Gov. Hochul is misrepresenting our CLCPA lawsuit
By Josh Berman and Eric Walker
For the Times Union
April 29, 2026
Link: https://eedition.timesunion.com/infinity/article_popover_share.aspx?guid=df863899-94b7-4836-bd9c-a1946ad04ef6&share=true
In a recent Times Union op-ed, Gov. Kathy Hochul argued she is trying to tailor New York’s climate law to reality. But the changes she continues to seek go far beyond pragmatic tinkering.

The governor’s proposal is a wholesale evisceration of the Climate Leadership and Community Protection Act. What’s more, it doesn’t address the real problems New Yorkers are facing — the equivalent of treating a broken pinkie by amputating the whole arm.

Hochul’s pushback isn’t merely a legal dispute. It is a political choice in an election year.

As litigants whose successful lawsuit to implement the climate law is now being used as a cudgel to break the law, we want to set the record straight on several key points.

First, contrary to the governor’s claims, there would have been no lawsuit had the state taken even modest steps to implement the CLCPA as intended. The Climate Action Council’s 2022 scoping plan included hundreds of important recommended regulatory actions that the state was directed to take by January 1, 2024, to help achieve the law’s mandates. Our groups watched as the scoping plan’s numerous recommendations were whittled down to just one program — cap and invest — and the January 1, 2024, deadline slipped past.

We then watched as the governor abandoned even this one program.

With virtually nothing left to accelerate climate progress in New York, we reluctantly took the state to court as a last resort. Unsurprisingly, given the governor’s abdication of her responsibility to faithfully implement the law, we won.

Second, the governor asserts that only a cap-and-invest program with no checks on cost will satisfy the law and litigants. This is false. Hochul appears to have forgotten that many of our groups had expressed support for a program that controlled for cost and would have lowered energy bills by over $1,000 a year for families making under $200,000. That’s not our number; it’s based on two independent researchreports. There is no reason such a program cannot move forward now.

The governor could have responded to our multiple attempts to discuss a settlement of the case, but instead she appealed the court ruling and began building a public case for gutting the law, built on unrealistic cost projections intended to spark fear.

The irony of her position is this: With fossil fuel prices skyrocketing and New Yorkers struggling to pay their utility bills and fill up their cars, implementing a program that raises revenue to help New Yorkers reduce their dependence on gas and oil would promote affordability, not hinder it. With gasoline at near-record prices, interest in electric vehicles is surging. And with federal support being slashed, state programs are more important than ever.

The people who lose if the governor succeeds are the South Bronx children with asthma living next to highways, the Buffalo residents who watched energy bills spike during last winter’s cold snaps and today’s foreign wars, and the Long Island homeowners stuck on expensive delivered fuels like propane. These communities fought for this law. They deserve a governor who fights for them. That’s why we need the leaders of the state Legislature — Andrea Stewart-Cousins and Carl Heastie — to fight with us to stop the attack on the Climate Law.

Our groups went to court because helping move New York off of fossil fuels is critical for our wallets, health and future. The governor still has a chance to make a better reality for New Yorkers: Advance the CLCPA, don’t dismantle it.

Josh Berman is a senior attorney with the Sierra Club’s Environmental Law Program. Eric Walker is the energy justice senior policy manager at WE ACT for Environmental Justice. Together with PUSH Buffalo and Citizen Action of New York, they are the plaintiffs in the CLCPA lawsuit.