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Brian Lehrer: Brian Lehrer on WNYC. Now, our climate story and climate question of the week. Today, how serious are Kathy Hochul and the New York State Legislature's climate provisions in the New York State Budget about to be passed? This is budget season in New York state, for those of you who don't know that aspect of the calendar. The new fiscal year begins next Friday, April 1st. The Governor, the Assembly, and the Senate are in the final phases of budget negotiations as happens every year at this time.

There are reported differences between the Assembly and the Senate on at least one major environmental item, a requirement to make producers of plastic packaging more responsible for reducing or recycling it. We'll get into why there's disagreement and the other major items in a minute with State Senator Todd Kaminsky of Long Island, Chairman of the Environmental Conservation Committee. First, here's Governor Hochul from her State of the State address in January, after announcing a $500 million investment in offshore wind energy that she said would create thousands of good-paying green jobs.

Governor Hochul: As we build out our wind energy capacity and continue our transition to clean energy, our reliance on fossil fuels must be phased out. In September, I announced two clean energy megaprojects to put us on a path to achieve the ambitious goal of cutting 80% of New York City's power plant emissions by 2030. New construction in the state will be zero-emission by 2027, and we'll build climate-friendly electric homes and promote electric cars, trucks, and buses.

Brian Lehrer: Governor Hochul in January in the state of the state but the proof, as we know, is never in the speeches. It's always what's in the budget. With me now, State Senator Todd Kaminsky of Long Beach and elsewhere around there and southern Nassau County. He is Chairman of the Environmental Conservation Committee and sent us a list of five interesting climate-related items being considered for the budget, including that plastics packaging bill, also new tax credits some of you might get for certain kinds of energy use, and more. Senator, always good to have you on. Welcome back to WNYC.

State Senator Todd Kaminsky: Thanks, Brian. Great to be here.

Brian Lehrer: Can we start with that clip of the Governor from the State of the State? For you representing Long Beach, right on the Atlantic Ocean there, are offshore wind turbine something you and your constituents will embrace or resist?

State Senator Todd Kaminsky: Yes, absolutely. I want everyone to remember the backdrop is that New York has taken the most aggressive and far-reaching climate scheme or ambitions into law. We are headed in that direction. I think the way the market has reacted in terms of the best companies in the world wanting to work here, train the New York workforce, create jobs, and help us transition away from fossil fuels is really leading the nation. We have to have a carbon-free electric sector by 2040, and even sooner than that we have to have 70% of our electric grid be carbon-free by 2030. We are far from there now. We got a steep hill to climb.

We need these projects to come into being. I think people are excited to get the transition. I think the issue is how fast can we do it so that we have the capacity to support the electrification of homes, of our transportation sector, of everything else. We're moving in that direction. I do think people support when. There's definitely some misinformation out there that we're doing our best to dispel, but by and large the public is very much in favor of it and realize that Long Island and New York, in general, is in the ground floor of the green economy.

Wind energy, offshore wind in particular, Brian, someone in wind energy from a different country once told me that what's called the Long Island bite, the Atlantic Ocean off New Jersey and New York, is known as the Saudi Arabia of wind. It's a perfect conditions for offshore wind, and it's going to do the lion's share of us getting to our carbon-free electric sector. The $500 million in the budget to help support the supply chains for it, the ports, the infrastructure, is very important. Just two weeks ago, $4 billion were spent by companies to bid on different leased sites at the different spaces in the ocean off Long Island and New Jersey. Everyone is rushing to be here, and we've opened the market and it's working.

Brian Lehrer: The Saudi Arabia of wind. I guess that's why when I was a kid and my parents would drive us from our home in Queens to Jones Beach, it would always be so windy when we were trying to put the blanket down. Is the $500 million that the governor cited in that clip for the offshore wind turbines in the budget? Is that a one-year number?

State Senator Todd Kaminsky: Yes, it is, and it's there. It's just one of the commitments we're making for climate including a bond act that the governor proposes would be $4 billion, the assembly $5 billion, and the Senate $6 billion. We're going to end up getting somewhere good that the voters will consider this November about not just a one-year plan, which is what you're asking, but tremendous investment in the future along the lines of climate and other things.

Brian Lehrer: Interesting. Now, you sent us a list of five specific climate-related items in the budget that's taking shape. Number one on your list is increased tax credits for solar and geothermal installation. Tell our listeners, here we are coming up on tax day in a few weeks, what tax credits could some of our listeners get for doing what?

State Senator Todd Kaminsky: We're proposing to increase the solar tax credit in New York from $5,000 to $10,000, and for the first time create a geothermal $5,000 tax credit for those who want to install in-ground geothermal heat pumps to heat their homes. It's an amazing technology, very few people know about it. In fact, in New York, we've only been able to find three real manufacturers that do it, and we're trying to prime the pump, I guess, is a bad pun, to try to figure out how to get people interested. One of the breakdowns we're having that we have to address is that when people build homes or renovate homes, you have one shot to get to that homeowner to get them to make the right green decision.

Now, when I had to renovate the home my wife and my family moved into in 2019, no plumber, no electrician told us about heat pumps, and I'm pretty educated on this stuff. Even though I've made other solar and other upgrades to my home, they've now lost me for 10 years to be able to make that decision because I now have a regular boiler in my house. I think if $5,000 is out there for folks to want to make this investment, we'll get other companies to come in to advertise, people will be incentivized, and we will begin to start heating our homes without the use of fossil fuel.

Brian Lehrer: Heat pumps just keep coming up in our Climate Story of The Week Series. We had Bill McKibben on the other week, the great environmentalist, and he was saying one of the ways to make Europe more energy independent from Russia so it doesn't have to import Russia's fossil fuels and could put more pressure on them to end the war in Ukraine is to invoke the Defense Production Act in this country and manufacture a gazillion heat pumps and send them to Europeans to heat their homes. I'm just noting the connection between that segment in this when you bring up heat pumps.

Listeners, it's our climate story of the week. This week, what's in play in the New York State budget negotiations that have to be concluded by next Friday along climate lines. If anyone wants to tweet at us or call in with questions about that, for State Senator Todd Kaminsky, who's the Chair of the Senate Environmental Conservation Committee, tweet @BrianLehrer or call in to the show at 212-433-WNYC, 212-433-9692. Let's take a call right now from, I think, your district out there on Point Lookout. George, you're on WNYC. Hello.

George: Hey, Brian. Hey, Senator Kaminsky, how are you? Senator Kaminsky, we really appreciate all the things that you're doing on renewable energy and the environment. We are a little concerned about your proposal for EPR. Since we know that the plastic pollution and recycling crisis that New York faces right now is that the materials are not being recycled and made into new products, which has eliminated the market for recycled materials that municipalities had depended upon to have recycled materials taken away at a lower cost, can you explain exactly where in your proposal it says that producers are going to be mandated to recycle more or more easily recycled materials be used?

Brian Lehrer: George, thank you. Let me give our listeners a little background on this issue so they know more about what George was talking about and what your bill is, Senator, and then you can respond to him. I know a big item on your list of environmental and climate things that the state legislature is doing right now is the so-called Extended Producer Responsibility to make companies that produce plastics and other waste responsible for the cost of recycling it.

In fact, it's not just George raising this question knowing that you were coming on, Judith Enck, the former EPA Administrator for this part of the country, now head of the group Beyond Plastics, wrote to us this morning to say the versions of producer responsibility that you and the governor are supporting aren't good enough because they allow companies to burn plastic waste in the recycling process. The industry calls it chemical recycling but Judith Enck and the NRDC and others say it's a form of incineration, which pollutes the air and disproportionately takes place near low-income communities, and it doesn't actually force reduction of the production of the plastic packaging in the first place. That's a mouthful, but what would you say to George and to our listeners about this?

State Senator Todd Kaminsky: Brian, if you allow me, I just want people to step back and focus on what the problem is we're all addressing because we have a sustainability and recycling crisis in our country and in our state. We are as a country producing 292 million tons of solid waste a year and only recycling about 69 million tons of that. A lot of that has to do with China's unwillingness to buy our recycled products. That's really crushed the market for recycling, which has hurt our municipalities.

What this means on the ground to your listeners is that when they go and put their recycling bin or bag on the curb, like in my community, it's highly likely that even though that person may feel good about what they're doing, that item is not being recycled. It's likely being landfilled. That is a tremendous crisis and our municipalities are also losing a lot of money on this. Take city of Long Beach. A few years ago it was-- Right now they currently have to pay $80 a ton for someone to buy their recycling. Before they used to be paid $2.25 per ton. It's gone from the black to the red very quickly.

What it also means, just to get in the weeds here for a second, is they don't have the money to invest in the latest and best machinery that could turn-- Think of the tin or the cardboard that you're eating your salad out of from the deli, you need the best machines to get the food off of that to turn that into a product someone wants to buy or to have the best processed glass. Municipalities can't afford to do that. What we want to do is have the companies producing this packaging, and this EPR is about plastic and paper packaging, which is 40% of the waste stream, pay into a system that is going to save the whole recycling system.

Brian Lehrer: Again, EPR stands for Extended Producer Responsibility, those who produce the plastic packaging and other waste.

State Senator Todd Kaminsky: That's right. In other words, we've all gotten that Amazon package that has a big box in it. In that big box is a smaller box and in that smaller box is a plastic sleeve with a tube of toothpaste in it. No one who's producing packaging has to think about what's that costing society. We want them to have to start thinking about that both in terms of the type of material they're using. We want eco-friendly materials, not materials that are hard to recycle or that will break machines, which happens a lot. We want them to use less packaging. If you ever think about it, why is a bag of potato chips in one sleeve, but a box of Cheerios is a cardboard box surrounding a sleeve full of Cheerios.

There's just a lot more packaging than we need. The plan that's used all over Canada and Europe is the plan that I'd like to institute. For a number of years, we tried to scour what's working, what's producing higher recycling rates. For example, Ireland went from a recycling rate of 19% before EPR to 65% after EPR. We try to study what works. What we found is when companies come together with government oversight and come up with a price per unit of materials, they can then come up with the money and pay the municipalities to pick up all the packaging they're putting out there. This buoys the recycling system and actually makes sure things are recycled.

It gives the municipalities money to reinvest in capital so they have the best machines. It makes producers produce less packaging because they don't want to pay that much. We've calculated that New York City will save between $80 million and $100 million a year if EPR is instituted, meaning companies will help over 10 years give the city $1 billion. Think of all the good things as a society we could do with that. The one thing I'll say before you ask me specific questions about our bills are, we need to do EPR.

I do think that Judith, who I have respect for, George, who I know very well from Point Lookout and we've talked about this, and a lot of other activists are taking the wrong tact if they want to kill EPR on the budget agenda. It has to happen. We have it right in front of us. It's really important. There's a crisis hiding right under the surface for all of us and whether there's a definition here or a definition there that we could change to try to kill this, I think is irresponsible. What Judith wants, Brian, is for us to say, "Hey, companies. We need you to pursue 50% less packaging over 10 years." I don't know where the numbers come from, or the timeline comes from, every company is different.

They have different packaging needs. We think it's better when we engage them and work with them. It's worked in other places and we want them to be part of the solution. Now, of course, they can't dictate everything. This is going to have to be approved by the DEC and have oversight and that oversight is going to be real, but I think just telling them produce less packaging and not let the market do its thing is a mistake.

Brian Lehrer: Let me take one more call of push back on this. I think the environmental activist community got the word that you were coming on today because about half our calls are saying, basically, the same thing. I'm going to take one more that's going to address just what you were talking about right there about can the state just mandate that producers of packaging simply produce less. We're going to go to Jennifer in Slingerlands near Albany. Jennifer, you're on WNYC with Senator Kaminsky. Hi.

Jennifer: Hi. Thank you, Brian, and thank you, Senator. Senator, you're absolutely right. You talked about packaging reductions and you talked about how EPR has worked in Europe to increase recycling. One of the things we've learned from extended producer responsibility programs in Europe and Canada is that they don't actually reduce packaging without specific requirements set in the law. Your proposal also lacks those targets, which is really problematic because it's likely to not actually result in packaging reductions. I'd like to hear whether you would be open to adding targets to your legislation and why or why not.

State Senator Todd Kaminsky: Brian, you want me to answer?

Brian Lehrer: Yes, please.

State Senator Todd Kaminsky: Yes, thank you. I certainly don't take it as gospel that packaging isn't decreased when companies have to pay for more packaging. I think that they will make a lot of changes. I think they're looking for uniformity. A lot of the bigger companies, the Nestles, the Unilevers, the Pepsis, have been really great to work with because they know what this is in other places and they're interested in having a seat at the table to help give their insights on the different materials they use and how to make it work.

I'm very open to studying what might work to reduce the overall amount of packaging. I do not want to pull a number out of thin air and say it has to be this percentage over this year in light of all the different types of packaging and all the different variables that exist. I think we can get there. I just don't think that's a reason to kill EPR or to not get the system started where these companies are going to have to pay more and actually take into consideration the externalities of their production and we can do that.

Brian Lehrer: Let me ask you one more follow-up on this and then we'll go on to some other things on which there's more agreement. I understand there's a competing version to your bill expected to be introduced in the assembly tomorrow by your counterpart in the assembly Steven Englebright from the Port Jefferson Setauket area on the North Shore of Long Island who chairs the Assembly Environment Committee. His bill would reportedly have the state set packaging standards rather than leave it up to the packaging industry, as our last callers were complaining about on how to limit their waste. My question is, are you in negotiations with Assemblyman Englebright and might there be a compromise bill between the two of you in the two houses by next Friday's deadline?

State Senator Todd Kaminsky: I have a tremendous respect for Assemblyman Englebright. He was the chair of the environment committee when I started in the assembly seven years ago. He is very knowledgeable and we do great work together. I was with him just this morning at a breakfast. I think we could always do good work together. What I don't love, and I don't how this has happened, I haven't even seen this bill.

The fact that some well-meaning activist saw the bill is reporting it to you and I'm hearing about it I don't think is the right way to go about it. I don't know what's in it. I could tell you that if the Governor, Steve Englebright, and his fellow assembly members and the senators want to do EPR, there's no reason why we shouldn't do it. I'm always, I think, trying to figure out the CLCPA which was our big climate bill between the governor on one hand and the assembly on the other back when it was Governor Cuomo. It wasn't easy. We got it done. We can get this done too, so I'm optimistic.

Brian Lehrer: This is WNYC-FM, HD and AM New York, WNJT FM 88.1 Trenton, WNJP 88.5 Sussex, WNJY 89.3 Netcong and WNJO 90.3 Toms River. We are New York and New Jersey public radio and live streaming at wnyc.org. A few minutes left with the Chairman of the New York State Senate Environmental Conservation Committee Todd Kaminsky on our climate story of the week, what climate provisions are in the New York State budget which is going to be concluded by next Friday if it comes in on deadline.

Let's go on to another climate related item in the budget where there is more agreement. I see the voters of New York State will get to vote on a $6 billion bond act that you helped to sponsor the legislation for. We'll cover that closer to the November vote as well, but do you want to make a case now for why New Yorkers should vote yes on this bond act and why it would be worth over $6 billion of borrowing?

State Senator Todd Kaminsky: Yes, absolutely, Brian. Just to be clear, the governor's proposed $4 billion and in our one house budget, the assembly and the senate have asked to add for that, and we specifically wanted $1 billion extra for electric school buses and other charging infrastructure. We want to have every school bus fleet by 2035, be running on electricity instead of the diesel fuel buses and other fuel they're using now, and we want to put some money behind that.

There's so much need in our state for resiliency, shoreline protection, but then at the same time to make sure that we're not just bracing for the impact of climate change, but openly combating it. That means more charging infrastructure. It's going to be more climate-friendly building, green buildings, more renewable heating and cooling and building weatherization. There's a lot that needs to be done. Frankly, $6 billion is just a fraction of what we're going to need to be able to figure out in order to get our state from where we are to where we need to go and I think it's a great down payment. It's going to create a lot of jobs.

These are all jobs that are really good-paying jobs, and we're talking about doing a lot of the infrastructure work that everyone wishes they could do, but we never could seem to find time or the budget to do it. I'm talking about sewering in Suffolk County where it really doesn't exist. I'm talking about open space protection which people want to do, but never get around to. There's a lot that we could do and, frankly, coming from a place like Long Beach where Sandy just devastated, we got our One Army Corps Project. We built the dune on the beach and then that's it. There's a lot more we could do to make sure that we're more resilient and that we're fighting climate change.

Brian Lehrer: Ray in the Bronx, you're on WNYC. Hi, Ray.

Ray: [inaudible 00:21:43]

Brian Lehrer: Good. What have you got for us?

Ray: Can you hear me?

Brian Lehrer: Yes. You're breaking up a little bit, but I think it'll be okay. Go ahead.

Ray: I just had a couple of questions for the Senator regarding the solar tax credit he was referring to. Number one, that targets primarily homeowners in the city which is fantastic, but does he have a solution for apartment dwellers? As far as I know, community solar projects can really offer them help, but there's no tax incentive for those individuals. Then at the same time in increasing the New York State income credit, there's also an agency called NYSERDA, which directly incentivizes homeowners.

That credit is due to decrease by 40% in the upcoming block. It used to previously be much higher. If the Senator is interested in incentivizing homeowners NYSERDA is a great way to do that in addition to just the state credit. Then one more addition to the state credit, will that be available to homeowners who have already gone solar and utilized the original $5,000 credit?

State Senator Todd Kaminsky: Brian, there's not a retroactive a aspect to this. One thing we did do though is make sure that people who may not be able to put solar on their primary home, but do have another home somewhere else would be able to utilize the tax credit, which is not currently the case now, which I don't think is a major climate issue, but we're just wasting the ability to do it wherever we could do it. I do think incentivizing solar in the city and apartment buildings is really important. Community solar is the answer to do that, but in the same budget, Brian, right now we're negotiating having all electric buildings, and we're trying to figure out the number of stories and the year by which it'll happen.

I think everybody agrees that by 2027, new buildings will not be hooked up to gas. I think we want to make sure we have the right amount of runway to do that correctly, but that's the future in New York. The COCPA says by 2050, we have to have a completely carbon neutral economy. That means the cars we drive, the homes we live in, the buildings we go to work in, and so we got to start taking the important measures to get there, and this budget deals with that too.

Brian Lehrer: As our last climate question for today, I'll reference the Governor's State of the State address again, where she announced, citing her words now, "Two clean energy mega projects to put the state on the path to achieve the ambitious goal of cutting 80% of New York City's power plant emissions by 2030," and 2030 isn't that far off, "New construction in the state will be zero emission by 2027." She said we will build climate friendly electric homes and promote electric cars, trucks, and buses. As chairman of the Environmental Conservation Committee, do you take whatever's in her budget as serious enough toward those 2027 and 2030 goals?

State Senator Todd Kaminsky: Yes. Look, I think the Governor has done a great job promoting and embracing this, being on the ground floor of this green economy is going to pay tremendous dividends for our state. It already is. Yes, I do think we will have something about electrifying buildings in the budget. I think we're just trying to figure out the number of stories and the year by which it'll happen, but it's going to happen. I think that that's an important step to take. These are not just pie in the sky blueprints. These are actual things that we're going to implement to get our state from here to there. I think people realize we can't depend on Washington. It's sad to say. It was true last administration, unfortunately, to a large extent, despite their best efforts. It seems true now, so states have to get up and act. We can't wait and we're doing it here.

Brian Lehrer: Hey, before you go, I want to ask you about yourself. I read that you're not running for reelection, which might surprise some people. You've been a pretty prominent member of the State Senate for a while on law enforcement, on anti-corruption, as head of the environment committee as well. Our topic for today, our Nassau County listeners know that you ran for Nassau County DA last year but lost, but now you're leaving public office voluntarily, leaving your State Senate seat. How come?

State Senator Todd Kaminsky: I just thought it was time to be with my family more, to take a different course for a little bit in the private sector. I did about six campaigns in seven years because when I first ran for Senate, there was a special election for the [unintelligible 00:26:24] and then that very same year another election, and it seems like I've been running every year. It's been really hard. My two beautiful boys are seven and three, love to be able to save up for college for them to be around a little more. I'm proud of what I've done here. I think not enough people pay attention to state government. This is where you can really move the needle and get things done, but I also didn't want to become the furniture here. I think I've had a good run. Maybe I'll be back one day, but right now it's time to focus on other things. Thank you for that.

Brian Lehrer: Do you think with the victories that the Republicans scored around Long Island last year, that your State Senate seat, South Shore, it's not the most liberal place in the world, would've been more vulnerable than it was in the past? Your defeat for Nassau County DA, do you think that the Governor is on the right track in wanting to pull back the bail reform now, which most of your colleagues in the legislature do not?

State Senator Todd Kaminsky: Yes, I think the Governor's definitely on the right track. I think this is nuanced. I got to be in the courtroom for 10 years as a prosecutor. I also see a lot of the injustices out there, and two things can be true. One is bail is being used as a weapon in a very false way to stoke people's fears when it's not justified, even when literally bail's not part of a story, it's part of the story. In my DA race, there was actually a commercial that everyone saw where a mother said that I'm to blame for her daughter's death in upstate New York. It's used in an awful way, and it's powerful. At the same time, there is a kernel of truth to the fact that there are problems with it.

When someone sees someone steal from the same Duane Reade seven times in two weeks, they wonder what's happening. I think you could say, what's really happening, I think you can make smart investments in mental health treatment and in housing and in pre-trial services, but you could also acknowledge there's a problem and fix it, and I think we should be able to do both.

I think that's what my constituents expect, and I think that it may be very true that COVID has caused all types of issues with crime and that crimes happening in places that didn't touched by bail reform, all of that is true. That doesn't mean we don't have to take to look at it and do a little bit better. I believe we can. That doesn't mean that it should be a war up here and I actually am optimistic we will get something done on them.

Brian Lehrer: Last question for this whole segment, do you think that there is data to back up making any changes? The New York City Comptroller Brad Lander released a study yesterday that indicates bail reform is just not related when you look at who's being arrested or rearrested, with respect to who's committing what crimes.

State Senator Todd Kaminsky: I think everyone's got different data. I think some is about only violent offenses then that doesn't account for the shoplifting and quality of life stuff. I think his data may be citywide, not statewide. I'm not undermining it. I have a foot in both worlds. All my old friends in the DA's offices, they work in the US attorney's offices, many are still there, they're telling me what they see. I talk to folks in law enforcement. I talk to folks impacted by law enforcement. There's definitely changes that could be made that I think will make people safer without compromising justice. I don't think you should be able to steal from the same place five times before you go in front of a judge.

Now that doesn't mean that there aren't lots of underlying issues the we need to deal with too. I think you have to have a nuanced conversation about it, and there's been way too much falsehood, and I think the reporting on this, frankly, since you're giving me a second to talk about it has just been terrible. Any official could stand up blame bail for something, and no one actually checks whether the judge could have given bail, but didn't. Whether the statute even says you can or not. That being the case, we still have to do our jobs. There's still problems we could fix with it, and I think we owe it to our constituents to do that, and I think we can and will.

Brian Lehrer: State Senator Todd Kaminsky, Democrat from Long Beach and around there in the southern half of Nassau County, chairman of the Environmental Conservation Commission, a committee in the State Senate. First of all, if we don't talk again before the end of the year, good luck in private life. We've always appreciated when you've come on and dealt with difficult issues on the show as a member of the State Senate. Thanks for being our guest on our climate story of the week.

State Senator Todd Kaminsky: Thanks, Brian. Big fan, keep up the good work.

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