Audio & Rush Transcript: Governor Hochul is a Guest on ‘Power to the People Show with Darius Pridgen’

Earlier today, Governor Kathy Hochul was a guest on “Power to the People Show with Darius Pridgen.”

AUDIO: The Governor's remarks are available in audio form here.

A rush transcript of the Governor's remarks is available below:

Bishop Darius Pridgen, Power to the People: I am again privileged to have in studio the Governor of the greatest state in the United States of America, the Governor of the State of New York, Governor Kathy Hochul. Thanks for being with us again.

Governor Hochul: It's always great to be with you, Bishop Pridgen, and come back and see my friends at True Bethel. It's a regular stop by every time I have a chance to come back to my hometown.

Bishop Darius Pridgen, Power to the People: Yeah, and you do that constantly. Now, we know that this week has been a special week and I heard your words at the Tops Memorial. For those of you in Atlanta, Tops is a supermarket here that a few years ago there was a massacre of ten African-American people and others were hurt and wounded by white supremacists in the State of New York. But you came right away even during the tragedy and you were here again this week.

Governor Hochul: Just as you were. You and I were shoulder to shoulder, trying to comprehend the scale of what happened, why it happened, but also, most importantly, to try to comfort a community that was literally in shock. These were our neighbors. These were our friends. And the stories of the individuals we lost are painful to even recall four years later, incredible loss to their families and all of us.

And what I did in the aftermath as you know, I came up with some of the toughest gun laws in the nation. And this year in my budget, I'm adding even more to them — making sure that we can enhance and make sure we're protected, that people do not get these weapons of mass destruction in their hands because of the lessons we learned on that day.

I was proud to come back here and stand with my community and hug them and grieve with them and let them know I'm not going anywhere. I made some more contributions to a memorial building, a beautiful park here on the east side of Buffalo to commemorate their lives.

Bishop Darius Pridgen, Power to the People: Well, speaking of you know, we know that the shooting there was a large weapon, but what I am seeing now in the press and all over is about even smaller weapons being made in homes with 3D printers.

We know about the larger ones, what are we doing or are we doing anything in the state about 3D printed guns?

Governor Hochul: Yes, well we started seeing a spike in cases involving these literally manufactured at your kitchen table. I mean your home can be a munitions factory and what we have is the ability for people to create something that is unregistered. There's no background checks, they're absolutely illegal — we banned them. But people are still doing it.

So what I'm doing, first time in the nation, we're banning the ability to sell the printers in this state that have not had a disabling device to prevent that. So we're putting it on the manufacturers of the 3D printers, and that's how we're going to get to it.

Bishop Darius Pridgen, Power to the People: So for those who may be listening, 3D printers — you put in image and specifications in a computer in the same way that it would print on paper. It creates an object. So it can actually create the casings of a weapon that can be fired. Is that correct?

Governor Hochul: That's right, but also there's a little plastic device, just the size of a thimble that you can create with a 3D printer that can take an ordinary gun, put that little piece of plastic in there, and it has the capacity to do 1200 rounds. So you've now turned a —

Bishop Darius Pridgen, Power to the People: At one time?

Governor Hochul: At one time. A handgun can be converted into this lethal weapon of mass destruction, the kind you'd see perhaps on a battlefield.

Bishop Darius Pridgen, Power to the People: I didn't know that.

Governor Hochul: So it’s also that little plastic device, why we want to ban the capability to have that, ban that as well. So we have really tough laws. My budget as soon as I get that signed very soon is going to have nation leading laws to protect us against one more way that the criminals are trying to thwart our laws, and we're getting ahead of them in this way.

Bishop Darius Pridgen, Power to the People: So no other state has done this, not even federally. It's well federally —

Governor Hochul: Not under this Administration.

Bishop Darius Pridgen, Power to the People: Yeah a whole different discussion. But the State of New York, for those who are listening and those who are watching, will be the first state in the United States to ban this?

Governor Hochul: Yes, yes indeed.

Bishop Darius Pridgen, Power to the People: So what happens if someone goes over to Pennsylvania and then brings it over here to New York?

Governor Hochul: It's illegal to use it in the State of New York.

Bishop Darius Pridgen, Power to the People: So it would be illegal regardless if you get it from the South, regardless of if you get it in the North. At the end of the day, you bring that into New York State and there are penalties there.

Governor Hochul: That's right, that's right.

I have to do everything I can in my power to protect the people in my communities. And we saw what happened when we had laws against machine guns, but we didn't ban them. Someone could literally go across the border into Pennsylvania, as the white supremacist did and purchase a bump stock, which allows him to add more capacity to it. Now, it's not even that hard. With these 3D printers, you can do that in your kitchen, you don't have to go to Pennsylvania. So that's what I'm getting at. And a lot of it was my thought process around what happened here in Buffalo. To make sure I can do anything I can to spare my beloved community from having to endure such horrific pain.

Bishop Darius Pridgen, Power to the People: Well, I think that's so important because we hear about the money, we hear about the money that is coming in, more money coming in. But at the end of the day, it has to be more than just money. There has to be sound legislation that helps to protect people and we know that you are almost probably at the end of the budget, sooner or later — it has been extended. Can you update us on where the budget is or whatever you want to share with us on the budget? But I do have something special to ask you about the budget that I am rather excited about.

Governor Hochul: Okay, well the budget process is lengthy, and I negotiate with the two leaders of the Assembly and the Senate and Crystal Peoples-Stokes is an important player in this. Our hometown girl, a dear friend of mine for many years. She's the Majority Leader, a very important position in our State Legislature.

So I come out with my priorities. One is I'm focused on affordability, how I can reduce the cost of living for struggling families. We have more investments this year in this budget for childcare to literally have universal childcare, early childhood education for 3 and 4 year olds. Childcare for infants to two year olds and I'm going to get that done. It's expensive, it's a huge commitment, but I believe that families should not have to bear the burden of $20,000 extra or $40,000 whatever it is to have childcare so they can go to their jobs.

I don't want any restrictions, any barriers on why someone who wants to work, take care of the rest of their family, has to stay home like I did. I had to give up a job I loved a long time ago because I had two babies. No one to watch them, couldn't afford childcare in the area and I had to walk away from that job. So that's something I experienced a long time ago. Now those babies are having their own babies and experiencing the same. So this is nation-leading in terms of our investment in childcare.

So that's job number one, and we got that done. Also making sure that we can put more money back in people's pockets to deal with utility bills. We're going to put $1 billion out there and help families reduce the cost of their utility bills. Also holding insurance companies accountable.

Bishop Darius Pridgen, Power to the People: Please! The insurance— So you know, the state of New York has some of the, as you have said, “some of the highest insurance rates in the nation.” And you are — I really mean — I had on this jacket the last time we were together when you were talking about this, I wore it on purpose because every time I see this thing, I think about my insurance rates and others. So when you're talking about affordability in the State of New York, we know that it's hard to keep a job if you can't deal with childcare. But the insurance rates are astronomical. Tell us in layman's terms what you're doing about that and why.

Governor Hochul: We have some of the, I think, possibly the highest insurance rates for automobiles in the nation.

Bishop Darius Pridgen, Power to the People: Wow.

Governor Hochul: As you know, I used to run the DMV.

Bishop Darius Pridgen, Power to the People: Yes you did.

Governor Hochul: Nobody could purchase a registered car without proving they had auto insurance. So it's not an option, you have to have it. And what has happened is that we have people staging crashes, defrauding the system, running up the cost. They're being passed on to the rest of us — It is out of control. We have the highest rate in the nation of people —literally, someone intentionally stops, slams on their brakes in front of you. You hit them or they may have drunk driving, going through a red light, hitting somebody, causing injuries, but they also feign injury to themselves. The insurance companies and everybody's paying out for this and spreading the cost amount among the rest of us. We also have liability laws where those people can have a huge jackpot payout from a jury that is sympathetic based on the laws we have.

So, I'm changing those liability laws, restraining those. I'm having higher penalties for people who are defrauding the system and these scams — literally there are scams where someone intentionally causes an accident, goes to a doctor who's also on the take and will say that, “Oh my gosh, that's going to cause $50,000 of injuries, it might be a broken arm.” Right? So there's — and then they sometimes send them to medical centers that are also on the take. So there's a massive scam going on here. Not everywhere. It's not that common. But when it happens, insurance companies look at their cost and say it's more expensive for all these reasons I've just mentioned, more expensive to issue policies in New York than elsewhere. Now I want to also go after them. I want to make sure that they're looking at, you know, we're stopping them from being able to look at your zip code when they're trying to determine what you're insurance is going to be.

Bishop Darius Pridgen, Power to the People: You are preaching, yes.

Governor Hochul: Not your zip code. Not your job. Not your education level. I'm wiping all of those out.

Bishop Darius Pridgen, Power to the People: So regardless of what your zip code, because I remember moving from one zip code to another, my insurance rates almost doubled, solely based on my— not on my driving record, but on my zip code. That will be gone if this Budget passes.

Governor Hochul: When I get this Budget passed — it'll take some time to get it implemented, there’s always regulations and all — but ultimately we'll get this done. The state of Florida — now the state of Florida is usually not my model for good governance, right? I’m not a fan of the Governor or anything they do down there. But that being said, this whole package of reforms I just worked and overcame enormous opposition in the legislature. I mean, this was dead on arrival a few months ago. No one wanted to touch it because there's so many sacred cows, right? You don't touch the trial lawyers. You don't touch the insurance. You don't. Except I'm from Buffalo, you know me I like a good fight. So tell me it can't be done and I'm going to do it. So we literally accomplished this. And so what Florida did — same reforms — the insurance rates after the first year went down about 7 percent, then the next year about 8 percent, meaning at some point they're starting to give some rebates back to people. So what I can promise is you won't see that escalation in cost and at some point it's going to stabilize and even start coming down.

Bishop Darius Pridgen, Power to the People: Are the insurance companies on board with this, or is that one of the mountains you had?

Governor Hochul: No, no, they don't like me telling them what they can use for their rate determination as I just did. We took out all those factors they were using. So they're not thrilled about that. And we're also looking at excess profits of insurance company executives, right? So you got to look at all these things, so I'm looking at that. So, but they're happy about the reforms and they know my full expectation is that the rates will stop escalating and at some point start coming down.

Bishop Darius Pridgen, Power to the People: So we need a break in this area. As you know, we deal with a lot of poverty housing. You have talked about SEQR and all that. I want you to tell the folks, if you will, Governor, what you're working on to bring even more affordable housing into this area, or the State of New York.

Governor Hochul: It is such a crisis for the entire state of New York, but I see it here in my hometown. And I want to see more affordable housing projects being built — built by churches, built by communities, built by private investors, because we can drive down the cost of rent if we can build more supply. I've seen that in other communities.

But for a long time there's all these barriers — NIMBYs, people who don't want a project to happen in their neighborhood. They don't want to bring in people that might not look like them.

Bishop Darius Pridgen, Power to the People: So for those who are watching who don't know NIMBY, “Not In My Backyard”

Governor Hochul: Not In My Backyard

Bishop Darius Pridgen, Power to the People: Which is like, “Build it anywhere else, but don't build it here.”

Governor Hochul: That's right. That's right. And that's been paralyzing in Buffalo and elsewhere. They've also relied on something called SEQR which is the State Environmental Review law put into place in 1975 — when it was needed. But since then, we've had other environmental laws that have superseded it, but people still had to follow SEQR, and it can add two years to a project and really dramatically increase the cost per unit. I don't know the numbers for Buffalo, but New York City, a housing project, the cost is an additional $82,000 per unit to comply with SEQR

Bishop Darius Pridgen, Power to the People: Per unit. Which is going to get passed on then to the renter or to whoever eventually is there.

Governor Hochul: That's exactly right. So another huge battle I took on. Nobody wanted me to touch this. They said just leave it alone. I just cannot accept the status quo. I'm always going to say, “Why is this cost more? Why is this happening? What are the barriers and how do I, as the Governor of the greatest state of the nation, as you said, how do I use my power to break them down?” And this Budget encapsulates all of that, all with the focus on making life more affordable and a better experience for people who call New York home.

Bishop Darius Pridgen, Power to the People: Well, our time is almost up. I have to hit on immigration reform because this is big across the country. I just saw reports on it in other states. You're the Governor of New York, and you have, as we say, you have stood on business when it comes to immigration reform. Talk to us about that.

Governor Hochul: Absolutely. If you look at the cover of The New York Times today, cover story about our refugee in Buffalo here, Mr. Alam. And I met with his family and everyone knows the story here, maybe your friends in Atlanta do not know and you can tell them. But this was a horrific example of the callousness of taking innocent people, who are not harming others and the countless others who are here living in our communities and the population of Buffalo would have gone down over years if we didn't have the influx of refugees coming in from all around the world, and many immigrants have found their way here, and they deserve a chance.

What I will do is work with the federal government when it comes to getting rid of criminals, right? We do not want “the worst of the worst, the baddest of the bad” is what President Trump told us he would go after. We'll work with you. My police will always do that. They always have. Nothing changes. But what we have right now, and this is why I call my initiative “Local Cops, Local Crimes,” I'm really proud that in New York State, crime has dropped dramatically since we've invested over $3 billion. Here in Buffalo, I announced that homicides and shootings are way, way down. That's because we have local police working on local crimes. Now, there is something called this 287(g) agreement where some counties, including Nassau County, the other end of the state, they have an agreement to do ICE’s work for them— “I'm helping you do your jobs. I will go to the Home Depot and help arrest people for you. I'll pull over people at a traffic stop and call ICE. I'll let them come into our jails.”

So I'm banning those agreements. I don't think that we should be doing ICE's job for them. It's an $85 billion agency, bigger than our public safety budget in the State of New York. And so, I want to make sure that we're focused on what police officers should be doing and not distracted fulfilling Donald Trump's desire to remove anyone who does not look like him.

Bishop Darius Pridgen, Power to the People: Well, in Atlanta, I know that there were reports of people who— parents, who are not sending their children to school, even if the child was legal because of the fear that the child would get caught up in the system of some of these very questionable ICE raids.

Governor Hochul: I'm sorry to tell you that it's not just Atlanta, it's New York State, New York City. I have heard from parents, parents, elected officials in our state Legislature who told me, one woman said, a Hispanic woman says, “I'm not letting my 13 year old son walk out by himself because I'm afraid he's going to be targeted.” Now he's a U.S. citizen. And we saw what happened to U.S. citizens who got in the way of ICE in Minneapolis. They were murdered. So I'm also saying that if ICE overreaches, they do something that violates your constitutional rights, as I believe happened to the family of the refugee here in Buffalo, that they should have a recourse in the courts.

ICE should not be able to get away with it. ICE should also not be wearing masks.

Bishop Darius Pridgen, Power to the People: Amen.

Governor Hochul: There's no other law enforcement entity, from FBI to DEA to our local police or state police, nobody else wears a mask. Why do you need a mask? It's an intimidation tactic. I also have identified sensitive locations where no ICE are allowed unless they have a court order or a warrant for arrest. Churches, places of worship, schools, community centers, hospitals, I have a whole list, and that's part of the law that I expect to pass in the budget.

I'm also adding polling places because I believe that, as Republicans are afraid that they're going to lose the next election, the midterm elections for Congress, they're going to send ICE agents to black and brown communities to intimidate people into not showing up to vote.

Bishop Darius Pridgen, Power to the People: That will be in this Budget?

Governor Hochul: Yes.

Bishop Darius Pridgen, Power to the People: If it passes — when it passes, it's got to pass sooner or later.

Governor Hochul: Very, very soon.

Bishop Darius Pridgen, Power to the People: But that is something that you're holding, that you're standing ten toes down, that that's something that you feel is important to be in this Budget.

Governor Hochul: Absolutely, that's why it's taking longer because I won't give up on fights. Yeah, I missed the deadline.

Bishop Darius Pridgen, Power to the People: I mean, you missed the deadline over and over.

Governor Hochul: Yeah, but you know what I get? I do better in overtime. I always win in overtime. Not like, not like my Sabres did last night or —

Bishop Darius Pridgen, Power to the People: Well, I'll tell you this. We're in the middle of a big, huge building project here, and it's not at the time that I wanted it to be, and people keep asking me when is it going to be done? And this is what I told them: If I did not take the time, there was — the devil's in the details, and there were things that we would have missed that would have been important in this sanctuary project, that now I'm grateful that we took the time. And I think that there are going to be people dealing with auto insurance, that there's going to be people dealing with immigration reform, and that there's going to be people, especially developers, who want to develop for the right reasons, the right reasons of having affordable housing in the State of New York, who are going to say, “Bravo, thank you for taking your time.” The Governor of the State of New York. Any last words, Governor?

Governor Hochul: Thank you, Bishop. Always great to see you.

Bishop Darius Pridgen, Power to the People: Thank you.