admin Kathy Hochul, the first female governor of New York, is proposing a $10 bn plan to grow the state’s health care workforce by 20 percent over the next 5 years, saying the pandemic worsened long-simmering staffing problems.
That contains more than $4 bn to support wages and bonuses for workers in a health care sector now suffering from a high burnout rate, and $2 bn for better health care infrastructure.
Hochul was delivering the speech before a limited, socially distant audience in the Assembly chamber at the New York State Capitol in Albany amid the worst surge in coronavirus infections since the virus first hit the state in the spring of 2020.
The Democrat was also declaring initiatives including a proposal to invest $1 bn in electric vehicle deployment and $500 mn in offshore wind port infrastructure to meet the requirements of a sweeping state law calling for 70% of electricity from renewable sources by 2030.
Such projects will power one-third of New York City with wind, solar and hydropower, Hochul added.
Hochul wants to speed up a planned phase-in of $1.2 billion in middle class tax cuts that began in 2018 to help ease the economic pain of the pandemic. Also, she wants $1 billion in property tax rebates for more than two million middle-and low-income New Yorkers.
With New York’s eviction and moratorium set to expire mid-January, Hochul wishes to offer free legal assistance for upstate New Yorkers. She stated the state could help stave off homelessness by building 100,000 affordable homes and 10,000 supportive housing units for vulnerable residents.
She aims to replace the state’s ethics enforcement agency, which recently has tussled with Cuomo over millions of dollars he earned writing a book while in office, and subject certain state-wide elected officials, including the governor, to a two-term limit on their service and a ban on most outside income.
Other initiatives including making the state’s tuition assistance program available to part-time students and a Jails to Jobs program to help incarcerated people get and stay employed.
Hochul later this month is set to announce her own one-year budget proposal.
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