- Albany, NY 01/05/2022 by Linda Perry (WBAI)

New York Governor Kathy Hochul, N.Y.S.’s first woman governor wearing suffragette white delivered her State of the State address from Albany. She says the days of three men in a room is clearly over. The Governor gave a far reaching address acknowledging the pain and loss of the last two covid years. She sought to address inequities across the state with an emphasis on building up the state's workforces and businesses and an investment in renewable energy. Hochul says it's cause for alarm that New York has lost 300,000 New Yorkers in the last pandemic year and she listed ways in which the state is trying to bring folks back and attract new New Yorkers with incentives to businesses, to workforces, and to institutions like SUNY. She proposed a $10 billion plan to grow state's health care workforce by 20% over the next five years, saying the pandemic worsened long-simmering staffing problems.

While the Governor is from Buffalo, her address was New York City centric. Hochul says she has a personal experience with every pothole on the L.I.E. and she put forth changes meant to improve lives of New Yorkers in the city and on Long Island. Her emphasis is on worker training and improving infrastructure, reconnecting neighborhoods separated by concrete, increasing methods of transportation, childcare and small business relief, training and education for formerly incarcerated New Yorkers with a Jails to Job initiative.

Hochul is ramping up efforts to certify teachers and adding more mental health professionals in schools to help heal the wounds inflicted by isolation during the pandemic. She also announced  help for homeless New Yorkers with increased housing and services. Hochul says she is working with NYC Mayor Eric Adams on addressing gun violence and sought to distance herself from former governor Andrew Cuomo with ethics reforms and term limits for the four state wide officials-Governor, Lieutenant Governor, Attorney General and Comptroller. Listen for yourself.