The governor recently presented her budget proposal for the 2024 fiscal year, and like many governors before her, it didn’t strike the right chord for me. Now, I won’t say that her intentions are bad, but like this government continues to do, it overcompensates with attention for New York City. It also removes consumer choice for as it pursues environmental protection measures and spends more than any other state in this nation.

After reviewing the highlights of her budget, one area of concern is the gas stove matter, as the governor is hoping to mandate that any new housing be built without gas stoves moving forward. This ties into her proposal to develop 800,000 new housing units over the course of the next decade. I am not one to fight environmental consciousness, and I’m glad that New York is attempting to lead the nation in its efforts to preserve the environment for future generations, but I’m scratching my head at this measure, particularly because I imagine the reduction in emissions from no longer using gas stoves in new housing would be negligible at best. The average New Yorker is not one who is upsetting the ozone layer or polluting the waters to such an egregious degree, so I don’t feel it’s right to punish them and prevent them from making choices as consumers in response to the situation. And this doesn’t prevent a homeowner from buying gas stoves and installing them as a replacement for the electric stove in the future, so I wonder what the real point is.

On the issue of 800,000 new homes in New York, I don’t see the practicality and need for it. New York loses more citizens to other states every year, and we recently lost a congressional seat because our state has such a serious out-migration problem. We still have a homelessness issue, but I do not see the construction of new housing, which will incur costs from retrofitting local infrastructure and accommodating increased populations in different localities, as the solution. The governor has offered to dedicate funds to helping with relocation and infrastructure updating, but that seems the wrong place to spend money. I’d think a more practical solution for a dwindling statewide population is to update older housing as opposed to wholesale construction of new units.

And the matter of the final budget cost should be addressed. This will not necessarily happen, but $227 billion is unsustainable. A nearly three percent increase from last year’s budget, this proposed amount will invariably come back to taxpayers to foot the bill. Prices on all goods and services have not dropped like we hoped, and I’m not keen to ask taxpayers to sacrifice more for programs and initiatives that don’t help them in the short term.

This proposal represents a concerning level of disconnect with the needs of real New Yorkers on the ground, and I can only hope that as budget negotiations begin, common sense and fiscal responsibility will be considered moving forward.