Gov. Kathy Hochul’s plan to send checks to middle income New Yorkers is getting pushback from her own party — as state lawmakers say there are better ways to spend the dough.
Hochul wants to send $300 checks to single New Yorkers making under $150,000 a year and families making under $300,000 but some Democrats are scoffing at the eye-watering $3 billion price tag — particularly a year before the governor is up for re-election.
“The checks address a symptom of the problem rather than the problem itself,” state Sen. James Skoufis (D-Orange) told The Post. “We need to address the fundamental issues that drive the high cost of living in New York – these checks fail to do that.”
Assembly Democrats discussed the plan during a closed-door conference meeting this week first reported by POLITCO, with many expressing reservations.
“I would prefer to do other things to help working class New Yorkers,” Assemblyman Harvey Epstein (D-Manhattan) said.
Epstein suggested the money could be used for pre-k and afterschool programs, while Skoufis floated doubling the school tax relief credit, or STAR.
An unusual amount of Dems were reluctant to speak on the proposal at length.
“Everybody likes a check,” Assembly Majority Leader Crystal Peoples-Stokes told The Post, declining to comment further.
One senator simply sent The Post a shrug emoji when asked if they thought the checks are a good way to spend $3 billion.
Others are getting behind the plan.
“I think people generally don’t mind getting money in the mail and I don’t think my constituents are going to object to it,” Assemblyman David Weprin (D-Queens) told The Post.
Weprin says policymakers are limited because the $3 billion the governor wants to spend is one-time funding, and likely wouldn’t be a recurring expenditure moving forward.
“I think everything’s on the table,” Weprin said, when asked if he’d entertain other ideas.
Others, including Assembly Speaker Carl Heastie (D-Bronx) have floated other one-time uses like paying off the more than $6 billion New York owes to the federal government for pandemic-era unemployment insurance.
“We must find a way to eliminate the money owed to reduce the burden on small businesses,” Heastie told his chamber during remarks at the beginning of the legislative session last month. “In doing so, we can also increase the benefit to workers who become unemployed so that they can continue to support themselves and their families.”
Businesses are now on the hook for the state’s debt, leaving some Empire State companies uneasy.
“We will never we will never be against government giving back money to consumers, but we would hope that at the same time people would realize that there is a $6 billion UI debt that that ultimately is going to cost taxpayers money because it’s a cost that’s being passed on to business,” said Paul Zuber, executive vice president of the Business Council of New York State.
Hochul, in the meantime, is sticking to the proposal.
“If you don’t think that means a lot to someone, walk into a grocery store and say, ‘How would you feel if you had $500 more in your pocket for this grocery bill?’ It means a lot to people,” Hochul said Wednesday morning at an unrelated announcement in Suffolk County.
