Reporting to New Yorkers on the “State of the State” is a job requirement for every governor. The state Constitution commands that “The governor shall communicate by message to the legislature at every session the condition of the state and recommend such matters to it as he or she shall judge expedient.”
This year is Governor Hochul’s fifth address. A major component of last year’s address was the governor’s emphasis on making New York more affordable. She was on to something: Making the nation more “affordable” was one of the key planks in President Trump’s successful campaign in 2024.Governor Hochul wanted to be on the right side of that issue.
The failures of the President and the Republican-controlled Congress to adequately deal with the issue – (at least the public perception) of rising expenses – fueled Democratic victories in 2025, most notably in New Jersey and Virgina, where Democratic candidates for governor were elected on pledges to tackle the rising costs of electricity rates.
Governor Hochul and state lawmakers are expected to tackle the issue of “affordability” this session. But what will they actually do and will it make a difference for most New Yorkers? It’s best to ignore the buzzword and to look at the underlying causes of spiraling costs.
Take electricity rates for example. New Yorkers are definitely feeling the pinch from rising rates. Utility rates are set at the state level. But as mentioned, the problem is one that is at least partly national in scope. Democrats won the governor’s mansions in New Jersey and Virginia on planks pledging to deal with the problems in their states.
Big Oil and its allies are working hard to promote the view that New York’s affordability crisis is due to measures designed to combat the worsening climate, in particular the Climate Leadership and Community Protection Act, the “Climate Law” for shorthand.
Take for example, New York’s electricity rates. New York’s residential electricity rates are high relative to the rest of the nation. But that has been true for years. For example in 2018 – the year before the Climate Law was signed – New York’s residential electricity rates were ranked the seventh-highest in the nation. Recently, New York was ranked eighth highest. Still high to be sure, but the impact of climate change measures didn’t make a meaningful difference.
Indeed, the Public Service Commission, the state’s utility regulator, recently reported that the state's Climate Law impacted residential ratepayers' electric bills by less than 10 percent (with a much smaller impact on gas bills).
The primary culprit? As the head of the Public Service Commission recently stated, "What we see … is the biggest drivers, is not batteries, is not wind, it's not solar, it's the aging infrastructure in our system." By the way, regulators are arguing that modernizing the grid is also needed to protect it from worsening storms and heat waves that are the result of a climate change.
The same is true for insurance costs. Those too are regulated by the state. While these rates are subject to state regulation, costs from one part of the nation can impact companies’ bottom lines and thus impact rates in another.
The costs of the rapidly worsening climate are a good example. In California, the mounting losses from communities being burned to the ground and the resulting financial losses to insurers have resulted in the market drying up for homeowners looking for coverage. The insurance market has gotten so bad that California’s insurance companies have dropped hundreds of thousands of policyholders across the state in recent years citing the increasing risk and severity of wind-driven wildfires attributed to climate change.
It has been reported that those losses will impact New York’s insurance premiums. The reason is the result of the arcane way the insurance industry operates. Insurance companies themselves also buy insurance to help them cover the costs of unexpectedly large claims they’re obligated to pay. That coverage – called reinsurance – has been getting more and more expensive as climate disasters have increased across the nation. As disasters mount, the cost of reinsurance goes up too, and that in turn drives up premiums in states that are not directly impacted by a specific disaster. So what happens in California and Florida, for example, can impact homeowners in New York.
Climate catastrophes will make electricity rates and insurance more costly – costs these industries will look to pass on to consumers. As a result, New Yorkers have to hunker down, demand that the state move away from burning fossil fuels – which is driving the climate disasters – and prepare for higher costs. Remember, when it comes to climate, energy and insurance “unaffordability” is not solely the result of state government, it is the result of the malignant advocacy of Big Oil and its stooges. And the longer that we delay meaningful responses to the heating planet, the more expensive action will get for us all.
New York should strive to be more affordable. Tackling the climate crisis is an important way to do it.
Blair Horner is senior policy advisor with the New York Public Interest Research Group.
The views expressed by commentators are solely those of the authors. They do not necessarily reflect the views of this station or its management.
