From: Anthony Kownack, Corning Place Communications

Subject: Weekly Articles of Interest (New York Propane Gas Association)

Date: August 11, 2023

Bill,

Below, please find a compilation of articles, issued this week, that may be of interest to you. Articles
are also hyperlinked within each headline.

Thank you,

Anthony

Weekly Articles of Interest Include:

 State collects feedback on how to spend $4.2B

 Why Your Energy Bills Are Going Up
 Commentary: Just how much is the CLCPA going to cost us?
 NY's climate is changing fast — so must Albany
 How New York Senate Democrats went from backbenchers to coveted candidates

State collects feedback on how to spend $4.2B

Gwendolyn Craig
Times Union
August 6, 2023

SARANAC LAKE — State agencies are drafting criteria for spending from the $4.2 billion Clean
Water, Clean Air and Green Jobs Environmental Bond Act, as well as how to keep track of the funds.
Staff are collecting feedback during listening sessions and through web-based surveys before
releasing criteria for public comment. 

Barbara Rice, executive director of the Adirondack Park Agency, led a virtual listening session
recently. An in-person session in Saranac Lake was postponed due to community leaders handling
the aftermath of severe flooding. It is rescheduled for Friday, Aug. 11, from 11 a.m. until 1 p.m., at
Harrietstown Town Hall in Saranac Lake.

Parts of the bond act are intended to fund flood resilience projects.
“To cancel a listening session because of severe weather says it all,” Rice said. 

Some eligibility requirements for bond act spending are already set. For example, a project can only
be eligible for money derived from bond borrowing if it has a lifespan of at least 10 years. It also
must create a tangible asset. Food, lodging and maintenance costs, for example, are ineligible. 

For recreational projects in the Adirondacks, that could mean a few things. Katie Petronis, deputy
commissioner of natural resources at the state Department of Environmental Conservation, said fee
land acquisitions would qualify. Campgrounds, nature centers, fish hatcheries and other
recreational infrastructure could also count. Trail work, however, is unclear. 

“We’re still in the process of exploring exactly what that means for trails and the 10-year useful
lifespan,” Petronis said. “We’re looking at different categories of trails, and which trails may or may
not be bondable.”

A minimum of 35 percent of bond act funds must also benefit disadvantaged communities
significantly harmed by climate change, Rice said. Keeseville, population 3,060, is the only
community in the Adirondack Park on a state map of disadvantaged communities. 

Bond funds may only go to municipalities or nonprofit organizations, state staff said.

A participant on the recent virtual session asked how state government would keep track of the
dollars spent. In research conducted last year, the Adirondack Explorer found state agencies used
different tracking methods when dispersing 1996 environmental bond act funds, the most recent
environmental bond act New Yorkers authorized prior. The Explorer found millions have yet to be
spent. When attempting to account for where the $1.75 billion went, the Explorer found most state
agencies could not provide an itemized list. No audit had ever been done. 

Suzanna Randall, chief resiliency officer at the DEC, said tracking the funds is something DEC is
working on with partner agencies. She said it will be “a clear and transparent process.” 
This story first appeared in the Adirondack Explorer.

Why Your Energy Bills Are Going Up

Colin Kinniburgh
New York Focus
August 7, 2023

IF YOU LIVE IN New York City, get ready for a big electric bill this month. Behind the spike is a little-
known, deeply bureaucratic process: Meet the “rate case.”

It’s a long, winding, technical ordeal, structured in many ways like a court case, that dictates how
much New Yorkers pay for some of the most basic daily necessities: energy and water. And it’s
hardly restricted to New York City. Utilities throughout the state apply for rate hikes in a constant
cycle, and regulators almost always approve them in some modified form.

In late July, a state body called the Public Service Commission (psc) approved major rate hikes for
Con Edison customers over the next three years, starting with a roughly 9 percent electric bill
increase for the rest of 2023. The average residential customer getting both gas and electricity from
ConEd can expect to pay about $65 more per month by early 2025.
That was the culmination of 18 months of haggling between regulators, local officials, and business
and advocacy groups. It was only supposed to take 11 months — and because it went overtime,
hikes that were supposed to be spread out over an entire year get crunched into a few months.

More hikes are coming: Three of New York’s major utilities — serving electricity and gas from
western New York to the eastern tip of Long Island — have rate cases underway right now.
In central New York, a proposed deal could see electric delivery rates increase more than 50
percent by mid-2025. And the two most recent cases have floated the steepest hikes yet: A Hudson
Valley utility and the main downstate gas utility are both requesting an additional $30 per month,
on average, for the energy they sell.
Utilities and the psc broadly agree that the process delivers fair compromises between the interests
of customers and those of the utility’s investors. “For the major electric and gas utilities, the
approved rates … are nearly always dramatically lower than what is requested,”
said psc spokesperson James Denn. “This transparent, stakeholder-accepted review process has
been an outstanding success in New York.”

Not everyone shares that view: Assemblymember Zohran Mamdani of Queens, who fought ConEd’s
current rate hikes, called the deal “a failure of how an industry should be regulated.”

And the result doesn’t just affect your wallet: Because rate cases govern a large part of the energy
system, they also shape the state’s ability to meet its climate goals.
So how does it all work? Here’s what you need to know.

THE TWO SIDES OF YOUR ENERGY BILL

A monthly energy bill breaks down into two main categories. First is the cost of “supply” —
basically, the price of energy on wholesale markets. On a gas bill, that’s the price of the gas itself; for
electricity, it’s the price set by power plants or other generators on the statewide grid. (Gas prices
still play a role since most of those plants burn it to produce electricity.)

Utilities are not allowed to earn a profit on this side of the bill — they’re required to pass along the
energy supply to their customers at the same cost they buy it for.

Then there’s the delivery side, which pays for all the infrastructure and staff it takes to get that
energy to your home. This is the core of utilities’ business — and, in the case of the private utilities
that serve most New York customers, the source of their profits. Utilities are entitled to earn a fixed
rate of return, typically hovering a little under 10 percent, on their infrastructure spending.
The delivery side is what utilities negotiate with state regulators, who are tasked by law with
ensuring “safe, reliable utility service at just and reasonable rates.” Deciding how much it costs to
actually deliver energy to customers is the crux of the bartering that happens over the course of a
rate case.

A UTILITY BUDGET BATTLE

The opening salvo in a rate case is a proposal from the utility, often thousands of pages long,
detailing all the reasons they feel they need to raise rates in order to keep the lights (or gas, or
water) on and sustain their business.
This kicks off a proceeding similar to a court case, overseen by an administrative law judge. The
state’s Department of Public Service (dps) assigns a team of its own to scrutinize the utility’s
proposal, and interested parties sign up to become “intervenors” in the case.

The process is open to anyone, but in practice, rate cases draw a familiar roster of intervenors: local
officials, businesses and institutions that use a lot of energy, and groups advocating on behalf of
consumers and the environment, all backed by countless lawyers and consultants.

“What people don’t usually know about is that they also have the opportunity to become an
intervenor and to get a lot more involved in the case,” said Jessica Azulay, program director of
Alliance for a Green Economy. Her group and others train members of the public to take this step
and weigh in throughout the process.

How a Rate Case Unfolds

Rate cases are supposed to be decided in 11 months, but it often takes well over a year. Here’s a
typical timeline.
 
Utility Files Proposal
Initial filings are often thousands of pages long, touching on all aspects of a utility’s planned
spending and finances.
↓
Months 1–3: Initial Review, Hearings
Parties begin reviewing the proposal and request more information from the utility; the state
assigns a judge to oversee the proceedings and hosts a first set of public hearings.
↓
Months 4–5: Counter-Arguments
Regulators and other parties submit their responses to the utility’s proposal; the utility issues its
rebuttals, and files for settlement.*
*In theory, the case could go before a judge to be litigated rather than settled, but in practice this is
rare today.
↓
Months 4–12: Closed Negotiations
The utility, DPS staff, and registered intervenors negotiate a settlement behind closed doors.
↓
Months 12–? Settlement and Decision
The utility and DPS staff issue a deal known as a “joint proposal” to settle the rate case. Other
parties respond. After another set of hearings, the PSC issues a verdict on the settlement and new
rates take effect.

Sources: Public Service Commission website and filings.

But even those eager to dive in might find the process daunting. The sheer amount of information
published on the psc’s website is “so extensive that it’s practically impenetrable,” Assembly energy
chair Didi Barrett said.

“Putting all the information out there doesn’t necessarily make it more accessible or more user
friendly,” she told New York Focus.
psc Chair Rory Christian acknowledges that the bar to entry in rate cases is high.

“While any party can participate, the path to meaningful engagement is fraught with obstacles that
perplex the uninitiated and often test the patience of seasoned participants,” he recently wrote.
“Parties and individuals who have long participated … possess an undeniable advantage over
newcomers.”

Today, most rate cases in New York are settled through secret negotiations, where all the parties
seek to broker a compromise behind closed doors, rather than being decided by a judge. The utility
and regulators have to reach agreement on a final deal before it’s presented to the public, and they
aim to get as many other parties as they can on board too. The recent ConEd settlement had the
backing of New York City, the mta, Walmart, and two groups representing real estate, universities,
hospitals, and other major energy users. (The New York Power Authority and one large
environmental group also backed the electric side of the deal.)

“Usually we see these joint proposals come out — that starts an inevitable march toward that being
approved, largely as is,” said Joe Stelling, associate state director at aarp New York, a regular
intervenor in rate cases. That’s what happened in the recent ConEd case.

FOSSIL FUEL UPKEEP — AND CLEAN ENERGY DEVELOPMENT

It’s hard to pin rate hikes on any one factor alone: Like most businesses, utilities have costs that
range from staff and pensions to computers and software to property taxes and more.

Generally, though, the biggest driver are infrastructure investments. These can range from
hardening electrical equipment against storms to replacing “leak-prone” gas pipes, an expense that
has been hotly contested by environmentalists.

Utilities argue that upgrading fossil fuel infrastructure is necessary to maintain reliability and even
reduce emissions. In its rate case filed in April, for example, National Grid proposed spending an
average of $500 million a year on leak-prone pipe replacement, projecting that it would slash
emissions by preventing leaks of methane, a potent greenhouse gas.

Climate groups argue that the aging pipes should simply be removed and replaced with all-electric
systems. The underlying problem, for Azulay, is that the state still hasn’t fully reconciled public
service law — which governs utilities and gives New Yorkers rights to gas service — with its
climate law, leaving the psc to constantly juggle two competing goals.

“We’re hashing out a lot around the climate law in these rate cases, and we’re having to do it over
and over and over again in each rate case,” Azulay said. “That is very time-consuming, because the
Commission has not taken the [climate law], clearly looked at it, and said, ‘This is what now needs
to happen with the utilities.’”

She and other climate advocates have made a priority of passing the ny-heat Act, which aims to
resolve the tension by ending subsidized gas hookups and giving utilities hard targets for reducing
gas sales, among other provisions.
As the state legislature repeatedly punted on passing dedicated climate funding over the last
several years, New York resorted to paying for clean energy through energy bills. Some argue that
this puts an unfair burden on low-income customers, since — unlike income taxes — nearly
everyone pays the same utility rates.

“When there’s not an overall vision for things like implementing our state’s climate goals, the
default so far has been, well, throw it on the backs of ratepayers,” Stelling said.

How much has that cost so far? The psc calculates that state climate policies accounted for
anywhere from four to 10 percent of the average electric bill last year, or $6 to $9 per month,
depending on the utility. (The impact on gas bills was negligible, at one percent or less.)
The largest chunk of the subsidies went to the state’s Clean Energy Fund, which supports clean
energy research, development, and finance, as well as community solar. Another big chunk went
toward energy efficiency and heat pump programs run by the utilities themselves. All of these are
paid for on the delivery side of the bill, while the supply side includes subsidies to nuclear plants
and a tiny but growing sliver of renewables.

The bottom line? Climate policy has not been a leading driver of rate hikes to date, but we’re still in
the very early stages of the state’s energy transition. Lawmakers, regulators, and advocacy groups
broadly agree that finding ways to share the costs equitably is a top priority as the state develops
its cap-and-invest program, its first overarching effort at funding climate action.

BARGAINING OVER CORPORATE PROFITS

How much of the hikes go to the utilities’ shareholders?

Utilities are allowed to earn a fixed rate of return on their investments. National Grid told
regulators this spring that returns accounted for roughly one-fifth of the increased rates they were
requesting, similar to the amount ConEd listed in a presentation last year.

“The entire regulatory construct is set up so that the utilities are incentivized to keep building … to
make those profits,” Azulay said.

PSC Chair Christian, testifying before the Assembly in July, defended “fair and equitable”
shareholder returns. Without them, he said, utilities wouldn’t be able to attract the investment they
need to operate, and they would face higher borrowing costs, which would in turn get passed on to
customers.

“Utilities in New York earn among the lowest [returns] in the United States, in large part because of
the outstanding regulatory work done by our employees in reviewing rate cases,” Christian said.
Still, even some of those in charge of the process admit that the results can be hard for many
customers to swallow.

“There will be pain,” said Public Service Commissioner Diane Burman before casting her vote in
favor of the ConEd hikes. “It’s a huge rate increase.”

The hikes come even as utility debt remains at crisis levels. Some 406,000 households are still
overdue in paying their ConEd bills, for a total of $560 million, according to the company’s latest
report. Statewide, utility debt totaled more than $1.4 billion in May 2022, or an average of $1000
per indebted household, according to filings reviewed by the Public Utility Law Project, a consumer
protection group. That’s even after the state distributed more than $1 billion over the last two years
to help low-income customers and small businesses pay off their debts.

Meanwhile, ConEd recorded $1.7 billion in profits in the first half of this year — nearly double its
earnings for the same period last year and triple the year before.

ConEd spokesperson Jamie McShane presented the company’s latest rate hikes as a down payment
on an electrified future, and a win for customers and shareholders alike.

“Our commitment to leading the clean energy transition and providing world class reliability for
our customers delivers strong and stable financial results for our investors,” McShane said. And
low-income customers will actually see lower bills under the agreement, he said, thanks to an
expansion of the state’s Energy Affordability Program, which uses a portion of the rates collected
from all customers to offset bills for those most in need.

Assemblymember Mamdani sharply disagreed. “I don’t know how you can see a $64 increase for
the average customer as anything other than letting ConEd run the show,” he said.
Mamdani favors full public ownership of the energy system, and said legislation to take over New
York’s private utilities was on the horizon, though he didn’t specify a timeline.
Stelling, of aarp, said that state regulators deserve credit for their work trying to balance the
competing pressures in rate cases, but that the results of the ConEd case underscored the need to
reform the process.

“They’re working in a broken system,” Stelling said of the Department of Public Service staff. “The
results come out with astronomical numbers, but because the original ask [from the utility] was so
high, they can still claim victory in a press release. It’s just not working for ratepayers.”
Stelling wants to see the state return to one-year litigated rate cases, which he said would boost
transparency and help redress the disproportionate power that the utility and dps staff have in
closed door settlement negotiations.

Azulay isn’t so sure. She said that, despite the process being “stacked” against them, climate
activists have won some significant victories through settlement negotiations, such as a provision
that ultimately blocked National Grid from building two new liquid gas vaporizers in Brooklyn.
Laurie Wheelock, executive director of the Public Utility Law Project, said that one way or the other,
it’s clear that reforms are needed to keep energy bills in check.

“We can’t just do business as usual,” Wheelock said. “We have to open things up and look at them to
find ways to really help cut the cost for repairs.”

pulp has supported multiple bills aiming to give consumers and advocates a greater say in the rate
case process, but they’ve faced a cool reception from Governor Kathy Hochul, who vetoed one in
2021 and another last year. The second bill, allowing advocacy groups to be reimbursed for their
work intervening in rate cases, passed the legislature again this year, and pulp is urging Hochul to
sign it.
Despite hangups over certain legislation, Wheelock says the state has taken important measures to
protect affordability under Hochul’s leadership, including the bailouts to indebted customers and
expansion of the Energy Affordability Program.
The state’s commitments to affordability and climate policy will be tested again in the three major
energy rate cases still pending, which together will impact roughly one in three New York
households.

The proposed settlement in the central New York case would see combined electric and gas bills go
up $35 a month for the average customer by mid-2025. Stelling says the only way to change that
now is for the governor to step in.

Hochul, who called that utility’s initial proposal “outrageous and unacceptable” last year, has yet to
comment on the deal. Her office did not respond to New York Focus’s questions about it. 

Commentary: Just how much is the CLCPA going to cost us?

Justin Wilcox
Times Union
August 11, 2023

In the rush to pass the Climate Leadership and Community Protection Act in 2019, concerns over its
affordability were brushed aside. Unfortunately, four years later, we find ourselves just beginning
to discuss the enormous costs associated with New York’s climate goals.

The state Department of Environmental Conservation’s commissioner, Basil Seggos, raised

concerns earlier this year that the CLCPA could result in an 80 percent increase in natural gas bills
and an increase of 63 cents per gallon of gasoline. Seggos and Doreen Harris, commissioner of the
New York State Energy Research and Development Authority, concurred in a joint op-ed that
“fighting climate change won’t work if people and businesses can’t afford it.”

We couldn’t agree more.

We encourage New Yorkers to take the time to better understand the realities of the CLCPA,
because it’s not just natural gas and gasoline prices that are going to skyrocket. In fact, just about
every cost associated with the CLCPA is blowing up.

The Port of Albany facility to build wind towers is already 100 percent over initial cost projection of
$350 million. Will the final cost be closer to $1 billion?  Probably.

This past June, petitions filed with the Public Service Commission on behalf of several renewable-
energy projects requested more money, warning that without it, they might walk away from those
projects. How much more are they requesting? The answer, as with most of the costs associated
with the CLCPA, is that we don’t know: It’s not included in the filings. Utility customers have the
right to know how much more they will have to pay before being forced to foot the bill.

While New Yorkers don’t know the real costs of the CLCPA yet, they can be assured that the rise in
their utility bills over the past few years will pale in comparison to the increases that are coming.
How do we know this? Because the Department of Public Service report released last month
indicates that the CLCPA caused double-digit increases on bills in 2022 alone. This is troubling
because only a small portion of the total costs of the CLCPA have shown up in 2022 utility bills.
A huge driver of the problem is the timeline, which isn’t just driving increased costs but is
encouraging them. For example, the developers of renewables are forcing the state into a situation
in which, if the PSC doesn’t approve their request for additional funding, it will be forced to rebid
the projects and, ultimately, risk missing legally required targets under the CLCPA. In this way, the
expedited timeline effectively creates a perverse incentive for developers to demand more
money from the state.

Lurching from cost overrun to cost overrun is a guarantee that the initial projections of the CLCPA
were wrong. We are long overdue for serious conversations about the impact of the CLCPA on
reliability and affordability. While there have not been blackouts yet, when it comes to
transparency of the costs of the CLCPA, leaders in Albany are keeping New Yorkers in the dark.

Justin Wilcox is executive director of Upstate United, an economic advocacy coalition.

NY's climate is changing fast — so must Albany

Anshul Gupta
PressConnects.
August 7, 2023

After bouts of smothering smoke from Canadian wildfires fueled by heat and drought, the climate
crisis came knocking at New York’s door again last month in the form of a stunning once-in-a-
thousand-year deluge in the Hudson Valley. Our legislators appeared shocked and blindsided; many
took to social media to commiserate. Gov. Kathy Hochul urged New Yorkers to use every bit of our
power to fight the ravages of climate change.

But none of this should be surprising, let alone shocking. It’s not that climate scientists haven’t been
warning us about this for decades. And that is exactly why New York passed the landmark Climate
Leadership and Community Protection Act in 2019 with emissions reduction targets modeled after
the 2015 Paris Agreement adopted by 196 countries to limit human-caused climate damage,
primarily from burning fossil fuels.

Pursuant to the CLCPA, a Climate Action Council including state agency heads, climate scientists,
and industry leaders was convened to prepare a Scoping Plan with a blueprint for the state to meet
the law’s emissions targets. So at this point, New York doesn’t really need the politicians’ platitudes.
All we need is for our leaders to fund and implement the CLCPA in a timely manner.

And how are we doing with that?

Meh. 

With much fanfare, the state passed a law to eliminate fossil fuels from new buildings, albeit with a
two-year implementation delay over the Climate Action Council’s initial recommendation. New
York’s climate scoping plan also recommends a strategic downsizing of the polluting and expensive
methane gas distribution system while slowly transitioning existing buildings to healthier and
superior electric appliances. Methane — a potent greenhouse gas 83 times more powerful than
carbon dioxide — is the principal component of the fuel marketed as “natural gas” that leaks
everywhere from drilling to distribution to domestic appliances. But far from downsizing, the state
is actually spending billions of dollars of utility ratepayers’ money in expanding, enhancing, and
refurbishing the ruinous methane gas network despite the fact that there is a popular active bill in
the legislature to implement the Scoping Plan’s recommendation. 

The New York Home Energy Affordable Transition, or NY HEAT Act accelerates the transition off
the climate-destroying methane by aligning utility regulations with the state’s climate law, all while
saving ratepayers money on energy bills by capping them at 6% of incomes. The bill passed in the
state senate, but despite the unfathomable incongruity of continuing to invest in fossil-fuel
infrastructure amid a raging climate crisis, it neither gained the governor’s support, nor did it get
Speaker Heastie’s nod for a vote in the state assembly. 

Meanwhile, every day without NY HEAT makes meeting our climate and energy affordability goals
harder and costlier in the future. This isn’t just a hypothesis, but a conclusion that utility experts
have arrived at after rigorous analysis. Moreover, delaying the passage of NY HEAT keeps more
New Yorkers tied to pricey gas, whose suppliers will then need to purchase more carbon
allowances under Hochul’s signature cap-and-invest emissions reduction program and raise its
costs.

There’s other common-sense climate legislation that the governor and the Assembly failed to
support. The climate disasters that we are witnessing aren’t natural disasters; these are
premeditated crimes. The fossil-fuel industry knew decades ago that their products cause grave
harm and chose to spend billions of dollars to lie to the public and lobby the politicians to block
climate action – a practice that the industry continues unabated to date. The Climate Change
Superfund Act would hold the largest historic climate polluters accountable and would require
them to pay to help partly shield New York tax payers from the tens of billions of dollars that the
state will end up spending in the coming years to fund disaster recovery, remediation and
resilience. So far only the state senate has been able to muster the political courage to pass this bill.

As Hochul urges New Yorkers to get used to the new climate normal, Albany must adapt too and
recognize that the business-as-usual of passing one or two major climate bills every few years is
neither an adequate response to the rapidly worsening climate crisis, nor will it be enough to
implement the state's climate goals. And Albany lawmakers’ thoughts and prayers in the wake of
climate disasters while mollycoddling the fossil fuel industry ring just as hollow as our federal
lawmakers’ thoughts and prayers in response to incidents of gun violence. We don’t need thoughts
and prayers. We need strong climate legislation.

Anshul Gupta is a senior policy analyst with New Yorkers for Clean Power and a steering committee
member of the New York Climate Reality Chapters Coalition.

How New York Senate Democrats went from backbenchers to coveted candidates
Bill Mahoney
Politico Pro
August 11, 2023

ALBANY, N.Y. — There have been 46 New York Democrats elected to freshman terms in the U.S.
House over the past 40 years.

Seventeen of them have come out of the state Assembly, while seven were New York City Council
members.
But only one, Manhattan Rep. Adriano Espaillat, has come out of the state Senate, the Legislature's
upper chamber that’s theoretically just one step below Congress.

That might change next year in the latest sign of Democrats' maturation as the majority in the
Senate, which had been controlled by Republicans for much of the past century until 2019.

There’s a plausible scenario in which four of the country’s most hotly contested congressional races
will feature recent state Senate alums as the Democratic nominees.

In 2019, the Senate’s Democratic conference entered into its first functional majority since World
War II. It has since joined the Assembly as one of the country’s most important progressive
policymaking institutions. And the entrants into next year’s House races indicate it might now be on
the verge of establishing itself as the state’s key Democratic bench.

“When we look to who could run for higher office, our members generally would be at the top of
that list,” Majority Leader Andrea Stewart-Cousins said in an interview Thursday with POLITICO.
The list of recent declarations for congressional districts that could become major battlegrounds
next year is filled with Democrats who were first elected to the Senate in 2018 or 2020, the years
the party gained its majority and supermajority, respectively.

Jim Gaughran is the lone Democrat challenging Rep. Nick LaLota in eastern Suffolk County. Anna
Kaplan and Kevin Thomas are seeking their party’s nomination in the Nassau County seats
currently held by Reps. George Santos and Anthony D’Esposito, respectively. And John Mannion is
in a primary to run against Rep. Brandon Williams in the Syracuse area.

And all of them are framing their campaign arguments around their experience in the Senate.
“We’ve been able to do so much — gun safety legislation, making it easier for people to vote in this
state, passing climate safety bills, codifying Roe v. Wade — these are all the things candidates are
saying they want to do in D.C.,” Thomas said. “I’ve actually done that here in New York.”

Mannion similarly pointed to bills on subjects like the economy and education: “It comes down to
the work I’ve done and the work that we do as a conference,” he said.

That’s perhaps the key difference in the viability of Senate Democrats these days compared with
those of yesteryear. There have always been some idealistic members who ran for the Senate
because they hoped to play a part in transforming it into the progressive body it has become.
But with Democrats stuck in a perpetual minority for decades, it also attracted plenty of ne’er-do-
wells who wanted the trappings of a prestigious political office without the hard work that usually
entails.

For example: Of the 32 Democrats who served in the party’s brief majority in 2009, nine were
eventually arrested or otherwise had their career end in scandal. Only Eric Schneiderman and Eric
Adams, now New York City mayor, went on to higher-profile jobs — and Schneiderman's political
career flamed out when he resigned in 2018 as attorney general over sexual harassment
allegations.

For decades, anybody whose focus was immediately passing significant legislation and spring
boarding up the political ladder would prefer to run for the Assembly. Notably, the two top
Democrats in Washington, Chuck Schumer and Hakeem Jeffries, got their start in that chamber.
But serving in the Senate is a quicker way to establish a record these days. There are fewer
members in the 63-person Senate than the 150-person Assembly, so you’re more likely to sponsor a
major bill or chair a committee right from the start.

“Normally when somebody got elected like me, they just say we’ll call on you when it’s your turn,”
Gaughran said. “But [Stewart-Cousins] immediately gave me one of the big committees, the Local
Government committee.”

Lee Zeldin, the most recent Republican to pull off the state Senate-to-Congress jump, said Tuesday
at the state Capitol he “was far greener showing up to the state Legislature in January of 2011 than I
was showing up to the House of Representatives in January of 2015.”

“The state Legislature provides you with experience to be able to serve in a Legislature, so that
helps," said Zeldin, who ran for governor last year and is touring the state to build the GOP field.
"What’s also important is where you stand on issues — how you’re actually going to be voting on
issues that matter most to your constituents. Just because you served in a state Legislature doesn’t
mean you’re a right fit for that district.”

That’s something the congressional hopefuls will still have to overcome. Being a part of an
accomplished progressive body means there are also some votes that Republicans will hope are
unpopular in swing districts back home.

Todd Kaminsky, the first member of the Democratic supermajority to run for a different office, was
handed a major upset in the 2021 Nassau County district attorney’s race after his efforts to make
the 2019 bail reform law more moderate caused the GOP to label him the “father of bail reform.”
And Republican ran successfully for House seats on Long Island and in the Hudson Valley last year
in part on the laws passed in Albany, particularly issues around crime and the economy. So expect
similar themes from the GOP next year against the senators if they win expected Democratic
primaries next spring.

“Anytime there’s an ample record, there are things that can be promoted and things that can be
criticized,” Senate Deputy Leader Mike Gianaris (D-Queens) said. “But when voters look at the
overall body of work of this majority, I think they’ll find amazing achievements that have moved the
state in a positive direction.”

Kaplan was similarly optimistic that her experience will be a net positive, pointing to
accomplishments such as her “legislation banning ghost guns [which] became a model for the White
House to adopt.”

“There are many candidates who are running for these competitive seats who don’t have a record,
and I think that puts us on a different caliber,” she said.