In this episode, Joanna Pasceri and Jack O’Donnell discuss the recent New York legislative session, highlighting the passage of 856 bills and the focus on environmental issues. They delve into the implications of new legislation, particularly regarding energy and environmental policies, and explore the political landscape as primary elections approach, including the potential comeback of former Governor Cuomo and the dynamics of various mayoral races.
Summary of this Episode
Guests
- Joanna Pasceri: Director of Communications at O’Donnell and Associates.
- Jack O’Donnell: Managing Partner at O’Donnell and Associates.
Major Topics Covered
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- The legislative session saw 856 bills passed, indicating a productive year.
- Jack O’Donnell gives the legislature a B plus for their efforts.
- Environmental issues were a major focus, particularly the New York Heat Act.
- The Packaging Reduction and Recycling Act faced significant opposition from businesses.
- The speaker’s influence is crucial in the legislative process.
- Upcoming elections are shaping the political landscape in New York.
- Former Governor Cuomo is leading in polls for the mayoral race.
- Ranked choice voting adds complexity to the election outcomes.
- Nick Lawler is seen as a stronger candidate against Hochul.
- New Jersey and Virginia’s off-year races are key indicators for midterms.
Full Transcript of the Episode
Note: This is a generated transcript. Please excuse any typos.
Joanna Pasceri (00:01.285)
Gavelling out in Albany, what went down in the final days of the legislative session? Hello everyone and thanks for joining us from the lobby with Jack O’Donnell for our Monday morning minute when we dive a little deeper into the issues in this week’s Monday morning memo with Jack, managing partner of O’Donnell and Associates, a top New York lobbying firm. So let’s get to it. Let’s welcome Jack to the podcast. Hi Jack.
Jack O’Donnell (00:28.718)
Hi Joanna, it’s great to be with you and as much as I enjoy Albany and the physical lobbies, it’s good for the next few months we’ll at least be just metaphorically in the lobby, right?
Joanna Pasceri (00:41.853)
Right. You can take a little bit of a breath now. 856 bills passed the Senate and the Assembly, you reported in your Monday morning memo, and they’re now headed to the governor’s desk awaiting her signature. Would you say it was a productive session this year?
Jack O’Donnell (01:00.014)
All well as usual it’s always subjective right down man and in the eyes of the the beholder but look i mean the legislators did their jobs and there are you know is this an area I mean there were over fifteen thousand bills introduced so they could pass a whole all of them or or none of them but I think this is a sort of happy medium you know they address some big issues we talked a lot last week about the a I bills some of the prison reform and they’ve tackled some big issues and this is after doing a lot in the budget so I I would say you know mission accomplished.
Joanna Pasceri (01:40.348)
We asked our memo readers this week to give the legislative session a grade and they are responding fast and furiously. Have your say, check out our memo at odonnelsolutions.com. Do you have a grade you’d like to give the legislature, Jack?
Jack O’Donnell (01:57.985)
that you know no and i’m getting and i would give them a b plus you know again made so hard job in and you know maybe we’re too close to it i i i’d like to respect a lot of legislators we really see how hard they work and how much time that they put into it but i do think a lot got done and i’d be comfortable with the b plus
Joanna Pasceri (01:59.996)
Hahaha!
Joanna Pasceri (02:22.216)
Well, environmental issues did dominate a lot of the debate this session with a provision in the New York Heat Act advancing that no longer requires existing ratepayers to cover the cost of new gas hookups. Would you consider this a first good step, a good first step, and what happens to the rest of the bill now?
Jack O’Donnell (02:42.957)
Yeah, I mean, what a good question. I mean, I think it’s interesting. We’re kind of in a new world, right? A lot of the solar wind, green energy provisions that have been pushed so heavily by the federal government are dead, dead under the Trump administration, dead under the Republicans in Congress, right? We did see, and we’ve talked about in this podcast, the Empire Wind Project and how the governor on kind of got that going again but we also see today her her talking about nuclear power because you know we in solar and are not going to get it all done so you know i think if you are and strident environmentalist and that that ending this hundred foot rule is certainly a step forward the irony says you know this this hundred foot rule was introduced 40 years ago in the mid 80s, know, in an effort to drive people to natural gas rather than coal and some other dirtier fuels. So, you know, a lot of folks really think that, you know, natural gas is still a good bet. And so, you know, moving this is questionable. Certainly the folks who build and operate those pipelines feel that way.
You know this is where it’s hard to kind of do all of the solve all these issues through legislation and uh… that you need kind of uh… uh… a broader plan and you know new york has some of that obviously it’s in flux the irony is that i think a big big reason why this piece happened is because there there are whispers uh… that is part of the deal to get empire wing going that the governor agreed to revisit some natural gas pipelines through the state. So it’s sort of all cyclical here. But look, it’s from the environmental side. A lot of folks will consider this a win. You know, I expect we will see the bill again next session just without that provision, right? These major issues in Albany are always alive. They evolve, and sometimes they evolve into something that can pass.
Jack O’Donnell (05:04.137)
Sometimes the electorate and the legislature evolve into positions where they’re going to pass it, but all those things have to meet. So, you know, it’s an ongoing concern.
Joanna Pasceri (05:16.665)
One of the environmental bills that did not make it through the Packaging Reduction and Recycling Act. It was heavily opposed by businesses because of the cost of reducing packaging. The bill never came up for a vote on the assembly floor. And you write in the memo how it touched off a feud between the assembly speaker and environmentalists. Does this bad blood kill the bill for good?
Jack O’Donnell (05:39.691)
Well, we’ll see, I suppose. mean, I do think it is, and this is our advice professionally and personally to clients and to friends, don’t piss off the speaker. Look, we have a great relationship with the speaker, like him, respect him. His job, as he made clear kind of in this back and forth is…is not to do what the environmentalists unnecessarily want but is to protect his members and you know it’s it seems clear that there are several members of the assembly who have publicly said they will vote for this but who didn’t actually wanted to come to a vote and at the end of the day the speaker is always gonna side with with his members rep rather than advocates on on any issue on the art side so you know i don’t think it’s dead it does have a lot of support it is a major issue and we’ll see where it ends up again you know there are ways that sometimes bills get dialed back a little and that’s how they get to to a vote you know we could come through the budget process we’ve covered extensively some alternate versions of this bill that have been introduced in the legislature so the issue lives on but it’ll be worth watching in January.
Joanna Pasceri (07:04.378)
You write in the memo that New York is keeping a close eye on any potential cuts coming from the federal budget later this year. How can the legislature respond?
Jack O’Donnell (07:15.828)
Well, they put a little bit of a circuit breaker or sort of fail safe in the budget this year that gives the governor some direct power to make changes depending on what happens and the scale and scope of those. I think that’s really what remains to be seen. We’ve seen several different versions of Republican legislation that would have different impacts on new york and we’ve heard as much as as thirteen or or fifteen billion dollars in in impact on the special around medicaid so you know that is a of real issue and and what can uh… legislature do well they could at least decide where those cuts are right in what’s going to be cut uh… whether they’re moving money from one program to the other whether it’s something like as i’ve heard speculated about in albany that the tax rebate checks maybe do not go when some of that money goes into mitigating health care costs. It’s also interesting to note sort of when the changes wrought by this bill would go into effect. Again, there’s different versions of it, but in some it wouldn’t go into effect till 26 or 27, depending on the exact provision. So, you know, a lot to watch, but I think at the end of the day, the legislature, the governor, they want to decide who who does get a cut or what does get a cut. And so if the bill does pass, and we expect it will, we’ll be watching, we’ll be communicating how the state reacts.
Joanna Pasceri (08:54.607)
Turning now to politics, primary day is Tuesday. We have a breakdown of the hot mayoral races across the state in our memo this week. So check it out on our website at odonnelsolutions.com. Do you expect a big comeback for former Governor Cuomo and the Democratic race for mayor of New York City?
Jack O’Donnell (09:12.775)
Well he certainly in the driver’s seat he’s been leading in in it least until today in every public poll and he is certainly by by matters of of multiplier has been leading in the the fundraising and and certainly some of the establishment endorsements out there but for the first time today you know there was a poll that showed arms or a mandami beating him in the rank choice voting and so man alive this is going to be a fun one to watch but i think it’s it’s neck and neck with also on city controller brad lander who you know we covered this book but was arrested last week by ice agents for for interfering with an arrest you know he’s right in the heart of that and as his polling comes up a lot of this comes down to who who are are his voters second choices the idea that any pollster can accurately reflect how this ranked choice voting is going to work the fact that many new yorkers may not know how ranked choice voting is going to work plays into this but you know voters basically have an ability to have to rank their their top few choices and if one of them gets cut out then their their their second choice votes go to the next you know the next time ok editor there who it’s been on their ballots so you know that’s going to be wild we talk about in the memo how the board of elections isn’t going to run that rank choice algorithm until on the first of july so a week later so at i think that’s going to be close enough that we won’t know until a week later her and will be watching and holding our breath
Joanna Pasceri (11:07.917)
What about in our home base here in Buffalo? How successful do you think New York Senator Sean Ryan will be against Acting Mayor Chris Scanlon and the other candidates in this Democratic primary?
Jack O’Donnell (11:19.208)
you know what’s interesting about this one as well as it’s a uh… a five-way primary uh… but certainly the acting mayor uh… and and senator ryan are are are the leaders in this uh… you know by a lot of reports it sounds like uh… senator ryan has has the edge today uh… but again really hard to predict what that turnout is going to be I think this is going to be another real close one uh… Mayor Scanlon definitely building some momentum here as well. So, you know, this one could go late as they count votes as well.
Joanna Pasceri (11:56.364)
You also write in the memo about the latest polling among GOP candidates considering a run against Hokel next year. Congressman Nick Lawler seems to have an edge with voters against Congresswoman Elise Stefanik, at least in this recent poll, who eventually gets the nomination to run.
Jack O’Donnell (12:15.4)
Well will be watching this one for for a while Joanna I mean look the the the polling certainly says that uh… you know it says that might waller would be a uh… uh… a stronger general election candidate and that’s a large part to the fact that he is more moderate uh… on several issues uh… including reproductive choice uh… and some other things and then congresswoman stephanie get the same time she is much more popular among Republican primary voters in part because of her full-throated endorsement of President Trump and his mega agenda. So, what happens? know, some of it comes down to how much pressure is there on Mike Lauder to run again in his seat? That’s a much more competitive, a genuine purple seat. And there are… certainly less than thirty of those in the country, maybe twenty of those, you know, that are truly competitive. So there’ll be a lot of pressure on him to stay. We’ll see if Stefanik really wants to do it. And I’m going to throw out there a third name, which is Bruce Blakeman, who’s the Nassau County executive. He’s up for re-election this year. If he wins, as a lot of folks think, you know, he may be a third entrant into this race not having to give up a seat might make him a favorite sort of a middle way for Republicans to have their cake and eat it too. So we’ll see.
Joanna Pasceri (13:51.081)
Certainly will. Favorite news link in our memo this week Jack?
Jack O’Donnell (13:55.185)
There were a lot of good ones, but I’m really focused on, we had a couple links in there on the New Jersey Democratic and Republican primaries and on Virginia and the Virginia races. Both New Jersey and Virginia have off-year races. That means their gubernatorial and statewide offices are up for election this year. They are genuine bellwethers about what might happen in in midterms so I’m watching that very closely.
Joanna Pasceri (14:28.235)
Yes, never a dull moment in politics these days, Jack. Thanks for your insight.