Businesses Ink Climate-Related Letter to NYS Legislators
Some businesses have found themselves green with envy when looking at New York’s proposed budget. They assert the governor’s budget line item marked for climate lacks appropriate funding.
After seeing that New York Governor Kathy Hochul’s proposed executive budget does not include additional funding for climate-related issues, the NY Businesses for Climate Justice organization sent a letter to state leaders calling for legislative action.
Over 40 businesses in New York State banded together to sign the letter, addressed to the state’s Senate Majority Leader Andrea Stewart-Cousins and Assembly Speaker Carl Heastie, pushing them to work toward passing climate-related bills that would pump cash into the state government for environmental eorts. In the letter, the signatories noted that despite the state’s Climate Leadership and Community Protection Act (CLCPA), which sets goals around emission reductions for the state, they believe the state has not made tangible progress toward those goals.
“Businesses prosper and eectively plan when there is clarity in our long-term direction, but we lack condence that the CLCPA will be fully implemented and its climate targets reached. As New York business leaders, we are writing to express an urgent need for action in 2024 through real and meaningful budget commitments,” they wrote in the letter.
“Governor Hochul recently called the climate crisis the ‘dening challenge of our era,’ yet we did not see new climate funding in the executive budget. We therefore look to the legislature to ll this void by including critical climate funding.”
The letter calls for the passage of six dierent legislative bills: The Green Aordable Pre-electrication (GAP) Program, The NY Tropical Deforestation-Free Procurement Act, The Climate Change Superfund Act, The NY Home Energy Affordable Transition Act, The Just Energy Transition Act and The NYS Residential Solar Storage and Tax Credit.