NY Renews Statement on the One-House Budget Proposals
***FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE***
March 12, 2024
Contact: Marie Scarles | (646) 389-8429 | marie@nyrenews.org
Web: @NYRenews | www.nyrenews.org
In response to the one-house budget proposals released by the New York State Assembly and Senate, NY Renews issued the following statement:
Once again, we applaud the Senate for taking a clear, decisive stance on climate and environmental justice by including the NY HEAT Act and the Climate Change Superfund Act in their one-house budget proposal. It’s clear our Senate leaders care about protecting future generations of New Yorkers from the worst effects of the climate crisis and ensuring that we build a just, equitable, and clean energy economy.
And, once again, the Assembly has failed to serve the people of New York when it comes to climate and environmental justice. Our communities and planet don’t accept the excuse that the chamber doesn’t “do policy in the budget.” The way that New York raises money—and where it’s spent, and for whom—is policy.
Without bold, decisive leadership from both the Governor and legislature this year, New York’s critical progress toward meeting the mandates of the Climate Leadership and Community Protection Act is in jeopardy. We need to pass the NY HEAT Act to get New York off of fossil fuels and onto renewable energy, and to ensure New Yorkers who are already struggling to make ends meet pay no more than 6% of their household income on energy bills in the process.
New York needs the $3 billion a year that would be raised by the Climate Change Superfund Act to make major corporate polluters pay for the harm they’ve caused and to equip towns and cities statewide with their climate resilience and adaptation projects.
We’re also concerned to see language that would launch a study on decommissioned power plants; this plan doesn’t include labor protections, explicitly benefit environmental justice communities, or include robust public process measures, unlike the Just Energy Transition Act our coalition has championed. We call on the Assembly to pass the comprehensive JETA bill, which would do all of the above, as well as apply to all power plants—not just decommissioned ones.
New York needs additional on-budget funding in the Climate Action Fund to address the impacts of current polluters—above and beyond what would be raised in the state’s cap-and-trade system—to launch and run grassroots-led climate solutions, like those we see outlined in the People’s Climate Justice Budget.
We call on you, our elected leaders, as NY Renews—as a coalition of organizations representing hundreds of thousands of New Yorkers statewide—to make 2024 the year you choose to lead the way toward the just, livable future our communities, friends, children, and grandchildren deserve.
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NY Renews is a coalition of over 380 environmental justice, faith, labor, and community groups, and the force behind the nation’s most progressive climate law. We fight for good jobs and climate justice for New Yorkers statewide.