BUFFALO, N.Y. — Western New York's Kathy Hochul is now 14 days away from becoming the first woman ever to serve as Governor of New York State. There are a lot of unanswered questions about how the process will work and what comes next for the office of the governor.
The line of succession is clear as per the state constitution. So within 14 days, it will be 'Governor Hochul'. But in that transition period of two weeks, a UB political science professor weighs in on what may be taking place in the Governor's office also known as the executive chambers
Dr. Jacob Neiheisel of the UB Political Science Department says, "I hope over the next two weeks that things are being packaged in such a way that the handoff is neat as it should be. But there are some lingering worries that I have about who's staying, who is going, and what does that transition looks like."
But the professor says while there will be a certain continuity in state government operations, it may not be that easy with certain considerations in Albany. "As an outside observer, it appeared that they're in a place in order to keep the government running. Wouldn't have any worries along that dimension. Where I would worry is if there are worries to be had it's in terms of who is immediately surrounding the Governor. First, we saw the high-profile resignation of Melissa DeRosa, the Governor's secretary. It's safe to say that she was really running quite a bit of the show internally there. And without her in place and presumably without some others like her in place that does the day-to-day operations. I'm not sure what that's going to look like."
Neiheisel expects COVID to be Hochul's ongoing first major challenge as the brand new state chief executive. While there are no current executive orders and there is hope the situation would not get worse in the Empire State to require anything like that, she has to be prepared, "The lessons of the pandemic have been you need someone who can respond quickly. That's an executive. And so the legislature has been all too happy to push a lot in terms of emergency powers onto the office of the governor. So I think she's going to need to be ready immediately in order to pick up that mantle because the legislature by its nature moves slowly. "