Gov. Kathy Hochul’s utility rebate checks are landing in mailboxes all over New York, and the timing could not be more convenient for her. Voters go to the polls Tuesday to decide whether to give her another four years, and the taxpayer-funded checks are still arriving, the New York Post reports.
The checks began going out in September and will keep coming through December. Each household gets $100 to $200, and about 8.2 million households statewide qualify, and the whole program costs $1 billion. It was built into the state budget in May.
Hochul sells the money as relief from energy bills. The Post notes those bills have spiked between 27% and 46% on her watch. In other words, voters are getting a small refund on a problem that grew under the governor now asking for their votes.
Her Republican opponent, Nassau County Executive Bruce Blakeman, isn’t buying it. He has called the checks a “big election-year scam,” and he previously dismissed the amounts as “peanuts,” asking what difference a one-time payment will make in the lives of everyday New Yorkers.
Criticism of one-time checks is also coming from an unexpected direction. At a New York City Policy Forum on Monday, two of Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s top appointees knocked the whole idea of rebate payments. Their remarks were not aimed at Hochul’s program specifically, but they were hard to miss a week before the election.
“One-time handouts disempower people,” said Mamdani Chief of Staff Elle Bisgaard-Church. “Means-tested programs segregate and encumber people. Private sector capture extracts wealth and tilts programs away from public welfare.”
Lina Khan, the Biden-era Federal Trade Commission chair Mamdani tapped to lead the Economic Development Corporation board, agreed. “This is not as much about one-time checks. This is not about one-time tax breaks,” Khan said. “It’s really about how do we address some of the upstream drivers.” Khan blamed corporate greed for skyrocketing costs.
City Hall backed the governor’s program in a statement Friday. “We welcome all solutions that deliver for working families, including shorter-term solutions that provide immediate relief to working New Yorkers and longer-term structural changes that alleviate their key cost burdens,” a Mamdani spokesperson told the Post.
The episode still exposes the gap between the democratic socialist mayor and the moderate governor, who campaigned together for the first time just days earlier. Mamdani’s socialist allies have routinely pressed Hochul to “tax the rich,” and his young supporters have even booed her at joint appearances.
Hochul has promised not to raise income taxes, but she did champion a contested pied-à-terre levy meant to raise millions for the city. On Wednesday she would not say whether she would bend to Mamdani’s tax agenda if re-elected. “There are no quid pro quos for us supporting each other,” Hochul said.
A Siena poll a week before Election Day had Hochul ahead of Blakeman roughly 54% to 40%. So is the governor buying votes with rebate checks, or handing back a sliver of what energy bills have climbed on her watch? Voters get to answer that Tuesday.
Source: nypost.com
