Audio & Rush Transcript: Governor Hochul Is a Guest on Spectrum News’ “Capital Tonight” With Susan Arbetter

Audio & Rush Transcript: Governor Hochul Is a Guest on Spectrum News' "Capital Tonight" With Susan Arbetter

Earlier this evening, Governor Hochul was a guest on Spectrum News' "Capital Tonight" with Susan Arbetter.

AUDIO: The Governor's remarks are available in audio form here.

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

Susan Arbetter, Capital Tonight: So much uncertainty coming from Washington, the President has said that he will withhold money to sanctuary cities, including New York, and he's also frozen other grants to New York multiple times. Governor, what if his threats don't end with the sanctuary cities? What's the plan?

Governor Hochul: Oh, they're not going to end Susan.

From exactly one year, starting today when Donald Trump was sworn in as President, we have been under assault, whether it's withholding funds, whether it's threatening to shut down everything from congestion pricing, shutting down offshore wind - which is an important part of our energy strategy to embrace renewables and powering hundreds of thousands of homes - and cutting off $3.8 billion of childcare funding and family support programs just a few weeks ago.

But what we had to do is engage the court process. We've been filing lawsuits. We've been winning the vast majority of them. And it's frustrating because we're spending so much time on this. I have to call the President to persuade him to restore, literally had to call to restore law enforcement funding for the NYPD and for first responders that he took away.

And so it's a constant attack. We have been successful in court. We need the Supreme Court to back this up here as well in some other cases. So, we're preparing for this, Susan. My Budget contemplates the volatility that comes with the Donald Trump Administration. It truly does.

Susan Arbetter, Capital Tonight: And there is that rainy day savings if needed. Do you… you've said that you talked to the Governor…or the President by phone. Do you think that President Trump is an honest broker?

Governor Hochul: I appealed to him as a New Yorker. My conversations are about, you have properties in New York City, you have employees, you have family, you have friends. So, when I try to convey to him that we need the money for law enforcement, for example, I want to keep the streets safe. Why we don't need the National Guard to come, because that'll destabilize what is really the economic engine for the country, not just our city. So, I appealed to him more on that front. Sometimes it's successful, but not always. He's not rational in his reaction to many - just look at what's happening with Greenland and Venezuela. So, it's hard to anticipate whether or not your argument is going to land and he'll agree with you, but I have to try. My job as the Governor is to stand up for our people and our values, and that's what I have to do almost constantly.

Susan Arbetter, Capital Tonight: When will the state hear if the federal government has granted a waiver to let the Essential Plan continue to provide services to non-citizens? And what if they say no?

Governor Hochul: We are working intensely on this and we're trying to pull in the Republican members of Congress who also represent New York and there's seven of them. And if they band it together, whether it's budget time and the margins are so tight, they could say, "Listen, you're hurting our state. You are hurting our constituents who rely on Medicaid and health care programs or child care programs or help for farmers. Why are you cutting this off? Why are you making our own re-elections more complicated?" So, we're actually engaging with a number of them to try and make the case that this is not good for them politically or for their constituents as well.

Susan Arbetter, Capital Tonight: So, you're hitting the President on multiple fronts?

Governor Hochul: We sure are. This is a multi pronged war.

Susan Arbetter, Capital Tonight: Okay. What is the plan though, if the waiver isn't granted?

Governor Hochul: No, we do have reserves set aside,

Susan Arbetter, Capital Tonight: It's about $3 billion I think.

Governor Hochul: It's $3 billion. We are fortunate because I have said we're not raising taxes in the State of New York, but Wall Street bonuses came in much higher than expected revenues for us - for us and the city. So, we're able to set aside money from that as well. But also we had to come up with $750 million right after the Big Ugly Bill was passed in July. They just cut money like that. We had to go back and squeeze more money out of agencies and talk about hiring practices. We've had to do a lot and we're prepared to deal with whatever comes our way. We have no choice.

Susan Arbetter, Capital Tonight: On child care, is it your plan Governor, to prioritize investing in the child care workforce next year as the state continues to build toward universal child care?

Governor Hochul: One thing we're doing is we have to have more capacity. You have to have the locations, you have to have the workers. We're even providing free community college for education - someone who wants to go and change careers when they're 25 or older, we'll cover the whole cost of getting you on the path to become an early childhood educator or someone who is trained to work with children. So, we're investing in those costs right now and helping them. We gave bonuses out a couple years ago to try and retain people who were leaving.

You remember the pandemic? How could you forget the pandemic. We lost so many healthcare locations and workers, and we're still trying to rebuild. But it doesn't thwart our ambition to ensure, as I announced last year, that New York is on the path for universal child care. I've invested over $8 billion as Governor. When I first became Governor, our investments were about $832 million a year. This year it's $4.5 billion because families are begging for relief. I lived through this. I couldn't find affordable child care when I had my babies. And so I'm really trying to just take some of the pressure off of families all across the state.

Susan Arbetter, Capital Tonight: So, we've heard Mayor Mamdani say that he would like to see universal child care in New York after four years. Here in Upstate, you have a $60 million pilot program for three states. Does that sync with your plan? Four years for Upstate as well, or is that going to be down the line?

Governor Hochul: No, I'll tell you what it's complicated when you're comparing New York City and Upstate-

Susan Arbetter, Capital Tonight: It's sort of apples to oranges.

Governor Hochul: Because they did universal 4-year-old programs back a decade ago.

Susan Arbetter, Capital Tonight: They have some infrastructure in place that Upstate does not.

Governor Hochul: Right. And so we've- they're working on fixing their 3-year-old program. We're investing money to help with that. We're investing money to help them launch, again, a smaller scale this first year, for the 2-year-old program.

What I'm doing for New York State is to guarantee that by 2028 every single 4-year-old will have an opportunity for their parents to have them in a 4-year-old pre-K program. Then we invest in the three year-old program, which I'm committed to doing. But also our pilot program in Dutchess County, Broome and Monroe is exciting because it's looking at newborns to three-year-olds and supporting community providers and seeing how we can scale that up. So, let's let this year play out. But we can make a real change with that as well.

So, ultimately we will get to everyone, but I have to have a little longer runway because we're behind where the city was.

Susan Arbetter, Capital Tonight: Quick question about K-12 education. Do you have an appetite for reforming the Foundation Aid formula this year?

Governor Hochul: No. We're actually increasing for areas that have, we have, we're going to fully fund it. We've debated for 16 years and many high need communities were left hanging. We've invested that money. But also there are some areas that were not going to see any increases, so we're actually having a sort of a floor to help them this year. So no, we have to keep investing in education. The education costs are going up, inflation is hitting everybody, and we don't want that cost put back on local property tax payers because of the property tax cap. This is still our desire to keep local taxes as low as they can be as well.

Susan Arbetter, Capital Tonight: Sure. Sure. More than half of the schools I think are on Safe Harmless. And I was just wondering if reforming the formula in and of itself is something that you want to do during your tenure?

Governor Hochul: Not this year, no. No. We have a lot on our plate with respect to keeping those programs in place. What I want to reform is looking at…it's going to be a $40 billion budget. We are increasing our spending on education

Susan Arbetter, Capital Tonight: For education. Yep.

Governor Hochul: Because we believe in this, but I'm not satisfied with the results that are coming out of that investment. So, that's why even something last year when we took on, people didn't think it was our place to say something, but they were teaching literacy, how kids, how to read the wrong way, based on 20-year-old strategies that every teacher knew wasn't working. So they changed it. We're going to do the same for math. I want better outcomes. And I also think by eliminating cell phones in schools, our kids are going to start paying attention again. They're listening to teachers and just in a couple months, we've already had reports from teachers that student engagement is up in 75 percent of the classroom. So that's extraordinary. So I'm really focused on making sure not just the money's there, but our kids' performance is better as well.

Susan Arbetter, Capital Tonight: I want to move on to immigration. One of the most enthusiastic applause lines that you had during your State of the State was over your decision to establish a right to sue federal officers for constitutional violation. Advocates are urging you though to get behind a bill that would prohibit not just restrict police agencies from interacting with ICE? Why not get behind them?

Governor Hochul: No, our policy is what we need to have in the State of New York.

Susan Arbetter, Capital Tonight: Why?

Governor Hochul: Because it's working. But I also know that my job is to keep New Yorkers safe.

And so what is hard to understand with the bill that you're referring to is that already we do not use State Police Officers to assist with civil ICE enforcement. We just don't do that. But we also have to have the flexibility that if a crime has been committed, not the offense of crossing the border, but a serious crime has been committed, I have to be able to assist when there's a court order…the judge says, you know that this person, there's a warrant out for their arrest. I can't stand down in that situation if we know where someone is who could be hurting New Yorkers, members of the immigrant community, like someone who is committing domestic violence against a partner, someone who's assaulting others, someone who is committing retail theft. How do I turn my eye to that and only enforce the law against New Yorkers? I can't do that. So, that's…

But I do believe that when ICE goes too far, you can't be trampling on our constitutional rights. Whether it's murdering a woman, who deserved to still be alive today, that her child needs support now to go forward. Who's going to raise the child? Or a farm up in Tioga County that I visited and that had his production line shut down because they took half his workforce and many of them were there legally.

So, there's consequences - or the members of the media that were roughed up trying to do their job covering these stories, by ICE. We are not sacrificing our rights as residents of this great country as Americans to ICE. And that's what I stood up for.

Susan Arbetter, Capital Tonight: So, Mamdani told The View that he thinks that ICE should be defunded. You don't agree with that?

Governor Hochul: No, because ICE was created after 9/11 to protect our borders. I'm from Buffalo. We have had terrorists thwarted at the border who come in from other countries who are trying to do harm to this country.

So, I think what they're doing now is excessive. They need to be reigned in. It is wrong. Go after the real criminals with which you - you're not doing what the President told you to do because you're only going to go after the worst of the worst. You're going after children, you're going after high school students, you're going after people that are just working at a pizzeria.

It is so wrong, and I believe there's outrage even in the reddest communities, in the State of New York, because people are seeing what's happening on the farms, and what's happening in our local factories. People have had it. So I'm going to stand up for New Yorkers' rights and the rights of people to protest and say what they want to say about ICE. But also I do think we need to protect our borders from real threats, international terrorist organizations in particular.

Susan Arbetter, Capital Tonight: So, I want to pivot to the environment and utility rates. You've got some things in your State of the State about that. On the climate law, the CLCPA, a judge gave the state until February to come up with regulations to implement the law. Will the state meet that deadline, or are you going to ask lawmakers to push that back or delay or suspend the mandate over concerns over energy costs?

Governor Hochul: These conversations were under way, but when this was first passed and I praised the goals-

Susan Arbetter, Capital Tonight: 2019.

Governor Hochul: 2019. tThe next year we have a pandemic. Disrupts the supply chain. We're not building the wind turbines during that time. The factories are not running. We're not building the electric vehicles because they weren't getting chips, semiconductor chips brought in from other countries. So we had this paralysis for a number of years that took us off track. And then one year ago, when Donald Trump is sworn in, he cuts off all the subsidies for wind and solar. Literally cuts off offshore wind that I had to fight to get turned back on, that was powering 500,000 homes with renewable energy in Brooklyn starting next year. So, they eviscerated our whole strategy for meeting these goals.

And I'll also say this, when Indian Point was shut down, and I know there's a lot of advocacy around this. There was no plan B to replace that power. So, that was 25 percent of the power for New York City. You know how it's being used now, replaced, home heating oil, liquified natural gas-

Susan Arbetter, Capital Tonight: Fossil fuels.

Governor Hochul: -coming over the roads in trucks with diesel fuel. Emissions have gone up. So, how is the state going to meet those goals with what Donald Trump has done, the pandemic, and decisions like Indian Point, without having the alternative sources in place. I want to meet these goals more than you can imagine. I really do. I believe in fighting for our environment. I understand climate change, but I have to deal with the realities. The cards that have been dealt to us right now. So, we're working on managing our response to the February court case.

Susan Arbetter, Capital Tonight: Thank you.

Contact the Governor's Press Office