Gov. Kathy Hochul has ordered New York officials to fix the way the state licenses cannabis businesses, amid widespread frustration over the sluggish pace of the state’s legal cannabis rollout and the explosion of unlicensed dispensaries.

The governor has ordered a major overhaul of the state’s licensing bureaucracy, set to begin Monday — weeks after she announced the rollout.a disasterand canceled a meeting of the Cannabis Control Board when she learned the agency was willing to hand out only a few licenses.

The main goal of the review, which will be conducted by Office of General Services commissioner Jeanette Moy, is to shorten the time it takes to process applications and get businesses open, officials said.

The state Office of Cannabis Management, which recommends applicants to the board for final approval, received 7,000 applications for licenses last fall from companies looking to open dispensaries, grow cannabis and produce products. But regulators have awarded only 109 so far this year. The agency has assigned only 32 people to review the applications.

Ms. Moy has “a proven track record of improving government operations,” the governor said in a statement, and will provide a playbook to turn around the cannabis management office “and jump-start the next phase of New York’s legal cannabis market York.”

In an interview, Ms. Moy said her goal was to work with the cannabis management agency “to identify ways that we can support them in streamlining and moving forward some of the backlogs and challenges that this sector may face. ”

The two-year-old agency, whose executive director is Chris Alexander, an activist attorney who helped draft the state’s marijuana legalization law, is facing mounting lawsuits and criticism of its licensing process. Applicants have filed lawsuits accusing the agency of overstepping its authority. provide conflicting guidelines And discriminatory against white men in its pursuit of diversity.

Mr. Alexander acknowledged that his agency could do more to improve the licensing experience and said he believed Ms. Moy “would help us get to where we need to be.”

Lauren Rudick, an attorney who has helped clients file more than 100 permit applications, said she welcomed the review and hoped it would create a transparent process for submitting applications and resolving issues along the way occur.

She said the licensing process was inconsistent in terms of guidelines and communication with applicants and there was no process to resolve conflicts. She has watched in frustration as customers who took painstaking steps to do everything right were passed over for licenses that went to people who cut corners and seemed to benefit from personal relationships with agency officials, she said.

“We want to have a system that is repeatable and predictable so that when someone comes to us for licensing, we can give them an idea of ​​what to expect,” she said. “But from now on it’s ‘be flexible and pivot or die’ because we just never know what the state is going to throw at us.”

The rollout has been delayed for months by lawsuits, the state’s months-long regulatory process and the state’s inability to provide the seed loans and real estate it promised to the first 150 pharmacies. The hiccups have left some companies in financial distress and undermined efforts to use a $5 billion industry to help small businesses and rebuild communities hit by the war on drugs.

Although officials have issued about 500 licenses for dispensaries since November 2022, only 85 legal stores have opened across the state. Only ten of these pharmacies have received government real estate and financial support. The number of stores far exceeds that of their unlicensed competitors, of which more than 1,500 are located in New York City alone.

The rogue stores have defied orders to close, causing confusion among consumers and raising fears that they were selling unsafe products to adults and children. Their rapid spread has fueled frustration over the state’s slower approach to opening stores.

A top official at the cannabis management agency was placed on administrative leave last week after a processing plant owner accused him of taking revenge on her for speaking out in a report published by New York Cannabis Insider. The complaint against the official, Damian Fagon, the agency’s chief equity officer, was referred to the state inspector general’s office for investigation.

Mr. Fagon declined a telephone request for comment on Sunday. In his role, Mr. Fagon oversees the state’s efforts to achieve the social and economic equality goals set out in the Legalization Act, which aims to have half of all permits go to people who harm experiencing the anti-cannabis policy; women; racial and ethnic minorities; distressed farmers; and disabled veterans.

His accuser, Jenny Argie, said in an interview that Mr. Fagon retaliated against her company, Jenny’s Baked at Home, after New York Cannabis Insider published parts of a conversation with him about the state’s inability to punish bad actors, that she had recorded. A month after the article was published, her products were recalled — a first for the state — and her business was temporarily closed, she said.

Ms. Argie, one of hundreds of entrepreneurs who joined the state’s cannabis program after the hemp industry went bankrupt, said the state’s recent actions have left her without money to run her business and destroyed her reputation.

“What kind of government office are we running here?” she asked, adding, “I hope that eyes will be on this – that if they can get rid of these people, we can start over and solve the problem.”

Annette Fernandez, a legalization activist and managing partner of High Exposure Agency, a cannabis business development firm, said the retaliation claim was concerning because it could have a chilling effect on the industry’s willingness to provide feedback to regulators. She defended Mr. Fagon, saying sidelining him would distract from the state’s plan for equality, the goal legalization activists had fought hardest for.

“Regardless of his hubris,” she said, “he is still the greatest advocate for equality.”

Hundreds of pro-Palestinian protesters gathered in Manhattan’s Union Square on Thursday evening, then flooded a subway platform and rode a train to the financial district, where they condemned US military aid to Israel and targeted New York Governor Kathy Hochul. she delivered remarks at a Wall Street restaurant.

The protest, organized by the activist group Within Our Lifetime, began with a 6 p.m. rally in Union Square that drew about 400 people, many of whom wore kaffiyehs and carried Palestinian flags. Protesters then stormed into the Union Square subway station and rode en masse on the No. 5 train to Wall Street, chanting and putting stickers with slogans on the walls of the car.

They disembarked and marched toward Cipriani Wall Street, where Ms. Hochul was scheduled to appear. Finding a police barricade outside the restaurant, they circled the area repeatedly, sometimes clashing with police.

The demonstration was the latest of hundreds of protests in New York City since Hamas attacked Israel on October 7. Those attacks killed at least 1,200 Israelis, according to Israeli officials; Israel’s subsequent military operation in Gaza killed 29,000 Palestinians, according to Gaza health officials. The rising death toll and humanitarian crisis in Gaza have led to international calls for a ceasefire.

At least one protester was arrested by police officers near Cipriani on Thursday. At least a half-dozen people were arrested during a scuffle with officers at the intersection of Broadway and Vesey Street. In the chaos, some protesters fell to the ground. Others were thrown onto the street by officers, their wrists were zip-tied and they were taken to a waiting NYPD van.

Police had taken strong action against protesters near the restaurant. At one point, about 50 officers, many dressed in riot gear, followed protesters through the streets, demanding they stay on the sidewalks and warning of possible arrests.

Nerdeen Kiswani, an organizer with Within Our Lifetime, told the crowd outside Cipriani that the group had chosen to attack Ms. Hochul over her statements about the war, referring to comments the governor made in February suggesting that Israel should have to destroy Gaza. (Ms. Hochul later apologized for the comments.)

“Kathy Hochul, you can’t hide, you support genocide,” the protesters chanted outside the restaurant.

Earlier, at the Union Square rally, protesters condemned Israeli attacks on Palestinians and turned their anger on President Biden, chanting, “Genocide Joe must go.”

Addressing the crowd, Ms Kiswani highlighted the growing hunger crisis in Gaza, drawing attention to the deaths of more than a hundred Palestinians there on Thursday when a crowd gathered near aid trucks and Israeli forces opened fire. The United Nations recently warned that at least a quarter of Gaza’s population is “one step away from famine.” Rally organizers threw flour on the ground Thursday to highlight the easy access to food in the United States, compared to the scarcity of supplies in Gaza.

“Children are starting to die – they have died from the bombs and bullets that Israel has dropped on them – but now they are dying of hunger,” Ms Kiswani said.

The self-immolation of Aaron Bushnell, an American pilot, outside the Israeli embassy in Washington, DC, earlier this week also loomed over the demonstration. One protester held a sign that read “RIP Aaron Bushnell.”

“Some may see his act of self-immolation as an extreme political act,” Ms Kiswani said. “But he himself said that it is not extreme at all compared to what the people of Gaza have had to endure.”

After the arrests on Thursday evening, the march drifted toward Foley Square and dissipated around 9:30 p.m.

In recent months, demonstrators in New York, many calling for a ceasefire in Gaza, have gathered almost daily, sometimes blocking bridges and roads. Some targeted elected officials who had expressed support for Israel during the war and accepted donations from pro-Israel groups.

Last week, demonstrators marched from the United Nations headquarters in Manhattan to the headquarters of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, a lobbying group, and then to a building where Senators Chuck Schumer and Kirsten Gillibrand have offices; some were arrested in the building’s lobby while calling on senators to support a ceasefire.

Gov. Kathy Hochul visited New York City on Wednesday to drum up support for her latest proposals to close unlicensed marijuana shops, which have exploded in number in the wake of the legalization of recreational cannabis.

In Manhattan alone, there are more than 400 illegal pot shops – more than the Starbucks stores in the borough and far more than the several dozen licensed cannabis stores in the entire state.

At a news conference at the governor’s office in Midtown Manhattan, attended by several owners of licensed pharmacies, Ms. Hochul sought to allay concerns about a return to the heavy-handed enforcement tactics of the war on drugs, while pushing for measures that she said would provide “some teeth” to the so far ineffective efforts to eradicate the unlicensed shops.

Her action came as state lawmakers considered her proposal to strengthen the hand of local agencies by giving them the power to open padlock shops. She was joined by licensed pharmacy owners who said the legal market could not compete with the low prices in illegal stores. The governor and business owners also called on search engines and social media companies like Google and Yelp to remove content about unlicensed stores, which they said adds to confusion among consumers about which pot shops were licensed and which were not.

The governor said the illegal stores posed a public health risk and undermined the state’s efforts to build a cannabis industry that could provide opportunities to people harmed by the war on drugs. She said efforts to deter the stores over the past year with raids and fines had been concentrated in the hands of too few agencies and had been ineffective. Her proposal would make it easier for the state Office of Cannabis Management to obtain court orders for padlock shops and allow the orders to be enforced by local agencies with more staff.

“More and more money is flowing into them and not into our legitimate operators – and that’s what needs to change,” she said.

New York legalized cannabis in 2021, prompting a rush of people trying to raise money before regulators could set the rules and hand out licenses. Despite hundreds of raids over the past year, smoke shops dot the city’s streets, brazenly selling cannabis to consumers who are often underage or unaware that the shops are unlicensed.

Last year, the Legislature gave state cannabis regulators and tax authorities more power to go after unlicensed sellers. The city and the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office also sent warning letters to the landlords of more than 400 stores, but only 15 of the stores have been evacuated, according to Mayor Eric Adams’ office.

Overall, few stores have been penalized or closed. The Office of Cannabis Management said it had imposed $25 million in fines, but the agency has collected only $22,500 as retailers fought the fines in administrative hearings that have lasted for months, a development that first reported by the city.

Licensed Retailers called for the state to take action against social media companies and search engines they accuse of driving unsuspecting consumers to unlicensed stores. Those same sites, the retailers say, removed ads belonging to licensed pharmacies without explanation.

The New York Times searched for dozens of unlicensed stores that had received warning letters from the city and the Manhattan district attorney and found that many of them had active listings on Google and Yelp. Some had over a thousand reviews, along with links to their websites and Instagram accounts.

During the press conference, the governor held up a cell phone with a list of nearby stores and said, “This is what we need to stop.”

Osbert Orduña, the president of Cannabis Place, a dispensary with locations in Jersey City and Queens, said the Queens store had been removed from Google Maps four times even though he had provided documents to the company showing it was a legal store. store.

But in statements to The Times, social media companies would not commit to removing the listings and said they would not allow cannabis companies to post ads. Google said it would display a message indicating a business had closed, but also said it would investigate the issues businesses had reported regarding their listings. Yelp claimed that consumers had a First Amendment right to information about all businesses, even unlicensed ones.

“Allowing users to contribute and view information (including complaints) about unlicensed businesses serves the public interest and provides regulators with a tool to determine whether a particular business is properly licensed,” the company said.

Mr. Adams said that he supports the governor’s proposals, but he added that lawmakers should give police and the sheriff’s office the authority to inspect unlicensed smoke shops. Currently, authorities can only inspect a shop suspected of illegally selling cannabis if it has a tobacco license.

The Manhattan district attorney’s office said it was also seeking a change to the state’s property law that would allow prosecutors to seek the eviction of unlicensed stores that “habitually or habitually” sell cannabis. Current law only allows them to clear stores that “exclusively or mainly” sell illegal cannabis, a spokesperson said.

Mr. Adams will attend Thursday’s opening of Matawana, a licensed dispensary in Brooklyn, one of only 77 legal outlets in the state. It is one of more than 50 that have opened since an order halting the rollout was lifted in December.

The owner, Leeann Mata, said she spent more than $100,000 of her own money to open the pharmacy after the state failed to deliver on its promise to provide the first 150 retailers with built-out stores and low-interest loans. Some of the money was intended to pay for her son’s tuition at Hofstra University, but they agreed he would start at a community college and then transfer to Hofstra once her pharmacy was up and running. But an order halted the rollout last fall and left her unable to fulfill her promise, she said through tears.

She said unlicensed stores abounded near her pharmacy in Park Slope.

“They just made my job more difficult than it needs to be,” she said. “And I put everything into this.”

Gov. Kathy Hochul apologized Friday evening for comments she made at a Jewish philanthropy event in New York City that implied Israel had the right to destroy Gaza over the Oct. 7 Hamas attack.

In a speech on Thursday at the event for the United Jewish Appeal-Federation of New York, Ms. Hochul began by calling out Hamas for being a terrorist organization that “must be stopped,” saying Israel could not continue to live with ” that threat, that specter over them.” She then tried to make an analogy with the United States, relating the war to her hometown of Buffalo.

“If Canada ever attacked Buffalo, I'm sorry my friends, there would be no Canada the next day,” Ms. Hochul said. in a video of the speech posted on social media. “That's a natural reaction. You have the right to defend yourself and ensure this never happens again. And that is Israel's right.”

In a statement to The New York Times on Friday evening, after the speech began circulating on social media, Ms. Hochul said she regretted her “inappropriate analogy.” She apologized for her “poor choice of words.”

“While I have been clear in my support for Israel's right to self-defense, I have also repeatedly said and continue to believe that Palestinian civilian casualties should be avoided and that more humanitarian aid should go to the people of Gaza,” she said.

In a message on X, Assemblyman Zohran Kwame Mamdani said: “Governor Hochul justifies genocide while laughing. Awful.”

The response to the governor's comments represented new territory for Ms. Hochul, who has rarely courted controversy during her time in office, in stark contrast to her predecessor, Andrew M. Cuomo.

Ms Hochul had been speaking to the UJA law department's annual event at the Pierre Hotel. The event aimed to support the foundation's “critical work in response to growing needs on the ground in Israel and ongoing needs in New York and around the world.” according to its website.

The foundation reported on Ms Hochul's comments later Thursday evening on Xthanking her “for always standing with the Jewish community and against anti-Semitism and hatred in New York.”

The governor's speech comes as the war in Gaza escalates. Israel this week stepped up its military operations along the Gaza-Egypt border, where the vast majority of Gazans have fled during the war. International leaders have warned the operation could turn into a catastrophe, with President Emmanuel Macron of France saying the situation could become an “unprecedented humanitarian disaster”.

Gov. Kathy Hochul will propose an appropriation Tuesday that would provide one of the largest amounts ever invested by a state in research into amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, the neurodegenerative disease known as ALS.

The appropriation, part of Ms. Hochul’s overall budget proposal, would direct $25 million to ALS research, creating a program that would support several efforts, including drug development. The governor said she hoped the program could also serve as a foundation for tackling other rare diseases.

Ms. Hochul’s mother, Patricia Courtney, died in 2014 from ALS, also known as Lou Gehrig’s disease. She never saw her daughter become a lieutenant governor or governor. But last week, as Ms. Hochul stood in the State Assembly and laid out her goals for the coming year in her State of the State address, she had her mother in mind when she announced her commitment to fund research into “rare diseases like ALS, who rob millions, like my own mother, of their vitality.”

In an interview, Ms. Hochul said that “it was obviously a very personal moment for me,” adding that she was usually reluctant to talk about her family. “By talking about it at that location, people can understand that we are working on this in a way that we hope will produce a different outcome for them,” she said.

The governor said health care was one of her top priorities when she first took office and that people with rare diseases had remained at the forefront of her thoughts. So when Ms. Hochul was at an event and encountered Dan Doctoroff, a former deputy mayor of New York City who has been living with ALS as of 2021, she immediately invited him to work with her. Mr. Doctoroff’s nonprofit organization, Target ALS, is committed to raising money for ALS research.

“Being in the ALS community, you feel like you’re brothers and sisters just by having experienced it,” said Mr. Doctoroff, whose father, uncle and college roommate died of the disease. “We feel connected to each other in a way that is deeply emotional.”

He said the intent of Ms. Hochul’s program would be to provide care and early diagnosis to all ALS patients, whose data could then be used to support research efforts across the state. The money will also be used to provide pharmaceutical companies with incentives to invest in the development of drugs to treat ALS and to fund regional centers outside the New York City metro area to provide better care to patients outside urban locations.

Misdiagnoses and late ALS diagnoses are major problems, stealing time from people with a disease that typically becomes fatal within two to five years. According to the Target ALS websiteEarly symptoms include twitching or cramping in the arms, legs, shoulders, or tongue, weakness, slurred speech, and difficulty chewing.

Ms Hochul’s mother was misdiagnosed, delaying treatment and leaving the family in limbo. She died not long after her ALS diagnosis.

“I’m not saying it would have changed the outcome, but it certainly would have given us some knowledge about what she was actually going through,” Ms Hochul said.

Dr. Neil A. Shneider, the director of the Eleanor and Lou Gehrig ALS Center at Columbia University, said New York was well positioned to advance ALS research because of the number of specialized centers in the state, such as his own and the New York City. York Genome Center, as well as nonprofits such as Target ALS.

“These kinds of efforts, I think, can only be supported with public money,” he said. “I think this money will be a real impetus for progress and change.”

Dr. Shneider added that ALS research has historically been underfunded, something Ms. Hochul also acknowledged. She called her proposal “trying to make up for lost time.” ALS research has made significant progress over the past five years, Mr. Doctoroff said, with an increase in academic studies, nonprofit involvement and federal government investment. In December 2021, President Biden signed the ALS Act, which invests $100 million annually for five years to provide research grants and accelerate the development of therapies. The missing piece in New York’s fight against ALS was state support.

“We are making progress in every respect,” Mr. Doctoroff said. “I think the field believes this is a treatable disease, that we can solve it. But it won’t happen overnight.”

New York Governor Kathy Hochul warned residents Tuesday evening of two major storm-related problems that were likely to persist after the system continues to develop: widespread power outages and the risk of flooding in certain parts of the state.

In an interview with Spectrum News, a cable television company, Ms. Hochul said that 52,000 households in New York — most of them in the western part of the state — were without power after heavy winds knocked out power lines. She predicted the numbers would rise overnight – and she was right. By 10 p.m., the number had nearly tripled to about 143,000. according to data from the site poweroutage.com.

Restoring power was not an easy matter, she added, as the trucks carrying out repairs could not operate as long as the wind gusts remained strong.

“We are asking families to look out for each other and keep an eye on the neighbours,” Ms Hochul said.

The governor said she was also “very concerned” about the threat of flooding, especially in the Hudson Valley, where a massive rainstorm swept away cars and killed one person last summer.

“That’s what we’re dealing with, not just today, but over the next few days, with the snow melting and the 4 inches of rain that’s coming,” she said.

According to the National Weather Service, by 10 p.m., precipitation totals in and around New York City ranged from an average of three-quarters of an inch to an inch and three-quarters. Similar totals were recorded from the Catskills to the mid-Hudson Valley, with the highest total being about two inches in Rockland County.

Ms. Hochul’s advice to New Yorkers?

“We need people to please stay home,” she said, adding that “it doesn’t take much for your vehicle to be swept away.” Even a few inches of rain can be treacherous.”

Governor Kathy Hochul presented a grim and somewhat gloomy picture of New York on Tuesday, highlighting crime, failing mental health infrastructure and affordability concerns as vexing problems her administration was prepared to tackle.

In her annual State of the State address, Ms. Hochul, a Democrat from Buffalo, deviated from the typical good-news message from a sitting governor, according to a copy of the remarks provided to the news media in advance. Even as she praised her administration’s achievements and promised that a “new day” was dawning in New York, her speech seemed tailor-made to answer the concerns of a state still struggling to find a balance between criminal justice and public safety.

She highlighted reforms such as the recently passed Clean Slate initiative, which she said would help incarcerated people reintegrate into their communities, reducing recidivism.

But she said in the prepared text that she understood why some New Yorkers remained afraid of being targeted “at the grocery store, at the synagogue or on the subway,” even as shootings and killings dropped last year. And pointing out the gap between the state’s mental health system and the criminal justice system, she said there is still work to be done.

“Troubled individuals commit violent acts, and all too often we learn that they have fallen through the cracks after being discharged from a hospital,” Ms Hochul said.

To address this, she called for a “significant expansion” of psychiatric services, including 200 new hospital beds, new mental health courts, increased supervision of people on parole and specialist housing for people with a history of arrests and serious mental health problems . She is also proposing a new joint task force to target organized shoplifting networks.

But perhaps most striking was what wasn’t mentioned as one of the state’s top concerns: addressing the migrant crisis, which has driven tens of thousands of immigrants from around the world to travel to New York City to seek shelter, which is impacting social services of the city and costs billions. of dollars.

The word “migrant” does not appear once in Ms. Hochul’s 180-page State of the State briefing book, although the book does refer to her immigrant grandparents and to a proposal aimed at supporting immigrant entrepreneurs.

Addressing the state’s dire lack of affordable housing, the governor proposed reviving a tax credit intended to encourage affordable housing development and incentives for commercial-to-residential conversions. But she has not laid out a comprehensive plan to address the housing crisis, which she and legislative leaders have previously identified as one of the most serious problems facing the state.

Last year, Ms. Hochul put housing at the top of her agenda and pledged to build 800,000 units, in part by requiring municipalities to meet certain construction targets. That proposal met with significant opposition that ultimately doomed the project.

The speech, which quotes two Roosevelts and Taylor Swift, is the second State of the State address Ms. Hochul has given since she was elected to her first full term in 2022. Her narrow victory over her Republican opponent, Lee Zeldin, The crime-focused election has fueled fears that Democrats’ iron grip on New York politics is disappearing.

She called for additional funding to prevent domestic violence and prosecute abusers, and to expand the list of crimes eligible for hate crime charges in the wake of a spike in anti-Semitic attacks.

Although Ms. Hochul herself will not be on the ballot in November, her fellow Democrats hope to reverse Republicans’ statewide gains in the 2022 midterm elections. The most consequential of these are the five seats in the House of Representatives that the Democrats lost to the Republicans that year.

These suburban districts, which stretch from Long Island to Syracuse, tend to be politically moderate places where quality-of-life issues from crime to the economy resonate.

“New Yorkers have heard promises before, and it’s easy to become cynical or feel overwhelmed,” she said.

“In those moments, I understand why some people feel like the sun is setting on the Empire State,” she added. “But I don’t despair. I see light on the horizon.”

Ms. Hochul has prioritized rebuilding New York’s economy since taking office amid pandemic-era shutdowns. She has made significant investments in an effort to attract businesses to the state, including a $5.5 billion stimulus package that would see a new Micron plant open in central New York.

Earlier this week, the governor announced a $275 million artificial intelligence consortium that will be the first in the nation to contribute public and private resources and research, putting New York at the forefront of the new AI economy.

But unlike in recent years, when better-than-expected tax revenues and cash injections from the federal government during the pandemic bolstered New York’s finances, the state is projecting a $4.3 billion hole this year.

With the governor unlikely to raise taxes, especially in an election year for state lawmakers, Ms. Hochul and legislative leaders will have to be creative to protect existing programs while proposing new initiatives.

This past week, the governor unveiled a series of proposals that address some of the most intractable problems facing New Yorkers.

She wants to spend $10 million on a statewide overhaul of literacy education — a proposal that many advocates say is long overdue. Less than half of third-graders were proficient on state reading tests last year.

She also proposes a significant expansion of disability leave, which has been capped at $170 per week since 1989. Under Ms. Hochul’s plan, that cap would be tied to the average weekly wage statewide, which would bring payments to about $1,250 per week.

The governor also called on the state to adopt a 40-hour paid prenatal leave so pregnant women can attend doctor’s appointments without sacrificing income or employment. The proposal is one of six the governor has made to address New York’s troubling maternal mortality rate, especially among Black women.

Ms. Hochul acknowledged the challenges New York has faced and will continue to face as a result of climate change. While calling for more help from the federal government, she pledged to create programs that would protect housing and infrastructure from flooding and other climate-related damage, allow homeowners to voluntarily move out of high-risk areas and strengthen state disaster response systems strengthen. .

Despite – or perhaps in recognition of – the headwinds the state faces, Ms Hochul underlined the state’s resilience and reputation as a place where transformations are commonplace.

“As Taylor Swift reminds us, everyone here ‘used to be someone else,’” she said.

Reporting was contributed by Jay Root, Claire Fahy, Erin Nolan, Luis Ferré-Sadurní And Mihir Zaveri.

Good morning. It’s Tuesday, the day Governor Kathy Hochul is scheduled to deliver her State of the State address. We will find out what to listen to.

January is a time for setting goals and agendas. Governor Kathy Hochul spent the past week laying out the themes for the State of the State Message she will release today. Here is a summary of the main proposals she discussed:

There were tensions in Albany last year, with legislative leaders saying Hochul, a moderate Democrat, had stood in the way of an agreement on housing initiatives. Left-wing Democrats in the Legislature also clashed with her on issues ranging from the state’s bail laws to her nominee to become the state’s highest judge. Today, those Democrats will listen for indications that Hochul will be receptive to policy concessions this time.

I asked Grace Ashford, who represents the state government on behalf of the Metro desk, to assess Hochul’s proposed agenda – and tell us what she will listen to.

How forward-looking is her agenda?

There is a lot the governor hopes to cover in her agenda this year.

One of her most exciting and unusual proposals concerns the new AI consortium. It aims to make New York a leader in the AI ​​landscape by connecting research institutions with funding from the state to create a supercomputing facility. The aim is to make AI technology, now dominated by large technology companies, available for research in the public interest.

How quickly can that come together?

That depends on many factors, from technology to security to getting the legislature on board. She hopes to free up $250 million to get started as quickly as possible, with another $25 million to be allocated on behalf of SUNY over the next decade.

This proposal stands out from the other proposals that came out last week because of its futuristic focus. The others are intended to address the serious but long-standing problems New Yorkers face.

As?

Take the disparities in maternal health. There have been previous attempts to address these, but the imbalances remain.

In New York City, for example, black women are nine times as likely to die during pregnancy or childbirth as white women.

New York State isn’t last in the country in this regard, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t a serious problem. Hochul has made it clear that, as the first female governor, she takes this seriously and personally.

Her first prenatal leave in the country would expand the state’s existing family leave policy, but it would only last for 40 hours, specifically so women could take time off from work to go to the doctor without jeopardizing their income or lose their jobs. .

What battles will Hochul’s proposals face in the state Legislature?

Everyone will be different. Maternal health is something that both chambers have made clear is a priority for them.

Additionally, proposals that don’t come with a huge dollar amount tend to be easier to sell. That’s because New York is facing a significant budget deficit this year for the first time during Hochul’s term. Lawmakers will have to take that into account when deciding which proposals will make the cut.

The governor has resisted raising taxes, a common solution to a budget deficit. That means cuts to programs and services, which are never popular. So you’ll hear legislators say there are a lot of good ideas. It’s just a matter of which ones get priority.

It’s also important to note that the biggest fight we expect to see this session is over housing.

But she made no mention of housing when discussing the themes of her speech last week.

That’s right.

Last year she made housing a signature part of her vision for the state, but failed to achieve this. The version she presented included mandates for increasing density in the suburbs. Lawmakers from those areas united in opposition.

She has said she doesn’t plan to push the exact same thing this year, but she also can’t exactly walk away from one of the biggest issues facing the state.

We’ve seen Assembly and Senate leaders say in their opening statements that they want housing to be a priority. So I think it’s safe to assume we’ll see a fight over this, and in particular a renewed focus on “just cause eviction,” which would make additional tenant protections part of state law. The real estate industry has opposed the concept.

This is an election year, not for the governor, but for the 150 members of the General Assembly and the 63 members of the Senate, as well as for members of Congress. How will election year politics impact what happens with Hochul’s proposed agenda?

That will be a priority for Democrats, whose vision for taking back Congress runs directly through New York state. They want to avoid controversy, and that will shape their approach to issues like public safety – concerns about crime and the way the criminal justice system functions – and, again, housing.

What else are you going to listen to?

The governor said nothing last week about the migrant crisis, a concern for New York City Mayor Eric Adams. So it will be interesting to see how she handles that.

On the climate front, New York passed a very ambitious bill in 2019, setting out a series of targets, the first of which should take place in 2030. It is not at all clear that we are on track to achieve those goals, and most people agree. This will require more investment and a greater degree of public support.

It is worth nothing that Hochul has included some individual environmental proposals in her State of the State speeches in recent years, such as banning natural gas connections in new construction. Whether she does so again this year, and to what extent, will tell us how concerned she is about meeting the state’s environmental goals.

---

Weather

Expect a rainy afternoon and temperatures in the low 50s. Heavier rain is possible late, with strong winds up to 50 kilometers per hour.

ALTERNATE PARKING

In effect until Monday (Martin Luther King’s birthday).

---

The latest New York news

---

METROPOLITAN diary

Mango slices

Dear Diary:

My son and I rode the Bx12 bus into Manhattan after a day at the Bronx Zoo. It was busy and traffic on Fordham Road moved at its usual glacial pace.

Opposite us sat a boy and a girl, both about 7 years old. They ate mango slices from plastic cups and broke the silence on the bus with an animated conversation in Spanish.

Suddenly the bus hit a bump and the girl’s mango flew across the floor.

With a short groan of disappointment, she started picking up the mango pieces. As she did so, her brother started cackling, which caught the attention of most of the passengers.

It took the girl some time to pick up the scattered fruit. When she finished, a man sitting a few rows in front walked back to her.

“I would like to buy that mango from you,” he said.

He handed her a five dollar bill and picked up the cup of mango she had picked from the floor.

“Buy another one,” he said.

– Judas Ziliak

Illustrated by Agnes Lee. Send your entries here And read more Metropolitan Diary here.

---

Yesterday I put the wrong character in the red Jaguar in the Metropolitan Opera’s new production of “Carmen.” It’s Escamillo, not Don José.

In her third State of the State address, Governor Kathy Hochul will propose a unique statewide consortium that brings together public and private resources to place New York at the forefront of the artificial intelligence landscape.

Under the plan, Ms. Hochul would spend $275 million in state funds to build a center that would be used jointly by six of the state’s research institutions, including the State University of New York and the City University of New York.

Columbia University, Cornell University, New York University and Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute would each contribute $25 million to the project, known as “Empire AI.” Additional private funding has been secured through the Simons Foundation and from billionaire Thomas Secunda, who helped found Bloomberg LP.

The initiative’s futuristic focus stands out from many of the governor’s other proposals, which aim to combat problems such as medical debt, literacy and maternal mortality.

Ms Hochul described it as an important investment that would strengthen the state’s economy for years to come and help offset the gaps between technology companies and academic institutions in the race to develop AI.

“This is not just a win for the future of technology – this is a win for the institutions across the state that will benefit from the growth of this technology,” Ms. Hochul said in a statement.

New York’s push to develop AI comes at a time when such research faces new challenges. Researchers are developing artificial intelligence technologies by exposing AI models to vast amounts of information, much of which comes from the Internet. But lawsuits against the owners of that information — including The New York Times — have raised questions about who should have access to it and for what reasons.

Ms. Hochul will also have to sell her proposal to the Democratic-controlled state Legislature, which will weigh it against many other priorities. This year, those negotiations will have to take into account a looming budget deficit.

Many progressives favor raising taxes on the wealthy, but Ms. Hochul has so far declined to go that route, saying raising taxes would drive high earners out of the state.

Ms. Hochul’s economic strategy so far has included a series of major investments — such as a $5.5 billion stimulus package to secure Micron’s new facility outside Syracuse — that she hopes will boost New York’s place in the tech market will secure.

The new project has some high-profile supporters: OpenAI CEO Sam Altman applauded the proposal, saying such private-public partnerships were “critical to the development and deployment of safe and useful AI technologies.”

Julie Samuels, the president and executive director of Tech:NYC, which represents companies such as Google, Microsoft and Meta, said the consortium would attract not only academics but also companies eager to hire top talent.

Companies like Microsoft and Google have long dominated the space largely because they have had access to the precious computing resources and data that AI systems require. That advantage has also allowed tech companies to attract researchers to private industry, where they can earn much more than at academic institutions.

“We’re in some ways not able to compete in the way that we would like to,” explains Jeannette Wing, professor of computer science and executive vice president for research at Columbia University.

And while the consortium would not completely level the playing field between the public and private sectors, it could give researchers access to tools that were previously inaccessible.

“The industry is developing so quickly; they don’t actually have time to think about the long-term future of where this technology is going. That is the role of academia,” said Dr. Wing, adding that researchers could also answer ethical questions that people in the industry might have less reason to think about.

Still, some questioned the state’s plan, which would involve creating its own cloud computing infrastructure rather than building on existing platforms like Amazon or Google — a logistically complicated undertaking that could also raise concerns about safety and reliability.

“It’s a huge effort,” said Oren Etzioni, former technical director of the Allen Institute for Artificial Intelligence. “Is this going to reinvent the wheel to put a Big Apple stamp on it, or a New York State stamp on it? That can be very worrying.”

Ms Hochul’s team emphasized that a key aim of the project was to challenge the monopoly of big tech companies on AI, enabling collaborative research in the public interest.

Proponents say such a collaboration would allow academics to apply AI technology to entirely new fields – from urban planning to medicine and music.

“I would actually like to see the people who do the weather have access to stronger computer systems,” New York’s director of operations, Kathryn Garcia, said in an interview the day before a snowstorm was expected to hit the state.

“I have a prediction that can range from ‘maybe nothing’ to ‘maybe a lot,’” she added. “When you try to plan for something and be prepared for something, our current weather models are not keeping pace with the direction of climate change.”

Cade Metz reporting contributed.

A plan for a floating, self-filtering pool in the East River could soon become a reality, New York officials said Friday.

A $16 million investment from the city and state created the floating pool, an initiative of the group Friends of + SWIMMING POOLwill open for testing this summer, with the goal of opening to the public next year, Gov. Kathy Hochul said at a news conference in Central Harlem.

The funding for the unique pool was one of several swimming-related projects that Ms. Hochul, joined by Mayor Eric Adams, announced on Friday as part of a broad effort to “help every New Yorker learn to swim and keep people safe in and around the water.”

The governor said her administration would invest millions of dollars in building new pools around New York to address the statewide shortage of lifeguards and increase the amount of swimming instruction available to state residents.

As summers get warmer and people turn to pools and waterways for escape, drownings in New York have reached record highs, Ms. Hochul said. In 2021, the last year for which data was available, 230 people drowned in the state. All deaths were preventable, the governor said. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has done just that cited Drowning is the leading cause of death in children aged 1 to 4 years.

“If you can’t swim, what you think is a refuge, that break can become a death trap in the blink of an eye,” Ms Hochul said.

The initiative announced Friday reflects the largest statewide investment in swimming since the New Deal and will expand access to swimming for underserved communities, the governor said.

Shekar Krishnan, chairman of the City Council’s Parks and Recreation Committee, called the effort an “important piece” but said it was not enough to reduce the number of drownings in the city.

“If the mayor cuts free swimming lessons, cuts back on summer programs for children and hires fewer lifeguards than ever, a floating pool in the East River is nice, but it won’t save a child from drowning on Rockaway Beach,” said Mr. Krishnan . , said a member of the council’s Progressive Caucus.

New York City, like many other municipalities, has struggled in recent years to keep pools and swim programs open due to a shortage of lifeguards. The lack of lifeguards has led to reduced pool capacity, unannounced pool closureslong lines at public swimming pools and the cancellation of free swimming lessons.

Last summer, the city entered swimming season facing its worst ever lifeguard shortage. To attract new lifeguards, officials increased pay and retention bonuses, relaxed the city’s notoriously difficult swimming test and advertised lifeguards at high schools, job fairs and bus shelters.

A spokeswoman for the city parks department said Friday that it is too early to know whether there will be a lifeguard shortage this summer; The qualifying exams started last month and will last until February.

The investment in new pools, swimming programs and lifeguards by the state and city comes as Mr. Adams cuts funding for municipal services, including cuts that would freeze police hiring and close libraries on Sundays. The mayor blamed the cuts on the financial pressure caused by the flow of migrants into the city, which he said will cost nearly $11 billion over two years.

Critics have said the cuts will hurt working families by reducing the public’s access to important resources.

On Friday, Mr. Adams said building new pools, including +POOL, is critical for communities that have historically been denied access to free public pools like the one he grew up at.

“I had a water hose and hopefully the fire hydrant was on,” he said. “That was my swimming pool.”

The goal is to make +POOL free and open to the public, said Kara Meyer, executive director of Friends of +POOL, a nonprofit that also offers free beginner swimming lessons and other swimming programs.

The self-filtering pool project has faced many obstacles because the idea behind it is “so out-of-the-box,” said Manhattan Borough President Mark Levine. It has been in the planning stages for more than a decade.

But the influx of money from the state and the city, which allows the project to proceed under newly created safety regulations, it creates the potential for similar pools elsewhere in the city in the future, Mr. Levine said.

“The vision is that you could have several – three or four even – in New York City waterways,” he said.