Gov. Kathy Hochul on Sunday blamed the state’s soft-on-crime bail-reform mess on former boss Andrew Cuomo and Albany pols, claiming she “held the budget up” this year to fix it.
Hochul said she has been fighting to reverse the controversial 2019 bail measures — while adding that the Big Apple is bouncing back from a post-pandemic crime wave to become one of the country’s safest big cities, even as New Yorkers flee the state.
“People say they’re going to leave our state because it’s not safe,” the governor told host John Catsimatidis on WABC-770 radio’s “Cat’s Roundtable.” “Tell me the city you’re going to, and I can guarantee we have a safer crime rate than you have in those cities: Miami, Washington, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Chicago, even Salt Lake City and Austin.
“We are better off,” she said. “I’m not going to say statistics should make people feel better. Let us keep doing our job and working hard to make sure that people stop committing these crimes.”
A survey earlier this year found that nearly one-third of New Yorkers want to leave the Empire State when they retire, with crime cited as the main reason — which many critics blame on criminal-justice reforms.
Hochul, who took over as governor in 2021, was lieutenant governor when state lawmakers passed bail reforms signed into law by then-Gov. Andrew Cuomo, effectively handcuffing New York’s judges by prohibiting them from setting bail in most criminal cases.
The reforms have been tweaked three times since, most recently this year when Hochul worked out a compromise with the legislature to allow bail to be set in more cases, in part by adding more gun crimes to bail-eligible cases and allowing jurists to consider criminal histories and other factors in determining whether to set bail.
“I had to work through the last session of the legislature, and finally this time, I held the budget up an entire month,” Hochul told Catsimatidis. “I was criticized for that. But I also said, ‘I’m not leaving here until we change the bail law.’ And we got it done.
“Now, here’s what has to happen,” she said. “The judges now have to look at the power that has been returned to them. Look at whether this is someone who has been a repeat offender causing harm.”
Hochul also spent part of the interview heralding major infrastructure projects earmarked for the Big Apple, primarily the long-delayed Gateway Tunnel between New York and New Jersey, the Second Avenue subway and the planned redevelopment of Penn Station.
She defended the Big Apple’s controversial congestion-pricing plan, too, dismissing complaints from New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy and Garden State commuters.
Hochul countered that 80% of Jersey commuters use public transit to get into Manhattan.
“From their perspective, yes, there will be some people affected,” Hochul said. “But this is going to be so beneficial for Manhattan, which is literally paralyzed.
“It is great to see the people back,” she said. “It is great to see the tourists, it’s great to see the commuters who are finding their way to their jobs. It feels so alive again. But it is also so congested that people cannot move.
“A bus takes forever to be able to get down the street. Cars are not moving, delivery trucks are not making it,” she said. “And worst of all, emergency vehicles. When your family or your loved one has a heart attack and that ambulance can’t make it to them because they’re jammed in traffic?
“We’re gonna be a model for the rest of the nation.”
