Video, Audio, Photos & Rush Transcript: Governor Hochul, Majority Leader Schumer, and Micron, Welcome President Biden to Central New York Marking Milestone Local Community and Workforce Commitments

Earlier today, Governor Kathy Hochul, Senate Majority Leader Charles Schumer, and Micron Technology, Inc., one of the world's largest semiconductor companies and the only U.S.-based manufacturer of memory, welcomed President Joe Biden and other federal, state and local officials to Central New York where Micron plans to invest up to $100 billion over the next 20-plus years to build a leading-edge memory megafab. With the signing of the Community Investment Framework, Micron will mark its initial community and workforce commitments established with Empire State Development (ESD). This framework encompasses the $500 million Green CHIPS Community Investment Fund focused on supporting workforce development, education, community assets and organizations, and affordable housing, as well as other initiatives that ensure the Central New York workforce will have the advanced skills needed to sustain leading-edge semiconductor manufacturing.

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 will be available on the Governor's Flickr page.

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

Good morning, Central New York. No, it's afternoon, isn't it? Just see if you're awake. I know some of you have been here since this morning and I appreciate your patience. I'm just catching to see if you're paying attention - paying attention here. It is so fabulous to be here. I have waited for this day for so long and I'm so grateful to have extraordinary partners - people in the private sector, labor community, and in government. And that does start with our very own, once a resident of Syracuse, New York when he was a student at the law school, our President, President Joe Biden. I want to thank him for coming to town, not for a law school reunion, but a reunion of Upstate with the glorious past of its manufacturing legacy. That's what the reunion is going on right here today. And then we've waited our lives for this. We have waited such a long time to finally have that sense of hope again, and it happened again.

And I want to thank Majority Leader Chuck Schumer. If he had not been the Majority Leader, we would not be sitting here today. I can guarantee that. We needed the Democrats to get this over the finish line. And I do think Senator Gillibrand and all the other senators who teamed up on this. And in New York State, knowing how important this was to our state, I think thank the entire Democratic Congressional Delegation and the two Republicans, John Katko and Chris Jacobs of Buffalo for being the two who supported it. I'm grateful. I'm grateful you stood up. I'm grateful at least you stood up.

And Sanjay Mehrotra, I cannot believe the relationship that we've had just over this last year. Our shared values, and how we can work together, the private sector and government, saying, "We can work together to just build and energize a community that had been forgotten for so long." I know you're doing this because you want to continue to be the world's greatest manufacturer of semiconductor chips, and you will be, and you're going to do it here, but what you have done to my community, to my state is something I will go to my grave grateful for. Because you transformed a state that for a while had given up believing in itself.

So Sanjay, to you and all your partners at Micron, everybody from Micron, we love you. We're so grateful you're here. You have been extraordinary. Micron. Micron. Stand up, Micron. Micron. How do you spell hope in New York? It's M-I-C-R-O-N. That's how you spell hope. M-I-C-R-O-N. We are grateful to you. And I remember my first weeks as Governor, just a little over a year ago, Kevin Younis came to me, and I want to thank him personally because this was the job of Empire State Development. He said, "We have an opportunity. There's these guys from Idaho - company. They're going to look around the country for an opportunity to expand." I said, "How big is this?" "It's the biggest deal in America's history." I said, "Really? It sounds a little big, Kevin." But I said, "Bring him into my office. Let's see what this is all about." So, we had a meeting. We had a chance to talk about what I knew about Upstate because I'm from Upstate. I happened to be the first Upstate Governor in 100 years. I know Upstate New York.

And I lived through the tough years. I knew what it was like when unemployment was 15 percent, when all the members of my big Irish Catholic family who grew up in an area called Lackawanna in Buffalo. Here we go. The Bills are doing pretty good too. Grandpa made steel, my dad made steel, my uncles made steel. But in 1982, when all those jobs went away, my brothers and sisters couldn't find work. Unemployment was 15 percent where I came from, and it was all over Upstate New York. We lost those jobs to Japan and China, the Southwest. The phrase in our — my community was, "Last one out the door, turn out the lights." That's what we told our kids. Our greatest export was our children. I lived through that. That's in my soul. I know what happened to a state and to a community because the businesses gave up on us. We didn't give up on them. We were still the same people. We still wanted the dignity of a good job. We wanted our union members to continue working and making things like they had for generations.

But the jobs were gone back then. So, when I saw an opportunity with Micron knocking on the door saying, "What can you offer?" We said, "We're not losing this one. This is just too big." This is how we can regain that sense of exceptionalism that we've always had as New Yorkers. It's who we are. We build things. We grow things. We imagine things, and I knew we couldn't let this one go. And we worked hard, and I'm so grateful to have partnered with Chuck Schumer through every inch of this to get it done at the federal level. But once it was done at the federal level, that meant to be incentives for companies to come back from other countries to build the industry here in the United States. But what would lead them to New York? Because everybody's saying, "Oh, it's not the place you want to build a business. Oh no, they're not so friendly." I said, "We're going to prove them wrong."

And what we had to do, we went to the legislature and I thank Al Stirpe our Assemblyman for being the quarterback who got this one into the end zone with the legislature. I thank Jeremy Cooney. I thank Majority Leader Andrea Stewart-Cousins. I thank the Speaker Carl Heastie, and everybody who stood up and said, "We can do this." Now, there were some naysayers. "Oh no, what are you doing here? Not sure about this one." I said, "I don't care. I don't care. I'm not losing this one. This is not happening under my watch." And we got through with the support of the legislature, the Green Chips Act that gave us that extra leverage to say — I go back to Sanjay, I go back to Micron, I said, "Yes, you're going to do something in America, but you can do it in New York. And we're going to give you the best-educated workforce, the most incredibly innovative people from all the walks of life up here. The people are being educated in world-class universities, and I know that working together with our Green Chips bill, which puts an emphasis on sustainability, you're going to be a model for every other business in the world when you're done. And we're focused on the $500 million community investment plan that you've made because we asked for it." And I'm — thank you —we said we can build up child care so moms can get to jobs, they can do apprenticeship training, give kids in underserved communities that chance of an opportunity that they never would've had, that their parents didn't have.

That's how we build the New York dream and it's happening before our eyes. That is what is so energizing. So to those who gave up on this state a long time ago, oh, you didn't make the bet in the right place because it's happening here. I'm getting phone calls right now from companies all over this country. They're saying, "Tell me about New York. Tell me about this whole ecosystem. We don't need to be a Silicon Valley or a triangle down in North Carolina." This is not just Chips Corridor. This is Chips Country. This is New York State and we're going to build it here in New York, and I'm so excited to be able to turn back, turn the page on history that was dark and hard for many of us for so long. This is a new era, my friends. This is a new day. This is New York. Thank you very much.