Last Monday, as New York's legislative session wound down for a year, a group of environmental activists staking out the capitol’s hallways celebrated a tentative deal that would reduce the volume of plastics tossed into state landfills by millions of pounds a day.
Lawmakers in the State Senate and Assembly had agreed to pass the Packaging Reduction and Recycling Infrastructure Act, which would require companies to shrink the amount of plastics in their packaging over the next 12 years or pay a fee that would cover municipal recycling costs, as well as prohibit several toxic chemicals from being used in their production. All legislators had to do was hold a vote.
Two days later, Governor Kathy Hochul announced in a pre-taped video that she would indefinitely pause the MTA’s congestion pricing plan set to go into effect at the end of the month. Then, with only two days left in the legislative calendar, she asked lawmakers to come up with $1 billion to make up the revenue that now-canceled tolls were expected to collect.
"It was like a bomb hit the place," said Blair Horner, executive director of the New York Public Interest Research Group, a nonpartisan voting rights and environmental group. "Getting the session done is about time management, and here in this crucial time, both houses were tied up figuring out what to do about congestion pricing."
In the end, the lawmakers did nothing about congestion pricing. They also declined to pass the packaging bill, and nearly two dozen other environmental bills that would lower carbon emissions, wean New Yorkers off fossil fuels, and reduce the waste stream.
The result is a demoralizing setback for the state's ambitious climate goals set by 2019's Climate Leadership and Community Protection Act, which stated that New York must have a net-zero carbon emission economy by 2050, and that 70 percent of the state's electricity must come from renewable sources by 2030.
"New York is just about out of time to slash pollution enough to avoid global catastrophe," Pete Sikora, the climate campaign director at New York Communities for Change, told Hell Gate. "Hochul and [Assembly Speaker Carl] Heastie must stop blocking social progress to cutting pollution, or all New Yorkers will pay an ever higher price. Right now, New York is headed straight over a cliff."
Only five environmental bills passed both houses this year. One of those is the Climate Change Superfund Act, which would require oil and gas companies to pay into a 25-year fund that would invest in infrastructure damaged by global warming. But the Superfund Act may not become a law, since the governor refused to include the measure in the state budget earlier this year.
Of all the failed environmental bills this year, the Packaging Reduction and Recycling Infrastructure Act had the most wide-ranging effects and was also the closest to being passed. After months of debate and intense lobbying from the chemical industry—including from the former chair of the State Senate's Environmental Conservation Committee—the bill’s sponsors had agreed to lower the percentage of plastics that companies would be required to reduce from their products from 50 percent to 30 percent, to win over a few holdouts. New York City was estimated to save $150 million per year in waste disposal costs from the 50 percent reduction.
On Friday morning, with only one day left of the session, the State Senate debated the plastic packaging bill for about two hours before passing it. But the Assembly, which was in a marathon of reviewing hundreds of bills, adjourned at 7 a.m. on Saturday without ever bringing the bill to the floor.
The plastics bill is currently in limbo unless assembly members return this year in a special session to tackle pending legislation. Otherwise, it would have to be reintroduced and advanced through multiple committees all over again next year.
Another bill that could be addressed in a special session: the New York HEAT Act, which would both cap utility bills and drastically decrease New York's use of natural gas by ending a rule that requires utility companies to hook up new customers to natural gas lines for free if they’re within 100 feet of a main line. The HEAT Act also failed to be approved by the Assembly, despite passing the State Senate in March. But in the final days of the legislative session, supporters were feeling confident, as lawmakers were holding three-way negotiations with the governor’s staff during the last week of session to settle their differences. But on the second to last day, sources close to the negotiations said staff from the governor’s office abruptly stopped discussions because they had to shift gears to find a fiscal solution to save the MTA after the governor’s congestion pricing reversal.
"We were two inches away from passing my New York HEAT Act and then this happened, and no one had time to talk about anything else because we had to deal with the created crisis of congestion pricing," State Senator Liz Krueger told WNYC's Brian Lehrer on Monday morning.
A measure that would establish a clean fuel standard, with the goal of reducing carbon emissions from medium- and heavy-duty vehicles by 30 percent by 2032 and 100 percent by 2050, stalled out as well. The proposal would mirror similar laws in three West Coast states and Canada that require fuel suppliers who don’t meet the fuel reduction standards to buy credits from renewable suppliers.
The governor's office did not respond to our questions about the effect of her congestion pricing decision on the rest of her climate agenda.
Not all the blame can be placed on the governor. While Hochul's last-minute congestion pricing flip-flop undoubtedly threw Albany into chaos, the legislature—specifically the Assembly—is very capable of killing environmental legislation without any help from the governor.
When New York League of Conservation Voters President Julie Tighe was lobbying state legislators for the NY HEAT Act this spring, staffers for Assembly Speaker Carl Heastie told her they had questions about the bill. "We heard a lot of concerns from the Assembly, but that’s it. We didn’t hear what the concerns were," Tighe said.
Liz Moran, a New York policy advocate for Earthjustice, also pointed the finger at the body that Heastie controls.
"New Yorkers are also reeling from high energy bills, which are continuing to rise due to our reliance upon gas infrastructure, but the Assembly once again was the roadblock to the policy solution," Moran said in a statement.
Each of these environmental bills were staunchly opposed by fossil fuel, chemical, and food manufacturing companies. National Fuel stymied the NY HEAT Act, the American Chemistry Council and Kraft Heinz fought plastics packaging, and Saudi Aramco and ExxonMobil disliked clean fuel standards. Some lawmakers attributed the power of corporate lobbyists for influencing debate over these bills.
Others said Heastie was doing his best to balance the interests of 150 different politicians, some of whom feared that ending natural gas connections to homes and requiring companies to cut down on their plastic use would be more expensive to New Yorkers in the short run.
"We have a diverse coalition that is generally more skeptical and significantly more conscious about costs it could place on consumers," one lawmaker, who declined to speak publicly for fear of angering colleagues, told Hell Gate. "The conference has some old-school working-class Democrats who are not leaders on environmental issues, and lots of the younger caucus members are not super progressive when it comes to these types of environmental bills or street safety bills."
A spokesperson for Speaker Heastie, Mike Whyland, did not respond to our request for comment.
Legislative leaders have not ruled out the possibility of coming back to Albany this year for a special session to address issues like revenue for the MTA, but if it doesn't happen, they would have to reintroduce climate legislation all over again next year.
In addition to the human costs of climate change, the long-term effects of climate inaction will be expensive. The cost of an Army Corps of Engineers plan to install levees and seawalls throughout New York Harbor to mitigate flooding along the coastline could approach $53 billion (by comparison, before Hochul's abrupt "pause" of congestion pricing, the MTA planned to spend $51 billion on infrastructure projects over the next five years). The price tag for upgrading New York City's sewers to handle the overflow of more frequent storms is estimated at $100 million. And as we learned last year, New York is not immune to experiencing the impact of increasing wildfires, which are estimated to cost the nation between $394 billion and $893 billion annually.
"The costs are mind-blowing if you look at them, and right now, you’re just socking it to the taxpayer," NYPIRG's Horner said. "Where the hell is this going to come from? That’s why these bills are important."
