Midday News: Hochul Appeals Directly to Striking Corrections Officers, Kean University Merger, Cuomo’s NYC Residency Questioned, and Businesses Brace for Tra...

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Announcer: Listener-supported WNYC studios.

Announcer: Welcome to NYC Now, your source for local news in and around New York City from WNYC. It's Friday, March 7th. Here's the midday news from Michael Hill.

Michael Hill: New York Governor Kathy Hochul's administration is bypassing the Corrections Officers Union, making a direct appeal to striking officers to return to work. WNYC's Jon Campbell reports.

Jon Campbell: State officials negotiated directly with striking officers and they thought they reached a deal to end the work stoppage. That angered the union's leadership, which refused to sign off. State Homeland Security Commissioner Jackie Bray says officers still have a chance to take the deal, but if they don't, the state is ready to act.

Jackie Bray: We are prepared to, and we will exercise all of our rights and all remedies, criminal and civil, to end this illegal strike.

Jon Campbell: The union says it's the only entity the state can legally bargain with.

Michael Hill: New Jersey's Kean University is poised to merge with a university [unintelligible 00:01:14]. In Jersey City, WNYC's Veronica Del Valle has more.

Veronica Del Valle: It's been a troublesome few years for New Jersey City University. The school has been under the supervision of a State Monitor since 2023 following years of financial turmoil. Now its board of trustees is saying yes to a merger proposal from Kean, a university about half an hour away in Union Township. The vote is only a first step in the process. A proposed timeline from Kean University shows it expects to complete the merger by 2026. Kean currently serves 18,000 students, including some at a campus in Wenzhou, China. NJCU has about 5,000 students. NJCU's interim president says the two schools will begin a due diligence process in the coming weeks as they work towards combining.

Michael Hill: 45 with sunshine now, sunny in 49, and gusty.

Announcer: Stay close. There's more after the break.

Michael Hill: When former Governor Cuomo jumped into the New York City mayor's race, his opponents pounced on his longtime residency in Westchester. In Albany, WNYC's Brigid Bergin reports the new mayoral candidate is claiming a luxury apartment in Midtown East as his current home, even if that's news to some of his neighbors.

Brigid Bergin: On a chilly afternoon, Cheryl Schwartz is taking her dog for a walk outside her soaring 39-story luxury building.

Cheryl Schwartz: She's a toy poodle.

Speaker: Oh my gosh.

Brigid Bergin: Schwartz moved to the city five years ago, just before the COVID-19 pandemic, and splits her time between here and Long Island. When I asked her about one of the city's newest mayoral candidates, former governor Andrew Cuomo, she says she's seen him.

Cheryl Schwartz: I don't know. I know his daughter lives here, and lives on my friend's floor, but other than that, I don't know. I've only seen him a couple of times.

Brigid Bergin: At Cuomo's first campaign event on Sunday, his daughter, Cara Kennedy-Cuomo, says she did recently move.

Cara Kennedy-Cuomo: As a person who just spent several months looking for a new apartment, I can tell you there's not enough affordable housing.

Brigid Bergin: What she didn't say is that up to now she was living in that luxury two-bedroom apartment in Midtown East in Manhattan that recently became the permanent residence of her father. An online listing shows the apartment is rented for $8,200 a month. Cuomo's rivals in the mayoral contest are questioning his New York City bona fides. Here's Assemblymember Zohran Mamdani.

Assemblymember Zohran Mamdani: Now he's decided to move from Westchester to New York with the promise of leading us through the chaos of Donald Trump. Andrew Cuomo is the chaos.

Brigid Bergin: Residency questions have become a recurring theme in the mayoral race. Just ask Eric Adams, who took reporters for a tour of his Bed Stuy apartment and refrigerator back in 2021 to push back on claims he was living in a New Jersey condo. Another building resident, Heidi Cohen, says Cuomo once commented to her husband about Louis, her Mini Schnauzer, when he was taking him out for a walk.

Heidi Cohen: He's been in the elevator twice when I've been in the elevator and he's been in the lobby coming and going three or four times when my husband's been coming and going with the dog.

Brigid Bergin: Mostly, she says, he keeps to himself.

Heidi Cohen: In a suit with his briefcase. Doesn't really chat to anybody, just walk. I think New Yorkers, people leave him alone.

Brigid Bergin: Until you're running for mayor and then everyone wants to know where you live. Brigid Bergin, WNYC News.

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Michael Hill: The Trump administration is delaying planned tariffs on Canadian goods, but New York businesses still worry about the effects of a trade war. WNYC's Jimmy Vielkind reports.

Jimmy Vielkind: Walking around the lathes and milling machines on the shop floor of Precision Valve and Automation, CEO Tony Hines points to the raw materials that would be impacted by new tariffs.

Tony Hines: Most of our aluminum that goes into our bulk aluminum for making our parts comes from Canada. So now that's tariff. Our machines are made up of thousands of thousands of parts, many that we make, but many are sourced from all over the world. If they tariff all this stuff, it's only going to drive up our costs.

Jimmy Vielkind: More than 200 people work in PVA's three buildings here in Half Moon, which is halfway between Albany and Saratoga Springs, consumers don't usually see what PVA does.

Tony Hines: Cars.

Jimmy Vielkind: The company sells machines that can precisely spray adhesives in--

Tony Hines: Telecommunications equipment,

Jimmy Vielkind: Well, just about anything.

Tony Hines: Trains, planes, automobiles, as they say.

Jimmy Vielkind: It's a relatively small firm, but one that highlights the feared downside of new tariffs. New York imports almost $23 billion worth of goods from Canada each year. Trump announced 25% tariffs on all those products earlier this week, but later said they would be postponed until April. Some business and governmental leaders pushed back. Governor Hochul estimates that tariffs could cost the average family more than $1,000 a year.

Gov. Kathy Hochul: This is a real, real hit on our families at a time we were promised affordability.

Jimmy Vielkind: The governor is warning of shocks to the agriculture sector as well. Items used on farms like the fertilizer potash are imported from Canada. Trump's tariffs could mean less business for a big dairy processing facility that's currently under construction.

Gov. Kathy Hochul: It's an extraordinary opportunity for there to be a marketplace for our dairy farmers, but these tariffs are going to make it so much more complicated.

Jimmy Vielkind: Republicans say that short-term pain is worth the long-term gain. Trump told Congress on Tuesday that tariffs will bring jobs back to the United States.

Pres. Donald Trump: If you don't make your product in America, however, under the Trump administration, you will pay a tariff and in some cases a rather large one. Other countries have used tariffs against us for decades, and now it's our turn to start using them against those other countries.

Jimmy Vielkind: In some areas along the border, that doesn't ring true.

Garry Douglas: Plattsburgh identifies itself and is regarded broadly in Quebec as Montreal's US suburb.

Jimmy Vielkind: That's Garry Douglas, CEO of the North Country Chamber of Commerce. The area, which includes the Adirondack Mountains, depends on natural gas and fuel from over the border. Canadian tourists fill hotels and restaurants, and the factories in Clinton County, which includes Plattsburgh, have supply chains that cross the border multiple times.

Garry Douglas: In Clinton County, 20% of the workforce got up this morning, went to work either for a Canadian employer on this side of the border or a job that's dependent on cross-border commerce. We don't want to hear that this is to create jobs. It's endangering jobs.

Jimmy Vielkind: On Tuesday, Canada placed tariffs on more than $100 billion worth of US goods, and China slapped levies on agricultural products. Back at PVA, Hines points to several machines that are set to be shipped to Mexico and shakes his head.

Tony Hines: These are global markets. It's a competitive landscape out there. Tariffing us is only going to make it harder for people to buy our machines outside of the United States. If Mexico does not tariff China and they tariff us, forget it.

Jimmy Vielkind: Eventually, he says, fewer sales could mean fewer jobs. Jimmy Vielkind, WNYC News.

Announcer: Thanks for listening. This is NYC Now from WNYC. Be sure to catch us every weekday, three times a day, for your top news headlines and occasional deep dives, and subscribe wherever you get your podcasts. See you this evening.

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