Governor notes the park in her third State of the State agenda
By Gwendolyn Craig
The Adirondack mountains may have provided metaphors for Gov. Kathy Hochul’s State of the State speech on Tuesday, but the largest park in the continental United States was mentioned in her 181-paged agenda just once.
Many of her initiatives, however, could impact communities in the 6-million-acre mix of public and private lands – from climate resilient infrastructure proposals to repurposing closed state prisons for housing.
“We’ve traversed rocky terrain, but there are still switchbacks before the summit,” the Democratic governor said, addressing a crowd of lawmakers in the state Assembly chambers in Albany. “I see light on the horizon. This is a state where resiliency runs in our blood. No mountain is too steep to summit.”
Hochul’s over 200 proposals included sweeping initiatives addressing mental health, crime, consumer protection, housing affordability, sustainability, education, health and agriculture.
More details will be revealed next Tuesday when the governor releases her executive budget. The state is currently facing a deficit of more than $4 billion. “We cannot spend money we do not have,” the governor said. “It’s up to all of us to make the hard yet necessary decisions and use taxpayer dollars creatively and responsibly.”
Reactions to the governor’s vision appeared tepid on Tuesday. Many conservative lawmakers highlighted the state’s deficit and fleeing population and felt Hochul’s address did not pose any solutions. Assembly Minority Leader Will Barclay said the speech was full of “vague goals for the coming year.” He looked forward to seeing her executive budget.
Green agenda
A concern Adirondack Assemblyman Matthew Simpson, R-Horicon, had over park communities’ eligibility for certain water infrastructure grants was mentioned in the governor’s agenda. Simpson told the Explorer that oftentimes Adirondack Park communities don’t meet the demographics or other requirements, especially with second homeowners skewing some of the formulas.
The governor acknowledged this under a clean water section of her 2024 booklet, “directing the Environmental Facilities Corporation to increase water infrastructure grants for small rural communities from 25% to 50% of net eligible project costs.”
It was in this section that she made her sole mention of the park: “This change will support smaller communities, like those in the Adirondacks, which often struggle with accessing clean water grants and delivering affordable projects.” Simpson said he was very happy to see that proposal in the governor’s agenda.
“The water infrastructure initiative would be welcomed,” added Shaun Gillilland, chairman of the Essex County Board of Supervisors and supervisor for the town of Willsboro. “Large water projects are extraordinarily expensive. Local government has to shop a myriad of funding sources.”
Climate change and climate resiliency projects received attention in the governor’s agenda, too. Hochul highlighted a number of “new normal” weather events across the state caused by climate change and said the state would address the root cause while fortifying the state “against future storms.”
Hochul’s agenda book identified high-risk dams as a major problem to address, something the Explorer has reported on extensively. The governor called for the state Department of Environmental Conservation to create “a grant program to reduce flood risks and restore environmental connections through the removal, rehabilitation, improvement, and modernization of municipal and State-owned dams.”
The governor’s environmental initiatives also included planting 25 million trees by 2033 in urban areas to provide shade during heat waves, directing funds to address harmful algal blooms in water bodies and protect drinking water supplies.
Jessica Ottney Mahar, policy and strategy director for The Nature Conservancy, said the tree plantings “would also help New York meet its carbon reduction goals while protecting clean drinking water, restoring wildlife habitat, and reducing the risks of extreme heat waves, which can be fatal in neighborhoods without trees. If matched with adequate funding, this goal would spur market growth, workforce development, and a local supply chain for seedlings and other reforestation supplies.”
And as the state transitions its electrical grid from fossil fuel power to renewable energy, Hochul is proposing additional shortcuts to the environmental and permitting review of major renewable energy projects.
The administration is looking at moving the relatively new Office of Renewable Energy Siting, which was created to streamline the permitting process for large-scale renewable projects, to the Department of Public Service. It’s unclear how this move could impact the one large-scale solar facility proposed in the Adirondack Park currently under ORES review. That 40-megawatt array is proposed in the town of Mayfield on Great Sacandaga Lake.
The Alliance for Clean Energy (ACE) New York said while ORES “has issued permits more efficiently than the previous process,” reaching the state’s climate mandate of a 70% renewable energy grid by 2030 is “at grave risk,” due to inflation and other factors.
The Hochul administration has also proposed a new transmission permitting process, which ACE New York Executive Director Anne Reynolds said will be important for additional renewable deployment. In the Adirondacks, transmission upgrades have already been an issue with the state’s first “Build-Ready” solar project on a former mine tailings pile in St. Lawrence County. The project was originally proposed at 20 megawatts, but due to the grid’s transmission capacity, it was scaled back to 12 megawatts.
Prisons and housing
Hochul held out some hope for reusing closed state prisons, possibly even in the Adirondacks. The governor is proposing a $500 million fund to facilitate the conversion of state properties including “transit adjacent lots, former prisons and other state sites for much needed housing development.”
A coalition of state and local government leaders and environmental advocates seek reuse of the closed Moriah Shock Incarceration Facility in Essex County, a boot-camp style rehabilitation center that housed 300 prisoners. They envision student and participant housing there for the new Timbuctoo Summer Climate Careers Institute or the Civilian Climate Corps.
Their hopes appeared dashed when the New York Prison Redevelopment Commission issued a 2022 report that said Moriah Shock would need a constitutional amendment for private redevelopment. A constitutional amendment takes years to pass and historically hasn’t succeeded for one Adirondack prison.
The former Camp Gabriels Correctional Facility just north of Saranac Lake closed in 2009. A constitutional amendment for its redevelopment was first proposed in 2015 and has continuously stalled in the state Legislature. It could be taken up by the Legislature this year, but state lawmakers have been reluctant to introduce another amendment for Moriah.
They appeared optimistic that the governor’s prison redevelopment funds could apply to Moriah Shock. Gillilland said he could see the complex turned into “cluster housing with some significant structure changes. The water and sewer infrastructures are still good. The physical plant is still functional as well.”
Simpson said the governor’s agenda isn’t clear if she is referring to residential housing or mental health housing, but he said either kind of reuse would be welcomed. “It just makes sense with it being a modern facility that doesn’t have the tell-tale signs of most correctional facilities.”
State Sen. Dan Stec, R-Queensbury, called Hochul’s proposal to get the sites back in use “a good start.”
Not mentioned
Though Hochul’s 2024 and 2023 speeches both used mountain metaphors (in 2023 she described “the mountains yet to be climbed”) she did not mention the state’s Catskill or Adirondack forest preserves.
Her recreation vision focused on swimming opportunities, but not trails, visitor management or the state’s unusual bid to host the 2026 Olympic Winter Games sliding events in Lake Placid. In December, the Lake Placid-based Olympic Regional Development Authority, with a cover letter from Hochul, responded to an appeal from the Milano-Cortina 2026 Olympic Organizing committee to take on the bobsled, luge and skeleton events..
It’s also unclear how state agencies’ staffing and budgets may be impacted in the coming fiscal year.
Top photo: Gov. Kathy Hochul delivers her 2024 State of the State address in Albany. Screenshot from the state’s livestream
Simpson is an irrelevant unqualified member who has delivered zero legislation and local funding while costing the taxpayers almost three quarters of million dollars in salary, benefits, expense reimbursements and office expenses.
Keep the Adirondack Park natural as it has been since the beginning when Teddy Roosevelt and others chose to preserve it’s natural beauty as a national park. Private land was honored in the park and it is a refuge for nature and adventurers lovers. It was never intended to house illegal immigrants or wind mills. Keep the 49 peaks pure from electric windmills and other ugly structures you have it mind. Don’t count your chickens before the next election.