Legislative labyrinth: The slow march toward consensus on environmental issues

Panel discusses legislative hurdles in setting and achieving NY’s environmental goals

By Tracy Ormsbee

As climate change threatens communities and spurs bold goals, there may be more agreement over environmental issues in the two houses of state government.

But in the end, the process still moves slowly. Sometimes too slowly, say advocates who participated in a panel discussion with lawmakers Wednesday, co-hosted by the Adirondack Explorer and Times Union at the Hearst Media Center in Albany.

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State legislators representing the Senate and Assembly Environmental Conservation committees, along with John Sheehan, communications director for the Adirondack Council, and Blair Horner, executive director of New York Public Interest Research Group, tossed back and forth an automobile analogy during the hour-long conversation of how laws make it through the state legislative process. 

“In terms of the environment, I’d say the two chairs (of the Encon committees) like to push the gas, but I’m not entirely sure the Assembly isn’t sometimes tapping the brakes,” Horner said. “It’s not necessarily ideological, it’s a more complex conference to deal with because of its size, scale and history.”

Sheehan described a time earlier in his career when Republicans controlled the Senate and it was more difficult to move any environmental legislation. “So it took a great deal of negotiation and working with both sides to get a piece of legislation even working its way through the Senate,” he said.

Most of Wednesday’s discussion focused on the Adirondack Park, protected by Article 14 of the state constitution as “forever wild.” Any changes that benefit communities but affect the state forest preserve require amendments to the state constitution. To do that, you need passage by two different elected legislatures and a public vote.

With climate change causing severe storms, increased temperatures and wildfires, Horner warned that we could be facing pressures on the park unseen since Teddy Roosevelt’s time. People will want to come to the park from hotter, more unlivable places and developers will be looking to develop the Adirondacks, Horner said.

“And so this is just a clarion call for those who care about the park to pay particular attention to this, because I think the historical trend with climate change happening over the next 20 to 30 years could have a dramatic effect on the park not only in the environment and how people live in it, but in the politics of how legislation plays out to impact the park,” he said.

Adirondack issues part of the discussion

State Assemblyman Matt Simpson, R-Horicon, ranking member of the Assembly Environmental Conservation Committee and the lone Republican lawmaker on the panel, provided the view of many residents of the communities of the Adirondack Park. Sen. Dan Stec, R-Queensbury, invited to participate, could not make it. 

Simpson expressed frustration that a constitutional amendment to sell the vacant Camp Gabriels, a former prison that could provide a water system for the nearby Town of Brighton, hasn’t been able to get through the process.

“It’s not helping anyone in the condition that it’s in right now,” Simpson said. “There’s a need in our hamlets and our downtowns, where we need investment that would take a lot of pressure off of developing other properties. We’re looking at one side of it, we’re not looking at the other side, because there are people in the Adirondack Park, there are families and generations, and that’s the way it was designed and intended.”

When it comes to issues such a constitutional changes concerning the Adirondacks, it’s important to first reach agreements within the Legislature, said Senate Environmental Conservation Committee Chairman Pete Harckham, D-Lewisboro. 

“Everybody in this room has a different view on different issues in the park. And so, you know, I don’t think you want people from Westchester and Manhattan dictating what happens in the Adirondack Park,” he said. “So it’s helpful for us when there’s consensus and unanimity on an issue. And then it empowers us to move forward.”

The panel discussed a conservation design bill that would require large scale developments to follow stricter guidelines to avoid sprawl and protect wildlife. It passed the Assembly in 2022, but never the Senate.

Assemblymember Deborah Glick, D-Manhattan, who chairs her chamber’s environmental conservation committee, said that the Adirondack Park Agency has called the measure unnecessary since they already assess the proposals stringently. She disagrees that a law isn’t needed.

“I do think that ensuring that there is this overlay of thinking about the ecological orientation of the development is important,” she said. “And sometimes lawmakers, because we make laws, think that we should have clarity and don’t see it as restriction but just see it as clarity in the law.”

It’s one of the issues that doesn’t yet have “local consensus,” Harckham added.

“I want to pivot to what the assembly member was talking about in terms of investing in the hamlets taking pressure off the outer and the more wild areas,” he said. “When I was up there, we talked a lot about the need for infrastructure, for sewers, for water, so that the hamlets can be built out in a smart but responsible way where development already was and the extreme need for affordable housing in the Adirondacks, for workforce housing.” 

Current environmental priorities

Among important environmental legislation being taken up this session, both chairpersons said they prioritize two bills around packaging, waste and plastic bottles, which will raise deposit fees on bottles and push companies to establish reduction and recycling plans for materials, taking the burden off of taxpayers. 

In a final lightning round, panelists were asked for the biggest impediments to the state meeting its “30 by 30” climate goals to protect 30% of land and waters in the state by 2030. Answers ranged from lack of consensus on a path forward to lack of money getting to land trusts. And they finished by discussing a transition to renewable energy.

“Let’s not forget 30% of the world’s energy, the entire planet, is now clean energy, and a kilowatt of wind and solar is a lot cheaper now than natural gas or nuclear and certainly coal, so it’s under economic interest to make this transition, we’re going to be creating 200,000 good paying jobs in New York as we go about this transition. And hopefully, we will be attracting new industries, which will also be creating jobs in the process,” Harkham said.

As long as these mandates are supported with reasonable deadlines and needed infrastructure, Simpson added.

“But you don’t want to not be aggressive, because there is a real problem with climate change in 1,000 different ways,” Glick said. “We’ve set aggressive goals, even though we know we might have to back off a few years on one or another.”