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Erik Bottcher & Keith Powers on Joining the State Legislature, Budget Negotiations, & More
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State Senator Erik Bottcher and Assembly Member K…
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- [00:00]
A
Foreign. Hello and welcome to Max Politics. This is Ben Max coming to you from New York Law School and its center for New York City and State Law. Thanks for tuning in. Good conversation Ahead on the show today with two brand new state legislators who just moved to the state Legislature from time in the City Council after both winning special elections earlier this year. And they jumped right into state budget and legislative session and a whole new universe of Albany. You're about to hear the conversation I had on Friday, May 15, 2026 with State Senator Eric Bottcher and State Assembly Member Keith Powers. Both are Manhattan Democrats, Botcher representing a West side district, and Powers an East side district. And they each won a special election in February after their predecessors moved on to other elected offices via the 2025 New York City elections. Senior Senator Botcher replaced Brad Hoyleman Siegel, who's now Manhattan Borough President, after he won last year's Democratic primary for Manhattan BP over then Council Member Keith Powers. But Powers was soon able to win his current assembly seat, given the vacancy created when Harvey Epstein left the assembly after winning a New York City Council seat that he now holds in last year's election. So Botcher joined the State Senate Democratic majority empowers the Assembly Democratic majority a few weeks into this year's state budget and legislative session. And they got right into representing their districts and the city in state budget negotiations, which are ongoing right now, six weeks after the start of the state fiscal year, of course, as well as doing oversight, working on legislation, negotiating with Mayor Mamdani's administration, and a whole lot more. Today on the show with Senator Botcher and Assemblymember Powers, we'll discuss how they've transitioned from city to state government and some of the biggest differences and their takeaways now that they're deep into the state budget process for the first time. We'll also talk about the status of state budget negotiations as those are ongoing and some of their individual top priorities in the spending and policy package that is coming together. What they see is some of the highs and lows of that deal that the governor and the state legislative majorities are finalizing. Also, how Mayor Mamdani has been navigating his first state and city budgets as mayor and more. Toward the end of the conversation, we'll talk a little politics around the hotly contested Congressional primary in New York's 12th district, which spans parts or all of both Boucher's west side Senate district and Powers east side Assembly District Boucher, who briefly ran for that Congressional seat before pivoting to The State Senate special election has endorsed Assemblymember Micah Lasher in that race to succeed the retiring Congressman Jerry Nadler, while Powers has not yet endorsed in the race. Fellow Eastside Assemblymember Alex Boris is the other current elected official along with Lasher in that Congressional primary. Been covering that primary a lot here on the show. If you've been listening, Breaking it down with journalist David Friedlander, who just wrote a New York Magazine cover story on that Manhattan primary and then also posted here in the MAX Politics feed the audio of a New York 12 candidate forum that I moderated that had many of the candidates running, but not all. Actually, Lasher and Boris weren't part of that, but we discussed them in the conversation with David Friedlander. So Eric Bottcher and Keith Powers with me in just a minute. Very briefly, if you've missed any recent episodes of the show, a couple highlights beyond the two related to New York's 12th congressional district primary that I just mentioned. I just did an episode analyzing Mayor Mamdani's $124.7 billion executive budget that he unveiled on May 12, for which I was joined by two journalists who cover the mayor closely in policy, budget and political matters. And we discussed how the mayor rebalanced the budget in this latest plan, what's to come in negotiations with the City Council, where his top priorities stand, and much more. Also recently on the show, I had a good in depth talk with Darielisa Avila Chevalier, a Democratic Socialist challenging Congressman Adriano espail in the 13th congressional district primary in Upper Manhattan and a little bit of the Bronx. Really good conversation with her there and hoping to have Congressman Espad on the show as well. A bunch of other excellent guests and conversations in the MAX Politics feed, including conversations with several other state Senate leaders along with Senator Botcher, who you're about to hear from alongside assembly member Powers. In case you missed any of them, check them out after you listen to this one. All right. I'm very pleased to welcome to MAX Politics New York State Senator Eric Botcher and Assembly Member Keith Powers, both Manhattan Democrats. Senator Botcher represents the 47th Senate District on the west side, including parts or all of neighborhoods, including the West Village, Chelsea, Hell's Kitchen, Midtown and the Upper west side. And in his Chamber of the Legislature, Assemblymember Powers represents East side neighborhoods of the 74th District district, including parts or all of the East Village, Stuyvesant Town and Peter Cooper Village, Gramercy Park, Kips Bay and East Midtown. They're both new to the state Legislature after having won special elections in February, both having recently served also in the New York City Council. Gentlemen, thanks for being here and taking the time. Senator Botcher, let's start with you. We're talking here on Friday, May 15th. We thought we'd have a state budget by now. But before we get into any specifics, just where are we and when, when might there be a state budget?
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B
Well, this is my first state budget as a state lawmaker. I've been an observer for many years. Obviously, one thing I did not really realize until I was reading Empire State Report yesterday was that this is the latest budget since 2010, since Patterson. And we're all really, really hoping that an agreement can be reached, the details can be finalized so we can vote on this budget. It's very, very late. No one is happy, and we're all hoping that it could happen as early as this week.
- [06:31]
A
Assemblymember Powers, what's your view on what's going on here and when we might have a state budget?
- [06:37]
C
I certainly think we're getting closer, and I know our side is hopeful by next week we will start voting. But obviously that is Albany hope, and that could turn into reality and maybe go later than that. But I think certainly hopeful we get into next week, middle of next week and can start voting on some of these bills as most of the broad things things are solved for, but we still have to make sure we actually get bills printed and solve for some final, final, you know, financial issues here. So I think we're close. Hopefully we can start next week.
- [07:18]
A
So sticking with you assembly members, your first state budget as a legislator as well, what's the, what's been the biggest sort of learning curve coming to the state legislature, and you didn't even get to start at the beginning of this, you know, process. You had to come in a bit in the middle. But what's been sort of the biggest learning curve coming out of the City Council and that budget and legislative process, which is, you know, pretty separate to now, this one at the state, that's a whole different animal. What's the biggest differences? What's been the biggest learning curve on all that?
- [07:52]
C
Well, I mean, the stakes are way higher here just because you're dealing with so much more money, so many different types of issues. You're not just dealing with one major city, you're dealing with the entire state and different municipalities. And I think remembering when I got there that we are not just focused on New York City, but there are towns and localities throughout this state who are equally relying on aid. Have A whole different set of issues. And also the scope of things like the deficits in small cities seem minuscule to a place like New York City, but have a major, major impact on them. And then also the sort of city versus state dynamic in all of this. We're so city focused as former council members and city elected officials, but remembering that you have to help and assist with all these other places that have much different types of issues and scope of issues. That's one, two is in the council you get so much more money and resources individually to really go out and fight and fend for your district and your issues. Here it's subject to three way negotiations and it's just a little bit of a more indirect path to getting things that you want to need for your district. And of course the timing aspect of it, which is the city, in the city you're constantly in session all year round and there's not the sort of finals week of the beginning of June and then you don't have this sort of delayed budget. But I was a staffer in the assembly years ago and I remember the constant people being very groaning around the budget process and how delayed it got. And I don't think we really should aspire to go back to that. We should get back to really trying to do on time budgets, get the localities their money quickly and give us the opportunity to work on some broader policy issues that we really care about. So I am hopeful in the future we will get back to a more normal place on all this. Yeah.
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A
Senator Bottcher, your thoughts on the, on the shift from the city to the state level and what, what you've been observing and learning.
- [10:08]
B
The biggest difference is that the city council, when we talk about the budget, we're just talking about the budget. We conference and they put numbers on the screen. Here's where, here's what we're looking at with education, public safety, social services, housing, money. We're not talking about, you know, legislation, big ticket legislation, items that we're putting in the budget. That's what we're doing in the state budget. And it wasn't until really the last week or so that negotiations started talking about the budget. Really, it was really about the climate laws, car insurance, immigration, secret reform. Those big policy items took up a long time because these are really, really substantive, consequential decisions. And there was a pretty big gulf on some of these issues. That's the cause of the delay primarily up till now. And that's a big difference from the city budget where it's really just about money.
- [11:34]
A
So from where I sit, you know, it's become fairly clear, I don't know your thoughts on this, that the state fiscal year should be moved at least a month. I, you know, I talked to the state comptroller, Tom Dinapley, about this. He's, you know, expressed some I mean, not that he's fighting for it, but when I've asked him about it, he's said, you know, that could make a lot of sense, especially since you get more of a sense, an early sense of some of the tax returns that come in in April, you know, if you moved it to even May 1st. There's obviously consideration around the school budgets around the state and different things with the timing that are issues. But even when the budgets were on time under Governor Cuomo, who came in, Andrew Cuomo who came in and made it such a priority, but he made it a priority at even further the expense of like, transparency and, you know, good sort of legislating and budgeting process where it was like twist every arm you had to twist to get a budget done by, you know, midnight on March 31st, which again, has some merit to it, to get a budget done. But there was still a bunch of policy always mixed in. And it was like legislators voting with really very little idea what they were voting on, which may still be the case even if you're voting on a budget around May 20 here. But so that's one. And then the other is this question about the policy mixed into the budget and what to do about that. It's obviously partly because the governor has so much leverage in the budget process to put their priorities in, and there's been plenty of attention on that with how Governor Hochul has approached that. And again, Governor Andrew Cuomo did, did his thing on that, too, and others before him. Any thoughts, either of you, about any adjustments to how all this works and ways the legislature could assert itself or any of these other things that could make this a more functional process, especially coming out of your experience in the city, which is a maybe too involved process. But it's, you know, it's, it's pretty functional and it runs, you know, on time most of the time, unless like we saw this year, where the city had to felt it had to move the mayor's executive budget because the state hadn't come in with its budget yet. Senator Botcher, any thoughts on sort of bigger picture reform on any of this?
- [13:48]
B
It's an interesting idea to move, move later in the year the budget deadline, so to speak. One factor to consider is the fact that the state legislature breaks in June and we as a legislature don't really begin passing the vast majority of our legislation until the budget is done. We the later the budget goes, the less time we have to really start passing our big ticket legislation. So there's going to be, when this state budget passes, there's going to be a huge, there's going to be like a flood of legislation for that last two weeks. If the state budget deadline is later, that would give us less time to pass legislation. One could guess that the governor would be perfectly happy with that because that would be less legislation for her to have to negotiate and veto at the end of the year. One could even perhaps guess that a late budget is a way of, you
- [15:05]
A
know,
- [15:07]
B
cutting down the amount of time we have to pass legislation. That's just one downside of potential downside of moving the budget deadline later. It would give us a much shorter amount of time to do the actual work of legislating after the budget.
- [15:23]
A
Assemblymember thoughts? I mean obviously you could move the fiscal year and then all also think about the legislative calendar going year round in different spurts or even extending it into the fall. Not that I'm trying to get you guys to have to make trips to Albany even more often, but
- [15:41]
C
yeah, good question. I mean look, I don't want to be too shell shocked by this one year, but I do think probably May 1 would actually make a little more sense because of how quickly you have to ramp up in the new just the realities of the legislature and like timing and calendar and also what we're seeing the last few years. But honestly you're right about Cuomo, but they did get budgets done by April 1st and that was an all in effort to try to actually do it with the actual pressure. It just doesn't feel like to me there's that many incentives in place for everyone to hit April 1st on the dot at this point. But I do think so. I think May 1st is a good and interesting idea, but I think as Senator Batra said, this right now totally disfavors the legislature. We're dealing with four or five policy issues that basically are now wiping to get done in the budget and then therefore wiping out the rest of the legislative calendar to do some big ticket policy things that the legislature really wants to assert. So there has to be some rebalancing of that and there has to be some, I think thought about how we disincentivize this. But to your other question, I mean the reason The City Council gets its budget done every year is. It's just about money. And that's what the budget really is supposed to be about. So I think, you know, any governor wisely would use this as a tool to get some changes done, but I think it has to be more limited and we have to let the legislative process still drive a lot of the policymaking because the governor still holds a lot of power in that a of lot ultimately with chapter amendments and vetoes and things like that, like the governor still hold. It's not like the council, where the mayor doesn't really veto a lot of bills. They hold a lot of power to veto or to change and amend legislation even when we initiate it.
- [17:35]
A
So we don't have, we won't have time to go through so many of the highlights of this budget deal that are coming together. But if you each want to take a minute or two to just talk about how you're feeling about the deal that's coming together and some of the specifics, like top priorities or things you're unhappy about that are going to be part of this deal. You know, I know there's many legislators who are frustrated about, you know, some of the changes to the State Climate act, the CLCPA that are, that are apparently being negotiated. There's others who are happy with it, of course, but, you know, lots of help for New York City is built in here in terms of the budget. There's been plenty of attention on that in recent days as Mayor Mamdani, you know, released his executive budget after getting general sense of what was going to be coming in the state budget. So any, you know, couple of top thoughts on where this is all landing things you've been particularly each focused on. Senator Bottcher, why don't we start with you Just, you know, the deal is coming together. We still don't know lots of specifics as we've been talking about here, and those are being ironed out over the final days. But you know what sort of top of mind good, bad, ugly here that's actually going to be in this budget deal?
- [18:39]
B
Mm. Well, I'll start with the positive and that is seeker reform, the environmental review process that has unnecessarily slowed and added expense to housing development, energy projects, clean energy projects, other kinds of projects in New York for many, many years. And this has added per unit of housing development. It adds like tens of thousands of dollars and it's helping to drive up the cost of housing. And that's something I am happy that we're addressing in this budget, I'm hoping that we do it in a fulsome way so that we can actually cut the red tape. It takes years and years before projects actually get shovels in the ground. And this is a way to bring down the house of cause, the house of the cost of housing. It's a way to actually comply with our climate laws to reduce the cost of these green energy projects. So that's something I'm really happy we're addressing. So the fine points of it though are ensuring that you, that you're not cutting environmental review when it's needed and that you're only applying it to what they call like disturbed land, like already developed places. Because if you're developing a surface parking lot in Manhattan, that's not going to need years of environmental review. It's very different than a rural area where you do want that environmental review areas where there might be, you know, environmental concerns. So that's been a topic of discussion in the budget. I'm very happy we're doing it because it needs to happen.
- [20:41]
A
And what's, that's the good, what's the, what's the bad or the ugly?
- [20:45]
B
Well, look, I think the climate, the governor's push to water down the climate laws to push back the deadlines, I think it's really problematic because we are going to be as a society in the next few decades, we are going to be incurring costs as a result of climate change that are beyond anything we're even comprehending right now. I mean, it's going to be a catastrophe unless we right now invest in clean energy and transform our energy systems. And we're seeing right now the nonsensical nature of how we fuel our economy. Shipping decomposed plankton from around the world in boats, that's totally at the whim of foreign conflicts. We could be energy independent here in New York. We have to pursue it aggressively. And instead of watering down the climate laws, we should be really looking at why we've been so slow to develop clean energy projects. We need a full court press to develop green energy here in New York. I know that the federal government has been making it extremely difficult to do, but we have to rise to the challenge.
- [22:16]
A
And the governor's argument is that that all can continue and will continue even with adjusting some of this climate law. You feel like the, the changes are going to undermine those efforts or do you think it can have been?
- [22:29]
B
Well, that's why we have to ensure that, yeah, any changes that are made, they have to be changes that don't undermine. Undermine the, the. The spirit in the letter of law. And that's why there's really close. Our chamber is working really closely with the environmental advocates to make sure that, you know, obviously, the governor's not going to let this proceed without some changes. What those changes are, how do we make sure that they are minimal? That's. That's what we're. That's what we're pushing for.
- [23:03]
A
Yeah. And just on the finances side, you. When you join the state legislature, you, you know, very quickly were there for Mayor Mandani's initial budget testimony and coming out of the City Council, of course, in all your years there, both as an elected official and as an aide, you, you know, we're really digging in on, you know, balancing the city's budget and all that. How do you feel about where this state budget is landing and how it's then impacting the city budget and how the mayor and the governor, you know, have come to some of these agreements with, of course, you know, agreement with the legislature, at least in general, on where this is heading and how the city's balancing its books. It seems a little bit like, you know, everybody's trying to sort of just get through this budget and the bigger picture, you know, issues around, you know, the city's fiscal picture are still, you know, pretty challenging, murky, questionable about, you know, what's going to happen in the next year or two after this. But maybe, you know, new mayor, it's good to just sort of get through the first budget without a lot of challenging, you know, cuts to agencies or different things that have raised concerns and, and sort of just get through it. But there are concerns about those out your budget gaps and the. That, that a lot of this help from the state is only sort of for a year, maybe two. And then there's a lot of big question marks. How do you feel about where this is all landing?
- [24:22]
B
It is true that my, My second day as the city's one chair was the tin cup day where all the mayors, including Mayor Ondani, came to Albany. And I was on the dais questioning Mayor Mandani about the budget. And one thing I asked him was, you know, I, I asked him, I said, you know, when you ran, you said that you weren't going to pursue the same patterns as Mayor Adams with the pegs, the programs to eliminate the gap, identifying savings of each agency, giving them targets. Instead, you've done the chief savings officers. What's the difference? The two his chief savings officers identified savings I think you identified one issue is that a lot of the issues with the city budget we're getting through this year, they're going to need to be addressed before next year. But I'm happy that the state is stepping up. I'm going to give Governor Hogle credit for working with Mayor Mandani to help the city get through this year's budget and providing the aid that's there. Keith raised an interesting point earlier with respect to this upstate downstate dichotomy dynamic with upstate municipalities also needing help. I think after we get through this budget, we as a state need to really take a look at all of our municipal budgets, see how can we create a New York state economy where every municipality can thrive without needing help from Albany. In New York, we send so many billions more to the state than we get back. Let's have this conversation after we get through this budget because next year is going to be. Next year is going to be tough.
- [26:31]
A
Interesting. You reminded me along with moving the state fiscal year at least a month, one of my other process thoughts is that the mayor should have to do one budget testimony in front of the city council every year. I don't know why, why the mayor only goes to, you know, see the state legislature once a year. There should be a mayoral budget testimony in front of the city council once a year, too. I think.
- [26:53]
B
Think that would have been fun under Adams, right?
- [26:56]
A
Oh, yes. Well, any, any mayor, I think it would have been pretty interesting. There's, there's different years where it would be smoother. Obviously, you know, the, maybe the first de Blasio, Mark Viverito budget would have been pretty calm. But assembly member powers good, bad, ugly of this budget deal that's coming together and how, you know, also how it impacts the city. But generally speaking, what are your, what are your thoughts on sort of your main focus areas, top priorities, and what you think of some of the headlines here of what's coming together?
- [27:24]
C
Well, first of all, I love the idea about the getting the mayor in front of the city council. That would make great entertainment and it'd be very fun. And I think they do go to state legislature. So it's interesting and good on the substance.
- [27:37]
A
It's like, you know, the budget director can be there and it's so much easier for the budget director to say, you know, we're going to get back to you. And like, people are going to maybe sometimes be, you know, pushing the budget director harder. But like the council members know, the budget director is at the direction of the mayor. And can only say so much and all that. And it's like, get the mayor in there one time a year, come on. Anyway, go ahead.
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B
They barely say anything. City agencies, they, yeah, we need a,
- [28:04]
C
we need a bill to make sure that every time they say I'll get back to you, they actually get back to you. I think it's about a 5% hit rate on that. But look, I think it's a good and best secret form, no doubt about it. I had done an op ed on that and I've been speaking a lot about that and it really works off of things we had done in the city council, State Senator Bacher and I, to accelerate housing, get more housing built. If you are trying to do modest changes in neighborhoods across the board to build and add more housing in a very logical way, you also have to make sure there's not a two year waiting list to get a draft environmental statement done. Put a shot clock on that, get it done faster, make it apply to situations where it's actually necessary. So credit to the governor on that. It was a good proposal and mostly I think is staying intact the super speeders bill that we're going to get done. While a little different than what I would have liked to see done in terms of the final substance, I think it's a very reasonable landing spot with very hard to oppose this iteration of it and I think will really get some really bad drivers off the street. So that being included in the final version. Good. And look, I think the aid package for the city. Good. To get them the money that they need and to recalibrate some of the parts of the budget that had been changed over the last few years that take money away from the rate, raid the city's accounts a bit. Even my first term in the council, I feel like there was a feeling from the state that we were flush with cash. We had to do a bunch of things to help out the state with like MTA costs and other shared costs. So I think trying to get those to a more reasonable place. Good. But I, you know, with the budget, maybe this is more on the bad side. Like I think with all this stuff we don't want to rely on, you know, new tricks to kind of stabilize city budgets. We do want them to address long term fixed costs, to have to make some decisions about certain programs and policies to actually make sure they're being effective and efficient. And you can't sometimes have it all. If you're going to balance your budget, it requires really picking the priorities out and figuring out what's not working and making adjustments there. Look, I think I agree with Senator Batra on the climate stuff, which is it's not an ideal place to be, to be rolling back laws that were really framed to be historic climate bills and things like that. And again, the bad here is that we're almost in June and that we don't have a budget, which means the city has to still keep guessing, other cities are still guessing exactly what they're getting, and we put everyone in a difficult financial position, let alone not being able to work on many of the good ideas that we all are trying to bring to the table. Mm.
- [30:59]
A
When you've been in this budget process, assembled member powers, you know, you're now in this massive Democratic majority conference in the state assembly, you know, over 100 members coming out of the council, where you were, you know, in the. In the Democratic majority of, you know, 30 plus in the, you know, in the 51 seat council, 40 plus. How do you. How have you approached sort of getting your voice in there and trying to make, you know, an impact where you think, you know, you can be most effective or just prioritizing things in this budget conversation, Are there one or two things that you didn't mention there that you particularly have sort of just tried to infuse into some of those conference conversations or say to Speaker Hasty, you know, one on one, or something along those lines, especially coming out of the City Council in recent years that you've sort of made a priority. I know, you know, lots of legislators from the city have concerns, you know, related to making sure mayoral control of city schools just gets extended, for example. Others want it, you know, to get some more scrutiny and all that. It looks like there'll be maybe a two year extension in the. In the budget deal. Correct me if that's wrong, but, you know, any. Any other. Couple of things that you've tried to sort of insert your voice in a way where you can have an impact in this very large majority conference.
- [32:17]
C
Yeah, that's great. Yeah. That's one of the main differences. Right. You walk in and suddenly you're one of the 100 here. But look, you have to speak up and you have to be willing to kind of lend your. Look, I think the one benefit that both of us have is we didn't show up and not have any relationships with anybody in our conferences. We know many of the folks. I worked in assembly years ago as a chief of staff, so kind of knew some of the sort of main pieces of all this. But look, I was really active talking about the cpu secret reform and change is hard on a lot of the land use and zoning stuff. As we learned in the council. This no different. So trying to offer a different perspective around why this is important and helpful and be in the yes category about doing things versus no. Let's kind of set this aside. I think is helpful to show a mixed feeling, but also to show where there's energy in places like Manhattan where so much of this applies to. The super speeders bill was a big conversation among New York City elected officials, New York City assembly members in our conference and, you know, was very happy
- [33:22]
A
and one where you really had to push the speaker to get there. Right.
- [33:25]
C
I think, I think if the conference is mixed on some of this stuff, and I think. I think the speaker does a really good job of trying to figure out how to get to a place. But honestly, he was great on when this deal came together, really, you know, showing why it was necessary and reasonable where we, where we landed on it. But obviously people were a little bit mixed on how they, how they felt about it. So I think he actually handled it really well in conference. And I was really happy to be one of the people stand up and say that.
- [33:59]
A
And also, let's be clear on this bill, by the way, like that when you get, you know, a certain number of speeding tickets, you'll have to have a device added to your car to keep you under the speed limit in a year.
- [34:11]
B
I mean, come on.
- [34:12]
A
Yeah, exactly. So this is, you know, it's. It's a significant step to do anything like that. But it's also, you know, a very sort of mild approach to it, careful approach to it. Again, this is, this is, I mean, you could, you could be moving to take people's driver's licenses away. That would be obviously, you know, a very dramatic, drastic sort of punishment. But installing these devices is also a tricky thing. I mean, again, this is the idea here is as soon as people start to get these tickets, they're going to start to get warned that if you get X number in the, you know, in the, in the coming months, you know, you could face this punishment that will change driver behavior. So I think there's some real potential impact of that threat that's there. But this is also like a relatively, you know, careful approach to all this.
- [34:59]
C
I look. No. No doubt about it. And I think I would like to see. See it go further and be more bold, and I'm sure there'll be opportunities to do that. But I do think that point you said is actually the ultimate point I'd underline, which is, and I think others feel this way, which is even the threat of having to modify your car or lose some driving privileges or whatever else it might be, I think will be a deterrent for people to stop speeding. And so I think while that number should be lower and we should expand it, I think the starting point of it to get everyone on board, by the way, because I think the point I was making is to folks is like, this is a pretty reasonable place to be. And if you can't support this, we're ultimately saying nothing should ever happen to address these folks. But I do think it will be a deterrent at the end of the day. And look, sometimes we have to start at a certain point then to really prove out its feasibility here and that it's not end of the world scenario. So especially places where they're more driving heavy. So I think that's part of this and I think it will deter people just by being in existence.
- [36:12]
A
Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Seems likely. Senator Bachelor, let me come back to you. Just generally speaking, I know you both cited secret reform here in terms of a big sort of likely positive coming out of this budget. I know the mayor's team was really active on this. It was something the mayor supported. He sent housing officials to Albany at least once to talk to people and push this, and they were pretty active on this. Beyond that, generally speaking, how do you feel like Mayor Mamdani and his team did here in this first state budget process of theirs? There's a lot of scrutiny. Often it's an inside game, but it has a huge impact on the city and the city's residents and, and the state. You know, how the city and the mayoral administration manage these intergovernmental affairs and trying to get the mayor's priorities over the finish line in Albany. And a lot of that can be, you know, sending officials there to make the case for policies that that would be beneficial to New Yorkers that, you know, may not be on legislators radars or they're opposed to it. But the city administration needs to make the case here. It was a lot of fiscal territory, but it was also seeker reform. It was also mayoral control of schools and some other things. Broadly speaking, how do you sort of grade, you don't have to give a letter grade, but how do you grade the mayor on his first, you know, state budget process here?
- [37:35]
B
I'm happy with the overall dynamics. And, you know, I think the bar was set low with Cuomo and De Blasio and now you have the mayor and the governor appearing together, working together, communicating well, not taking shots at each other. And they seem to be working together, and that's very important. And that's something that we can't take for granted because that does not happen with every mayor. It doesn't happen if every governor. So I think they've been working well together, and I think he's been working pretty well with the legislature, too. He comes from the legislature. He happens to know Albany from his years there. So I think that's benefited him that he has an overall sense of how it works, how the budget process works, and I'm going to give him pretty good marks on that.
- [38:34]
A
And a summit member, I mean, he,
- [38:36]
C
he's getting what he wants. He can't really complain about.
- [38:39]
A
He's getting some of what he wants. Yeah, no, the tax, the tax increases are mostly not happening. So I think, you know, that's a big one.
- [38:47]
C
But I agree. But I think the pied a terror tax he is counting as part of his mission and really honestly getting a better balance of the budget. And look, I mean, I think he has played it smartly in terms of, you know, having a good relationship with the legislature and the governor and creating a dynamic where in his first year where they're willing to sort of hop in and he didn't really alienate folks here. So, yeah, I think he's done. I think it's a good job. And ultimately, if the budget is balanced and fiscally healthy, then that's a, that's a win for him in the city.
- [39:21]
B
Yeah.
- [39:22]
A
All right, you guys have some joint legislation you're working on. Why don't we take a few minutes on that? You've got, you guys came in at the same time, Manhattan representatives, East side, west side, you know, working closely together here. So.
- [39:35]
B
And Ben, you left out the best part. We're roommates in Albany.
- [39:41]
A
You know, I'm not even going to dig in on that because I, you know, we, I would love to know all the dynamics around how that works and who's neat and who's not and all of that.
- [39:53]
C
He's very neat. He's very neat.
- [39:55]
B
I don't know. I mean, we're kind of on the same level.
- [39:59]
A
So it's working so far.
- [40:00]
C
It's working.
- [40:01]
A
All right. I mean, again, for the legislative calendar, you know, you get a, you'll get a nice break. Break from each other here. That can always help. Help those dynamics. So. But you're working on some legislation.
- [40:15]
B
I get home Earlier.
- [40:19]
A
Oh, that's interesting. So, Senator, you want to start on the artist housing is.
- [40:27]
B
Sure, yeah.
- [40:29]
A
Say what you're trying to do together there.
- [40:31]
B
And. Yeah, in the City Council, Assembly Member Powers and I had introduced legislation paving the way for more artist housing in New York City. We in New York City have really great examples of artist housing. In our district, we have Manhattan Plaza in Hell's Kitchen, West Beth in the Village. But it's been decades since we've had new artist housing, partly because of ambiguities with the Human Rights law saying that you can't discriminate on the basis of lawful occupation. We want to allow artist housing to be built again. So that's why we're introducing the state version of that legislation that would permit us to move forward with artist housing. We have a new development in Hell's Kitchen that would be perfect for an artist set aside. We want to permit it to happen. That's what our legislation would do. The Senate Cities One committee, the committee that I chair, we passed it yesterday, and we're hoping that we can get this through. Mm.
- [41:39]
A
Limber, anything you want to add on that as a priority or the.
- [41:42]
C
Yeah, we are. You know, we. I think both of us worked on a lot of housing issues, but this was a bill we did in the City Council and now expanding up in Albany. And I think we have so much great reception in my district in the East Village. So many people who are artists, musicians, talented people here who are facing that affordability crisis here, very excited about it. Obviously, Senator Botcher represents some historic places that have been home to so many great talents. So we're very excited about getting that bill introduced and part of tackling affordability here, but also offering something to people that we think makes New York so special. We both represented Times Square and Broadway when we were in the council, and I can say that so many people who work there, for instance, whether they're the electricians on the stage or the. The talent on the stage, they are, I think, very enthusiastic about this opportunity.
- [42:41]
A
And we won't go into all the details of how artists are defined and all that. We don't have time for that right now. But people can read up on the legislation and see what the. What the details are there. What's the. What's the general gist on your prospects for whether this gets over the finish line this year? As. As you both have said, there's going to be a very short legislative session here. Whenever this budget gets done, maybe a couple weeks until the session's over. There's going to be a flood of legislation, as one of you said, coming through. What are the prospects on this one for this year? Are you seeing this as a multi year effort?
- [43:17]
C
I think we'll see after the budget. I mean, I think the budget is constraining our ability to, you know, really focus on some of these bills and address issues that. Or like just like answer questions and things like that. But we have, I don't know, we have just got a number of sponsors on the assembly, all from the city who are very excited about it. So we got to kind of work till the end to try to get it done. Because I'm excited it's moving in the Senate and we're, we're. It's a priority for me. So we're trying to get it done this year.
- [43:44]
A
Yeah, yeah.
- [43:45]
B
Okay.
- [43:45]
A
And gun signage. Assembly member, you want to start on this one? What you're pushing for here related to warnings and gun stores.
- [43:53]
B
Yeah, it's another bill that I had introduced in the City Council. Council member Powers had co sponsored it and essentially what it would do, what would require gun sellers to post a graphic warning on the wall warning consumers of the dangers of having a gun in the home. What previous laws did was require a written sign. What this would do would be require a graphic image because we know that public health imagery is more effective when there's a graphic image that's very well documented. Lots of research backing that up. It's never been done in the United States with respect to guns. You could look at cigarette packets in other countries. As an example, picture a gun store with a sign on the wall that included a young child, a toddler, pulling a handgun out of a bed stand drawer. That would hopefully help someone think twice before purchasing that gun about the dangers of having the gun or not storing it safely. That's why we want to get this legislation passed. It's never been done in the United States. We passed it in the City Council. The Department of Health, New York City Department of Health is in the process of putting together the signage we're going to see in action in New York city. In the 15 gun sellers in New York City. We want to do it statewide.
- [45:31]
A
So that is moving ahead in the city.
- [45:33]
B
It is, yeah.
- [45:35]
A
From the Department of Health is creating the signage.
- [45:38]
B
I'm excited to see it. The other bill, gun safety bill that we're hoping to pass this session is Francesco's Law, which would, which would require safe storage of firearms for all gun owners in New York State. It's named after A young man who took his own life with a shotgun that was not stored securely in his parents home. We want to get that passed this session.
- [46:06]
A
Assemblymember, anything you want to add on that signage bill or anything else?
- [46:11]
C
No, I'm really excited about it. I think it's a. We are, you know, like we said we did in the city and obviously state different dynamic, but we are excited about travel to get, trying to get it passed and build on existing efforts in the city and the state to give people clear warnings about firearm onage in the House.
- [46:32]
A
All right, let me get you out of here on a politics question. We always got to talk a little politics. You both represent districts that overlap either fully or significantly with this New York 12th congressional district primary that's happening in Manhattan. Crowded field, highly competitive. Couple of your assembly colleagues running in there. Senator Botcher you've endorsed some of them. Are Michael Lasher part of the especially west side, you know, groundswell behind his candidacy? Assembly member Powers, I don't think you've endorsed in this race, is that correct?
- [47:09]
C
I have not, no. Yeah.
- [47:12]
A
So say a little bit about what's going on there. I think it's become maybe a little more interesting than people expected. Jack Schlossberg seems to be making some waves. Maybe it's just, you know, based on sort of the Kennedy legacy and lineage there, but certainly popping up, you know, solid in, in a whole bunch of the especially internal polls that have been released. I don't think we've seen a good nonpartisan, you know, non aligned poll in that race. But Assemblymember last year, you know, making some waves there, especially with the endorsement of outgoing Congressman Nadler and on the east side, your assembly colleague Alex Boris. I think putting forward a campaign that's maybe surprised people in terms of how strong it's been. He's getting a lot of labor endorsements. So Senator Bocce, you want to take a minute just on why you. I guess why you think some member of Lasher is the best candidate there and your, your sort of thoughts on that race?
- [48:07]
B
Yeah, well, I was running for that.
- [48:10]
A
You're running Briefly months. Raised a whole bunch of money. You know, you.
- [48:16]
B
Yeah, it was great. But ultimately, you know, this opportunity for the state Senate is such a great opportunity to serve right away in such an incredibly meaningful capacity. And by the way, I would not have exited the race if I didn't feel that there was someone in the race who would be a phenomenal member of Congress who is solid, experienced, tested and someone who would represent us well. And to me, number one was Micah Lasher, who I really got to know over the last few years. And I'm really excited about his candidacy. I do think he's going to prevail. I think people as they get to know Micah, you know, he's not the most glitzy of candidates, but he's gonna really be a phenomenal member of Congress. And I'm going to work really hard to get him elected between now and the primary.
- [49:17]
A
And you. You part. You partly owe your. Your seat in the State Senate to have you thanked Assemblymember Powers for losing the Manhattan Borough president race so that Brad Hoyman Siegel moved from the State Senate to the borough presidency.
- [49:36]
B
Well, in the New York 12 race, there's the Democratic primary, but then there's the Powers primary for Keith support.
- [49:44]
C
Yes, right. That's right.
- [49:45]
A
Which we'll get to right now. But, Senator Botcher, just real quickly, what do you make of the Schlossberg candidacy? Do you think it's sort of one of these early name recognition things that's showing up in polls, and it's not real. There's that. There's one theory there, there's another theory that, like, you know, he's got a very strong social media presence with younger voters, plus this, you know, Kennedy, that could appeal to some older voters, and he's a real threat in this race. What do you sort of make of his candidacy? There's obviously a lot of attention, including a big New York Times article about, you know, sort of a chaotic campaign and questions about whether he's really ready, you know, for this role. But what's your sense of that candidacy? Is it real? Is it not real? What do you make of it?
- [50:26]
B
Definitely real. And I would never want to diminish the enthusiasm that a lot of his supporters have. I know some of them. But I do think, though, at the end of the day, that the. The voter profile of New York 12 are extremely serious. Discerning, older, they skew a little older professional people who I think would gravitate more towards a Michael Lasher kind of candidate. And that's why I. I think he's gonna prevail. I think all the candidates, for the most part, are putting together, you know, good campaigns. So it's going to be a really interesting month and a half. I want someone like Micah who has really substantial experience professionally, because these jobs are not easy jobs. And there's a big difference between being able to message effectively on online and actually executing the jobs. I know that because I've had A couple of these jobs. At this point, it's very different.
- [51:51]
A
All right, the Powers primary here, within the primary. Assembly member, how you thinking about this? I know you, you know, have friends and colleagues supporting Michael Asher. You're on the east side there with lots of, you know, east side support for assembly member Boris. I don't know if you have any connection to any other candidates, but how are you thinking about this and are we going to see you jump into this race at all?
- [52:12]
C
Well, I don't, you know, to be determined. You know, I was, I was, I was to still. I'm still holding out for my endorsement of congressional candidate Eric Bottcher. But look, look, I mean, these races basically start today. I mean, I know there's a lot of, a lot of money being spent and traction, but these races really do start when the voters, when you really start spending money and the voters start cluing in and paying a lot more attention. And I think we are. I think they've all run honestly, really interesting and good campaigns to make their point. And obviously there's an outsized amount of attention here with the outside spending and the issues that are on the table and what this district is. It's the heart of New York City and Manhattan. So I've not made a decision. Obviously friends with many of the candidates and have gotten to know others in the race. Look, I ultimately want to know who's going to be a good partner, who's going to be good for my district, who's going to be on the ground and actually effective. And obviously I've worked with many of them, so I know what their legislative capacities are and what their tone. Tone are as elected official. But I really do think these races kind of start around now when you really get to see what these candidates are putting forward in their messaging and what they look like.
- [53:30]
A
So Senator Botcher's case there for Michael Asher didn't persuade you?
- [53:35]
C
I've known Micah for about 20 years. He's a great legislator. Alex Boris has been doing a great job. They're all, they're all good candidates in their own ways. And I, I have great relationships with, with all of them.
- [53:45]
A
Yeah. Fascinating coalitions coming together there, by the way. You've got, you know, Michael Lasher has as not just Senator Botcher and outgoing Congressman Nadler, but he's got Mike Bloomberg, who he used to work for, and Nydia Velasquez. You know, that's a, that's a pretty, that's a pretty broad range of politics there with many other electeds. And others in between supporting him. And then, like I said, oh, I
- [54:08]
B
didn't even see that about Nydia. That's great. Yeah.
- [54:10]
C
Yeah.
- [54:11]
A
And Governor Hochul has, you know, been campaigning for him. Michael Lasher worked for her, as well as policy director. So that's interesting. And then, as I said, Assemblymember Boris getting a lot of labor support, which I don't know. You know, I don't know that people expected that. So that's been very interesting to see. All right.
- [54:30]
C
Just the narrative around the race with the, you know, outside spending coming in.
- [54:34]
A
AI.
- [54:35]
C
Yeah, just like informing, by the way, like just informing the voters, too, about the race and who's on the ballot and name ID that, you know, elevates the race and the consciousness of the voters so that they are sort of paying attention. And obviously, the money's coming in from a lot of different directions. And then you have a Kennedy on the ballot. I mean, it's a. Fascinating. Fascinating, right?
- [54:56]
A
Indeed, indeed. All right, well, I appreciate the time. State Senator Eric Botcher, assembly member Keith Powers, Great to catch up with both of you now that you've had a little time in the state legislature here, almost getting through your first state budget. We'll see when that actually comes in. But really appreciate the time and thoughts and stay in touch.
- [55:14]
C
Thank you.
- [55:15]
B
Thanks, guys. Sam.