On her first day in office, New York Gov. Kathy Hochul proved to be just as much of a megalomaniac as her predecessor.
Hochul, the state’s former lieutenant governor, replaced Andrew Cuomo after he was forced to resign in the wake of an investigation that found he sexually harassed nearly a dozen women, several of whom worked for him. When she was sworn into office on Tuesday, she vowed to be better than Cuomo and provide a different kind of leadership — one that would be accountable to the people in charge, the voters.
Just hours later, Hochul implemented a statewide school mask mandate, taking away individual school districts’ ability to determine their own coronavirus policies. She also warned that New Yorkers “can expect new vaccine requirements” now that the Food and Drug Administration has approved the Pfizer vaccine, though she did not specify what those requirements would look like.
This was the kind of heavy-handed approach New Yorkers had come to expect from Cuomo. But even Cuomo understood that allowing school districts to make their own decisions regarding masks was the best approach because there is very little agreement among parents about whether masks are really necessary, or terribly effective, for children. Hundreds of parents in Long Island, for example, have been fighting for months to make sure their schools do not require masks. Hochul just rendered their well-founded concerns worthless.
Hochul’s mask mandate shows she thinks she knows more about what’s best for New York’s children than their own parents. This is the kind of hubris that gets government officials in trouble — just ask Cuomo.
