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Mayor Eric Adams continues to parse words with Governor Kathy Hochul over New York’s declaration that it is a sanctuary state. He wants the governor to declare a state of emergency and send migrants to counties other than the five boroughs. Hochul, meanwhile, is upset with city agencies for, as she describes it, dragging their feet on the problem. Former Westchester County Executive Rob Astorino is fed up with both sides for dropping the ball. He vented his exasperation on 710 WOR’s Len Berman and Michael Riedel in the Morning program.
“I would never have set up $2 billion in the state budget to have services for them,” Astorino told Berman and Riedel. “What’s New York City going to do in a week? They got almost 20,000 students that are going to be going into their schools, none of whom speak English, all of him require services, and, according to reports, the Department of Education has not even informed any of the local school districts and [public schools] what to do.”
Astorino feels the city and state just said “we can do it” without first considering how to do it. “There’s a lot of things that should be done and should have been done a year and two years ago to make sure we were never at this point, but they didn’t. They wanted to play the political game and wave them in, because we all have big hearts- and we do, everybody does- but there’s a point where you’ve got to have a policy that makes sense, and you’ve got to predict and understand where this leads, and they didn’t, so now we’re in a crisis.”