(upbeat theme music) - Welcome to this week's edition of" New York NOW."

I'm Shantel Destra.

This year, New York decided to make controversial changes to its 2019 climate goals, also known as the Community Protection and Climate Leadership Act.

The changes mean a reduction in the state's gas emission target, changing the method the state is using to measure emissions, as well as extending the deadline to establish regulations.

To understand the state's move to adjust its climate goals, we sat down with assembly member Deborah Glick, who chairs the Environmental Conservation Committee in the lower chamber.

Glick, who is retiring after more than three decades in the legislature, also spoke at length about her political career as well as her identity as the first out member of the LGBTQ+ community to serve in the state's legislature.

Here is that conversation.

(upbeat music) Thank you so much for joining us on the show today, assembly member.

- Well, thank you for inviting me.

- Of course.

And after more than three decades serving in the state legislature, you've decided to retire and end your career in state politics at the end of this term.

How are you feeling in this moment as we wind down in the final days of the legislative session?

- Well, this wasn't the kind of session I would have chosen for my last session.

It's, you know, the budget still hasn't been done as we're taping this, but I am hopeful that we'll still have some time to do some serious business other than the budget.

But I'm feeling a touch nostalgic, but also very excited.

- Yeah.

What are the serious business that you're hoping to accomplish outside of the budget?

- The first and foremost is the Packaging Reduction and Recycling Infrastructure Act, which would require producers to reduce their packaging so we can address our solid waste crisis, and also our health crisis because there are a lot of toxic chemicals that we hope we can require that they no longer use after a period of time that they get to make adjustments.

So we think it's a balanced approach, but a necessary one because it's costing taxpayers a lot of money to get rid of excess stuff.

- And that certainly has been a bill that you have pushed for several years along with the Senate sponsor and environmental advocates.

And there have been some challenges along the way.

Can you help us understand some of the amendments to the bill and, you know, how does the fact that you are leaving this year impact the conversations that you're having around that bill?

- Well, first of all, the bill has changed very much based on a myriad of conversations and meetings with stakeholders of frankly every description.

It's amazing who came out of the woodwork to discuss this.

And we've moved from requiring a 50% reduction in packaging in 10 years to a 30% over 12 years in stages that make it easy to comply.

We reduce some of the timeframes, I should say, we've changed timeframes so they have more time.

We've extended a waiver period so that if, based on health and safety requirements by the federal government, if there's some reason, no alternative type of packaging, one can apply to the Department of Environmental Conservation for a waiver.

We moved the waiver timeframe from one year to five years.

We've stretched out the time one needs to comply for various recycling requirements.

We've made our timeframe consistent with other states so that, again, we don't have a patchwork of you do this at this time for this state and that time for another state.

So we are consistent with Minnesota and California on requiring packaging to be recyclable.

And we eliminated what was viewed as an extra level of burdensome oversight.

We eliminated the Independent Inspector General.

There is already oversight by the Attorney General and by the Department of Environmental Conservation.

So the consumers are, and business are protected, but it's not an extra layer.

And we have taken out a toxic task force.

We reduced some of the number of chemicals.

There are thousands of chemicals that are in packaging.

People think that those have been tested to be safe by the government.

Not true, sadly.

But the task force was something that the companies objected to.

They felt that that was, again, burdensome oversight.

And so instead, the Department of Environmental Conservation will in fact be addressing that.

And we have made certain that we've reduced it to only those things that really shouldn't be exposed to people.

Lead, cadmium, mercury, formaldehyde, PFAS, biphenyls, phthalates.

These are things that are endocrine disruptors.

These are things that can cause cancer.

These are things that cause developmental problems and infertility.

So we think that we really should take that step even though other states have not.

And we see the federal government abandoning protection for the public.

So we think it's important for New York to make that statement and protect New Yorkers, even if other states have not yet decided to protect their people.

- And another big policy that has been driving, you know, conversations around the budget this year, of course, is the 2019 Community Protection and Climate Leadership Act, which essentially would reduce the state's gas emission in the years to come with various benchmarks across the next couple of years.

There's been a lot of conversation about whether or not the state will be able to reach these goals and, you know, potentially changes to the law in this budget cycle.

So what do you make of all of this this year?

- Well, I will say that the pandemic upended a lot of things including supply chains and some of the market forces that might not have been foreseen in 2019.

On the other hand, if anything, we understand that we must be as aggressive as possible to reduce gas emissions.

And frankly, when we talk about affordability, the reason things are as expensive as they are, are because here in the Northeast, especially in New York, we are very tied to natural gas.

We made a decision, not me, but others made decisions to try to move away from oil, which was good.

But natural gas as a byproduct is very damaging to the climate.

I don't wanna get too far into the weeds, but methane is, doesn't last as long in the atmosphere, but it is many, many, many more times damaging and warming to the environment than CO2.

So it is, in some ways, if you're thinking about affordability, we need to move more aggressively to transition away from gas and embrace more electric based things like heat pumps and using solar and wind.

And of course we don't have a partner in the feds.

In fact, they're doing everything they can to undermine us.

So I know that we might not have reached the goals, but I don't know that you sort of adjust everything, including how you measure whether we are moving towards those goals, which unfortunately is the view of the governor that it is essential for us to count our gas emissions like everybody else.

We learned that... They may have been ahead of us.

We learned in 2019 from science that counting methane was really what we needed to do.

And sadly, I think we're going to move away from, in a more appropriate way to measure our success.

But, you know, people are very stressed now with the war in Iran.

It's not an excursion, it's a war, and it is impacting everybody's cost from, you know, gas at the pump to getting your food delivered to the grocery store.

So we should be and could be making things more affordable by making the transition to electric more rapidly.

- And when you were elected, you of course made history as being the first member, open member of the LGBTQ+ community to serve in the state legislature.

So I'm curious, how has that identity and milestone impacted the way that you approach legislating and also represented your constituents?

- You know, I was elected in 1990, and New York City in 1986 passed a law that protected basic civil rights, right to housing, employment, public accommodation.

The state did not make that change until 2002.

I was a sitting member of this body, and my basic civil rights were not protected in many parts of the state until we did a statewide bill.

So I am, you know, part of why I ran was to protect women's right to choose.

When I went to college, choice was not an option.

Abortion was illegal.

And that was a very driving force for me because I saw the impact among friends.

And I also knew who I was as a kid and felt the isolation.

And I didn't want successive generations of young gay people to feel that isolation and lack of self-worth.

And I wanted to protect women's right to choose.

And here we are back trying to protect women's basic reproductive health.

It's just that part is outrageous.

And we see attempts to attack the LGBTQ community.

Again, using my community as scapegoats for political purpose.

When it's clear there are members of this community that are everywhere.

They are Republican, Democrat, independent, non-participating, and they deserve the same rights as everybody else.

And they deserve not to be demonized and marginalized as we currently see today.

- Yeah.

And given those threats to the community, how are you hoping that the state will continue to hone in on the support for the community and really, you know, progress in the years to come?

- Well, we have taken steps.

We've not only passed the Reproductive Health Act several years ago, but we have enshrined basic rights in our constitution.

And we did that, and the people voted for it, and it's in the constitution of New York state.

So I'm very proud of having been just a part of that.

And, you know, the difficult years were the AIDS years.

People felt very free to be very homophobic.

People were frightened, they were uncertain of how to protect themselves, and they lashed out.

And when people ask me how did I, you know, deal with the homophobia, first I said, we had to get over the sexism, which, you know, is always under the surface, but really it came out in full force during the AIDS crisis.

And people were dying, and the government at many levels was doing very little about it except taking negative action.

So I'm pleased that we came through that.

And think of all of the people that we lost that might have been saved if the government had moved more aggressively.

- And lastly, what are you hoping your legacy will be?

How do you hope New Yorkers will remember you and remember most about you?

- I have no idea.

That's kind of a strange thing.

I hope that here within the legislature that people will think about, you know, hard work.

Reading, reading is, you know, social media is not where you learn about history, it's not where you learn about issues.

You have to read trusted sources.

TikTok is not where you get your PhD in history.

In fact, you will become increasingly less educated by focusing solely on social media.

So I'm hopeful that my example of trying to be broad in my reading and in my conversations, that people don't hang to their own little crowd, but are more expansive and are also more focused on doing the job.

And, you know, not as much the performative arts as we have seen in all politics.

- Well, thank you so much for your time today, assembly member.

Unfortunately, that is all the time we have for today.

But we thank you so much for connecting with us.

- Well, I so appreciate the opportunity.

It's been a great honor to serve my constituents and to be a part of the legislature.

- And we were speaking with assembly member Deborah Glick, representing the 66 Assembly District and chair of the Assembly's Environmental Conservation Committee.

(upbeat music) And for more information on the state's approach to its climate goals, you can visit our website that's at nynow.org.

Now, turning to another important topic.

In this next segment, David Lombardo of WCNY'S The Capitol Pressroom led a round table discussion with capitol reporters, Dan Clark and Raga Justin.

The trio examined the lasting impact of some of the more pertinent in policy issues this legislative session.

Here's that discussion.

(upbeat music) - So we're talking now a little after the session has ended and I just wanna do a wellness check on both of you.

How are you holding up?

The session is, it's not a sprint, it's a marathon.

So maybe it involves some recovery time.

I mean, Dan, how are you feeling right now since you do this on a daily basis, you're churning stuff out?

- I was as prepared for this session as I am prepared to run a marathon.

Yes, I'm burnt out.

The budget went very late.

And then we had a marathon of bill's passing in the last week of session.

There's been a lot to look through.

I mean, the legislature passed more than 700 bills.

That's not unusual, but I'm still trying to unpack every little bill that goes in there.

A lot of those are local bills, like tax authorizations, but you also have these small little bills that have wide ranging impacts.

So we'll be watching through the end of the year to see how the governor decides 'em.

- Coming into this legislative session, there had been some high profile action on high tech industries, artificial intelligence, social media.

There were efforts to regulate the social media experience for minors, regulations still in the works on that, there was the RAISE Act, something that you've covered a lot, those really high end, big groundbreaking AI developments.

What was on the table, at least from advocate's perspective or from the legislator's perspective when it came to high-end high-tech rules and regulations for Albany?

- You know, I think they wanted to see just something done.

The issue is inaction is what lawmakers will tell you.

The federal government isn't doing a ton on AI regulation, trying to curb some of, you know, what folks call the worst impacts of this new technology, especially on developing brains.

And so the governor, I think, you know, to her credit and to your earlier point, has already taken on some of those tech fights in previous years against social media companies and social media platforms.

But there is a greater interest as with the RAISE Act to start going after the developers of these AI models.

This year we saw some chatbot bills, mostly disclosure.

There was one, you know, requiring newspapers to disclose when they use synthetic content on their platforms.

You know, there's a difference in industry terms between disclosure bills and actual prohibition.

- Sure.

- The prohibition bills people don't love, right?

That impacts their bottom line in many cases.

And that's again, where we're seeing Democrats especially really want those prohibition bills, they might have to settle for some of the disclosure bills.

- Thinking about you and your experience covering this budget, was there anything that you were particularly getting involved in?

I know with Bloomberg tax and finance is usually a big thing.

So was that an area you were focusing on or was it policy because there was so much policy to choose from?

- Yeah, we cared a lot about the potential for tax increases.

I think that was a big political conversation as well as a policy.

One at the beginning of of session, we saw Mayor Zohran Mamdani and the city and his left wing flank of allies in the state legislature really pushing for that.

And there was sort of an open question about whether the governor was going to cave on those demands.

She ultimately, of course, didn't, although they came to a sort of compromise tax, what we call it, the Pied-à-Terre Tax or the tax on second homes that are owned by people who aren't primary residents in New York City.

They might live actually elsewhere in New York State.

They could live in Russia.

That was a country that came up a lot.

There's this idea of Russian oligarchs living in these, you know, high priced mansions off of Central Park.

And I think that again was sort of cheered by both the Democratic Socialists and by the governor and her kind of faction, the more moderate folks as a; look, we did something on taxes.

This is something that's going to generate about $500 million for the city of New York, which has been saying it is in, you know, fiscal crisis.

And so theoretically this is sort of a stopgap measure to help them fix that budget hole.

But is it the full tax increase set that leftists wanted?

No, not at all.

And I think that raises the question, where do we go from here?

- And I don't genuinely, I think we have this conversation every year where the legislature pushes for higher income taxes on the wealthy and higher corporate tax rates.

The governor says, "No, I'm not entertaining that."

And I think we did see more pressure this year from the mayor of New York, but I don't see a situation in which she caves in the future on those taxes.

I really don't.

She has been given opportunity after opportunity where we have multi-billion dollar budget gaps to say, yeah, let's do this.

This is the solution.

But she has continuously said, "I am not doing that.

I'm not entertaining that."

A lot of people have said, you know, after this year's election, she's going to change her tune and immediately become supportive of raising those taxes.

I don't know what factors could possibly lead somebody to come to that conclusion, to be honest with you.

I think that somebody could change their positions after an election, but she's been elected to a full term once now.

I don't know why she wouldn't change that in 2023 if she's gonna change it in 2027.

It's one of those things that it's this constant push and pull with the legislature and this governor just has shown no interest in raising those taxes.

And I don't see that changing.

- Absolutely, Dan.

But I do think that the introduction of the mayor of New York City and just his political popularity has potentially changed that future outcome, right?

We don't know what his influence is yet, or we don't know the extent of his influence yet, I should say.

The governor and the mayor have had a overall pretty cordial relationship, at least publicly.

- Oh, I would say more than cordial.

I would say they've embraced each other to the sense that if he can be beneficial to her or she can be beneficial to him, they have found ways to lean into the partnership and have avoided those areas of difference.

For example, on taxing the rich, there was a big rally in Albany.

People expected the mayor who's been pushing this to come up to Albany.

He did not.

And I think that was very a conscious decision that was reflective of him trying to have that strong relationship with the governor, which netted him lots of money for New York City's budget hole, netted them lots of money for childcare, money for pre-K and now 2-K, and it also got them what you talked about with the Pied-à-Terre tax.

So I think that they are people who worked really closely together in this last year, but what that looks like after the elections, I think that is a big question.

Whether he feels some freedom to pressure her a little bit more now that she's likely secured another four years in office.

- Right, I mean, he might not feel the same pressure to pull his punches at that point, and he might say, "Look, the gloves are off to use all of the metaphors."

And, you know, maybe be more publicly antagonistic towards the governor.

And I do think that might have the potential to change her thinking on it.

Maybe not privately, but at least publicly.

- Yeah, I think you could look at it from the opposite direction too.

If she wins reelection and you know, she has four more years in office, does she come out a little bit stronger and say, "I do not agree with the mayor.

I am not going to, you know, go along with his priorities."

But I think you're right that I think she has consciously built this relationship that at least publicly and I think privately too, appears positive and is a working relationship that she wants to benefit the city of New York.

Obviously he does too, as mayor.

I think that she really is earnest when she says she doesn't wanna go back to those days of governors and mayors- - Sure.

At each other's throats.

- Yeah.

- Sniping at each other.

- I had something less TV appropriate to say.

- Undermining each other.

The Bill de Blasio, Cuomo thing is emblematic- - It was just ridiculous.

- and unhealthy relationship.

- Oh my God.

- Frenemies at best.

- Grow up.

Yeah.

- And I think you make a good point though about what the elections mean for that 2027 dynamic.

If the governor beats her GOP challenger, Bruce Blakeman, the Nassau County executive with 55% of the vote, I think she comes into this session a lot differently than if she gets 60% of the vote or even higher.

Which I think would embolden her to say, I have this mandate and voters are supportive of the way I approach budgeting, policy issues.

And maybe Zohran Mamdani, depending how he does in winning through some of his surrogates in November, maybe comes in a little more skittish.

I don't know.

It definitely is one of those unpredictable questions that we can revisit in December as we build up for the next budget.

My thanks to Capitol Confidential author Dan Clark and Bloomberg Government Reporter Raga Justin for chatting with me.

(upbeat music) - And for more on the pertinent policy issues of the legislative session, you can visit our website.

Again, that's at nynow.org.

You can also subscribe to our newsletter by going to newsletter.nynow.org or by scanning the QR code on your screen.

Well, that does it for this edition of "New York NOW".

Thank you for tuning in and see you next week.

(dramatic theme music) - Funding for "New York NOW" is provided by WNET.