sure that they get a piece of the new green future here in the State of New York.

We also launched a wage theft task force. Believe it or not, you might be surprised to hear this. There are some unscrupulous employers out there. Sorry. Sorry to break it to you, Sam. We had launched an investigative team in our Department of Labor that is finding out anyone who reports and investigating to make sure that they stop wage theft from taking literally money out of the pockets of our hardworking men and women. So, we've accomplished that as well.

I live here part of the week. I still have a wonderful husband here. You all know Bill. But I spend a lot of my time in Albany, and I'm blessed to be the Governor of the State, but I'm also very fortunate to have a home where I don't have to worry about the struggles of other people. But that's why I come back here, and I sit in the diners. And I go back to the trailer park in Lackawanna where mom and dad started out.

So, I never forget that. But I also don't lose sight of the home that I'm able to live in Albany - was once the residents of people like Teddy Roosevelt. And Franklin Roosevelt, he was governor before he came the president, so there's portraits, pictures of him all over the place. I'm always thinking about Franklin Roosevelt, and I want to share something that he said because he is the one person who is recognized for getting us through a crisis in our nation: the Depression. But everything he did as president, he started as governor because he was literally the Governor of the State of New York when the Crash of '29 hit. And he had a brilliant Commissioner of Labor, Frances Perkins, who started these great ideas about lifting people up in a safety net, so nobody falls too far. And she started in New York State before she went to Washington as well.

So, what FDR once said is, "The test of our progress is not whether we add more to the abundance of those who have much, but as whether we provide enough for those who have too little." That's what we're doing here today. That's what we're doing all across the State of New York. And until every single New Yorker has the same shot at the dream that perhaps their parents, their grandparents, their ancestors envisioned, we're not stopping.

And I believe that this is a turning point when people will have confidence that they have leadership in Albany — the Senate, the Assembly, the Governor who are all aligned with labor and working men and women to lift them all up and give them that shot that is so long overdue for many. So, let's go forth here, recommitted to fighting for working men and women.

Again, I thank every single labor leader here today. Sometimes it gets tough out there, but what you do representing these incredibly hardworking individuals, is a huge source of pride to me as your Governor as well. So, with that, I want to bring up Vanessa Hall to share with you her own life's experiences to make sure you know who we're fighting for.

Thank you, everybody. Thank you.