For many months after she took over from Andrew Cuomo last Aug. 24, it was good enough for New York Gov. Kathy Hochul to be seeming to turn a page. Gone were her predecessor’s domineering ways. Gone were petty and vindictive fights with the leadership of New York City. Gone was most of the obfuscation on nursing home fatalities during COVID-19. Here was a humbler, genial, politically savvy chief executive who’d actually try to work with people for once.
Thirty-three weeks in, Hochul enters the primary campaign season bearing scars of her own making.
The state budget, an ideal opportunity to shore up the state’s finances for future years, wound up committing to $4 billion in spending above her initial $216 billion plan. She made the right choice to propose significant changes to bail and discovery and other public safety laws, but she erred in waiting until mid-March, as an April 1 budget deadline loomed, to inject that fraught argument into the complex process. She erred further by going silent for days, before finally making the case in public in these pages.
