That was one small step for Kathy Hochul — one big mistake for New York.
The governor, up to her eyeballs in migrants, this week pointed the bony finger of blame at Biden administration border policies — and this was a very hopeful sign.
Could she be coming out of her coma?
Probably not.
For the governor then effectively endorsed the root cause of New York’s border-crosser crisis — Gotham’s completely insane, prohibitively expensive and totally unsustainable “right-to-shelter” policy.
You know, the one that says if you can make it to New York, you’ll have it made in New York — now and forever, no questions asked, until the tax base breaks.
Mincing words
To be sure, Hochul called out Washington’s abandonment of those states and localities shellacked by America’s shameful — and exceeding dangerous — border breakdown.
“This crisis originated with the federal government,” she quite correctly noted in an Albany speech Thursday, “and it must be resolved through the federal government.”
So, two cheers for Krazy Kat.
It’s a rare day when a high-profile Democrat criticizes other Democrats — if only inferentially.
Of course, a more resolute chief executive would have named names: Joe Biden, for sure; also Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (both of Brooklyn), and New York’s junior US senator — the vaporous Kirsten Gillibrand of Albany, last seen in public while running for president in 2019.
And a truly serious governor would have minced no words proclaiming a solution to the crisis — a reversal of Biden’s effective open-border doctrine.
America may be fated to struggle assimilating those border-crossers already here — but until the pipeline is throttled down, no lasting solution is possible.
Hochul, clearly, is neither resolute nor serious — as the policy prescription she dispatched to Washington Thursday demonstrates.
She wants:
Federal work-permits for migrants.
Big-bucks cash assistance for assimilating migrants.
Lots more federal land for shelters.
(Obviously the 2500 beds she just got at Brooklyn’s Floyd Bennett aren’t going to cut it; migrants are now arriving at the rate of 3000 a week.)
Some couch-cushion reimbursement change for a previous National Guard deployment.
For the short run, this makes a bit of sense.
Washington broke it, Washington needs to buy it, right?
But the short run in this crisis is a week from next Tuesday: You can stuff only so many iconic Midtown hotels with migrants if those buses keep rolling into Port Authority — and before long, the rest of New York will fill up, too.
Thus Hochul’s migrant-shelter policy is this: If they come, we will build them.
Until we no longer can — and it effectively is indistinguishable from Gotham’s “right-to-shelter” approach.
True, Hochul’s criticism of Washington brings her into rhetorical alignment with Mayor Adams.
Hizzoner takes unfocused pot-shots at the feds all the time — though he never names names either.
So, now what?
A wise fellow who has worked for more than one governor said the other day that Hochul is more an observer of her government than a participant in it.
Adams, who sometimes seems surprised that he actually is mayor, also has no obvious appetite for hard choices.
Props to them both for saying the dread “W” word, but they’ve given nobody — certainly not Biden, Schumer, Jeffries or Gillibrand — any reason to take them seriously.
Until they do, New York will remain a border-crossers Mecca.
