Equity and Innovation – not austerity – should drive the State’s COVID-19 recovery

 

 

New York, like the rest of the world, is still grappling with the crushing consequences of the ongoing pandemic. And with the more than a $15 billion dollar projected budget deficit, the NYS Legislature and Governor are facing some difficult choices to protect our economy and public health – without compromising the clean drinking water and air quality that sustain both.

 

With tens of thousands New Yorkers dead from the virus, and countless more struggling with the fiscal crisis, everyone is looking for a ray of hope beyond the drawn-out vaccination process and presidential transition.  The fall elections brought a supermajority of progressive leadership to the NYS Senate, and Senate Majority Leader Stewart-Cousins has lead her conference for the past two years with a record of righting decades of injustice and applying solutions to long-standing NYS problems.  Her counterpart in the Assembly, Speaker Carl Heastie, has applied his collaborative leadership style to meet those same challenges in a house with equally ambitious goals.  This year will be interesting, with a nearly 1/5 turnover of long-held Assembly seats, and new progressive champions to fill them.  Governor Cuomo has kept pace with the Legislature in crafting and signing transformative laws to address the climate crisis, among other significant actions and reforms.  But can this troika of leadership solve the latest crisis without gutting environmental protections and essential social programs?

 

When the state has faced deep budget holes in the past, environmental funds have been the first pots of money to be raided and obligations to protect natural resources first to be discarded.  These short-sighted cost savings have caused immeasurable long-term financial hardships to NYS in the form of water pollution, increased illnesses and costly cleanups – hitting low income communities the hardest.  Especially in the time of COVID-19, there is a growing awareness that ignoring air and water quality only deepens the impact of the health and economic crisis.

 

As the New Year has unfolded, there have been indications that history will not repeat itself despite a historic budget shortfall.  The Governor has released a FY 2022 Budget that has fully funded most lines of environmental expenditures, and staffing levels, and there is continued momentum to build upon the renewable energy economy and environmental justice programs.  Both Stewart-Cousins and Heastie have indicated their support for this approach.

 

All this “normalcy” in the budget, despite economic crisis, is predicated on an uncertain $15 billion infusion of federal aid (matching NYS’s shortfall) that Cuomo is hoping will flow from the new Biden administration. If the State receives less than that amount, all bets are off about the current numbers.  But it is significant that Cuomo is confident of the federal relief, and positions the environment prominently among priorities that deserve full funding.

 

As the Sierra Club approaches this unusual budget season and legislative session we are looking to support policies that do not increase costs to the state (i.e. staffing), promote Environmental Justice, maintain funding for critical expenditures, and generate responsible revenue for the state. 

 

 

Budget: Defend the $300 million Environmental Protection Fund and $500 million Clean Water Infrastructure Fund, maintain DEC funding and staffing lines, protect the Regional Greenhouse Initiative (RGGI) from sweeps to the General Fund, and fully fund and maintain our parks.

 

New York communities are struggling to finance the transition from fossil fuels to wind, solar and energy storage. CCIA is more than just a revenue generator for the state. It’s a mechanism to make polluters pay for the costs of contaminating our environment and fund renewable energy development, electrify public transportation, and fund worker retraining programs and building efficiency jobs - all with a mandate to prioritize equity, racial justice and fair labor practices.

 

In the wake of Trump’s regulatory roll backs of the Clean Water Act, NYS desperately needs to reform how the state protects wetlands in a way that prioritizes the ones that are most important to clean water and flood control, without relying upon significant new staffing resources. 

 

The Extended Producer Responsibility Act (S.1185-A Kaminsky) 
New York is drowning in packaging waste. This legislation would mandate an EPR program for all packaging in NY. Under our current model, manufacturers are not responsible for recovering or recycling their products. Instead, municipalities bear the burden for collection, transportation, sorting, and processing of waste. Under an EPR program, producers will finance the recycling of their products. Producers will also be rewarded for creating easily recyclable products that contain higher percentages of post-consumer recycled material.

 

In a time of deep budget gaps, NYS should be eliminating wasteful state tax exemptions and subsidies to fossil fuel companies. These long held entitlements represent hundreds of millions of dollars the state is bleeding away every year to the benefit of corporations that endanger public health and thwart our climate goals.

 

The Atlantic Chapter’s legal challenges related to new fracked gas pipelines and new power plants, egregious water withdrawals, landfill expansions to accommodate fracking waste, development of “forever wild” lands, and violations to the Clean Water Act have yielded significant decisions that have shaped environmental policy across New York.  But we still face enormous hurdles in challenging violations to the State Environmental Quality Review Act purely on the court’s unreasonable tests for who has the right to sue.  This bill would grant standing to any litigant who can demonstrate they have or will be affected by an environmental injury.

 

Including Environmental Justice in SEQRA Reviews (S.1031-B Stewart-Cousins/A.2103-A Pretlow)
There has always been an inequitable pattern in the siting of polluting facilities in minority and economically distressed communities, which have borne a disproportionate and inequitable share of public health ailments and other negative environmental consequences. This bill would require NYS to factor in disproportionate or inequitable burdens on minority communities or economically distressed areas under the State Environmental Quality Review Act.

 

Green Transit bill (A.3090 Dinowitz) and the Green Jobs Bill (A.2083 Dinowitz/S.3405 Kennedy)
These two bills as a package, set the goal of 100% electric bus procurement by 2029 and provide mandates for fair labor practices for mechanics and  drivers transitioning into the all-electric era.

 

There are far too many undisclosed toxic chemicals in the everyday products we use in NY.  This bill would better regulate the disclosure of harmful chemicals found in personal care products.

 

Birds and Bees Protection Act
New York State’s pollinators are in trouble. Field surveys and exhaustive accounts from professional beekeepers reveal that in only the past few years, populations of honeybees in hives have reduced by at least 40% due to what has been termed “colony collapse syndrome.” Scientific consensus is now laser focused on the impact of a powerful class insecticides, known as neonicotinoids. “Neonics,” used to kill leaf, fruit and root chewing agricultural pests, are extremely toxic to bees and other pollinators. This bill would place a five year moratorium on the application of most neonicotinoids and a companion bill would ban the treating of corn and soy seeds with the pesticide.

 

Thanks to the vision of the Legislature and Governor Cuomo, the Climate Leadership and Community Protection Act (CLCPA) has provided the enforceable structure by which the state must achieve a 70% renewable energy grid by 2030, a zero-carbon grid by 2040, and complete sector wide carbon neutrality by 2050. But as the Climate Action Council (CAC) and its supporting committees deliberate over the scoping plan for the eventual climate regulations, the state of New York is wasting many staff hours and resources reviewing the permits for new fossil fueled generators in Queens, Brooklyn and Newburgh that can never legitimately comply with our climate laws.  The Legislature needs to give DEC the authority to deny them now, and focus on building the renewable energy grid of tomorrow.