Tuesday Headlines: Keeping Em Honest Edition

The governor still isn’t explaining herself on car insurance, and has even resorted to denying Streetsblog questions at her press events. Meanwhile, the same lies are being spun to the whole press corps.

The Times Union’s Dan Clark asked Monday at a paving event what way there was to ensure that car insurance companies would lower their rates as a direct result of her changes to the insurance law that would make it harder for crash victims to sue for damages.

Gov. Hochul referenced the Excess Profit Law that would require companies to return surplus profits to customers.

“We have a law in the books that caps how much insurance companies can make, right,” Hochul told reporters. “So they’re going to make more money because their costs are going to go down because of our changes.”

Under the Excess Profit Law, insurers with an average rate of return on net worth of more than 21 percent over six years can be forced to return a share of profits to policyholders. There is no evidence that this has ever happened.

And according to the state Department of Financial Services, insurance companies that are seeing record profits have not been making a profit in New York specifically recently, so this has been unenforceable.

Clark, like Streetsblog, pointed out in his reporting that insurance companies are hardly promising lower prices and rebates. In fact, they’ve promised nothing. But Hochul appears far more concerned about her old foes and opponents of this proposal, the New York State Trial Lawyers Association, than about explaining their role in all this and how it translates to savings.

“I don’t want excessive profits made by the insurance companies,” Hochul said. “I don’t want the trial lawyers to keep lining their pockets from all these outrageous cases they bring and have these jackpot payouts, because, you know, who’s paying for that? Our drivers.”

More news:

• State lawmakers are passing a week-long budget extender today, and the length of the second is unknown. (State of Politics)
• The leading Republican candidates in the North Country’s 21st Congressional District say they have enough petitions to get on the ballot. (The Times Union)
• State comptroller candidate Raj Goyle also counts enough signatures as her mounts his long-shot primary challenge. (NY1)
• Assembly Member Andrew Hevesi says that his opponent in this year’s Democratic primary may have fraudulently changed Hevesi’s party registration. (The New York Times)
• Top lobbyist Patrick Jenkins’ close relationship with Assembly Speaker Carl Heastie could color car insurance negotiations. (Newsday)
• The Buffalo News Editorial Board is pushing Hochul to invest in upstate public transit.
• Gov. Hochul has begun a statewide pothole blitz and got in the mix with state DOT workers in Albany. (WXXI)
• Rochester wants to raise its state funding to $500 million for local projects in a joint city and county request. (Rochester Beacon)
• I’ve always loved City & State’s “Grizzled Old Editors in Transportation” list for obvious reasons, but yesterday’s “trailblazers” in transportation was a bit, um, meh. I mean, I like state Sen. Leroy Comrie as much as the next guy, but it’s hard to call a lawmaker who has been in office virtually non-stop since 2002 a “trailblazer.”
• So much for “renewable” fuel. (The Footprint)
• The big news yesterday was that Waymo’s permit to test driverless cars has expired and was not renewed by the city or state departments of Transportation. We’ll also be diving deeper into that, but for now, The City has you covered. And City & State looked at the politics of the end of testing.
• The yellow cab drivers’ union put out a mixed statement about Gov. Hochul’s attempt to reduce car insurance premiums that, in short, urges the governor to refrain from making it harder for crash victims to get compensation. (NY Taxi Workers Alliance via Twitter)
• This sounded alarming at first, but it’s not that bad. Parts of Penn Station will be closed to everyone but World Cup ticket holders on game days later this summer, NJ.com exclusively reported, but the biggest pain will be for the usual suspects: NJ Transit users: “NJ Transit commuters will not be able to access New Jersey-bound trains at New York Penn Station for four hours before World Cup matches are set to start at MetLife Stadium.” But Amtrak and Long Island Rail Road customers will merely be directed to other entrances, a slight inconvenience.