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Who paid for Gov. Hochul’s Israel trip? Her office won’t say.
By
Jon Campbell
Published Oct 25, 2023
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Photo by Shlomi Amsalem, Office of Gov. Kathy Hochul.
By
Jon Campbell
Published Oct 25, 2023
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New York Gov. Kathy Hochul’s office won’t say who pledged to pay for the governor’s recent visit to Israel, an arrangement the state’s ethics board has not yet approved, despite her trip to the Middle East last week.
Hochul, a Democrat, spent last Wednesday and Thursday on the ground in Israel amid its ongoing war with Hamas, touring the country and meeting with dignitaries, along with victims and their families after flying commercial to Tel Aviv from John F. Kennedy International Airport.
Hochul’s spokesperson Avi Small said a “New York-based nonprofit that works with the Jewish community” committed to covering the cost of the governor’s portion of the trip, while Hochul said taxpayers are picking up the tab for the state police officers who provided security.
But Hochul and her office have repeatedly declined to identify that nonprofit, with Small saying the state Commission on Ethics and Lobbying in Government, or COELIG, is still “in the final stages of reviewing this arrangement to ensure it fully complies with state ethics law.”
For good-government advocates, the entire arrangement raises red flags — partly because Hochul’s office won’t identify the nonprofit, and because she didn’t receive approval for the arrangement before she went on the trip.
“Our recommendation would have been the governor should have cleaned this all up before wheels lifted off the tarmac,” said Blair Horner, executive director of the New York Public Interest Research Group.
State ethics rules allow third parties to pay for travel, lodging and food for New York officials — including elected officials — in certain circumstances if the travel is “part of their official duties.”
But the rules set out specific conditions that, among other things, prohibit third parties from paying for travel if it can be interpreted as an attempt to influence the official’s actions or reward them for past actions.
For statewide elected officials, it’s up to COELIG to decide whether those conditions are met. The ethics regulations say the official — in this case, the governor — must make an official request for approval “within a reasonable period of time prior to” the travel, complete with the name of the funder and an itemized list of costs.
In Hochul’s case, it’s not clear when her office first sought approval from COELIG — or whether it came before or after the trip. Emily DeSantis, a spokesperson for the ethics board, said state law prevents the board from revealing if and when it received such a request.
What is clear, however, is that COELIG did not approve the request prior to Hochul’s travel. The governor left for Israel early on Oct. 18 and returned Oct. 20; as of Tuesday, Small acknowledged the approval had still not been granted.
“Our teams worked very quickly,” Hochul told reporters on Monday. “I said, I need to get over there. Work it out. And I said, just follow all ethics rules.”
John Kaehny, executive director of Reinvent Albany, a group that advocates for government reform, said the state’s laws and rules should be changed to completely prevent third parties from funding travel for elected officials.
Allowing private interests to fund government travel opens the door to people seeking to influence government officials, Kaehny said.
“If it's worth doing as governor, the taxpayer should pay and we don't have this problem with gifts,” he said.
Both Kaehny and Horner pointed to a past scandal centered on gubernatorial travel, when a group known as the Hungarian-American Chamber of Commerce of New York and New Jersey funded trips to Hungary by then-Gov. George Pataki in the mid-1990s.
A few years later, The New York Times revealed Philip Morris, the tobacco giant that actively lobbies in Albany and had business before the state, made significant contributions to the organization just before Pataki’s trips.
Hochul has repeatedly sidestepped questions about who was funding her Israel trip, starting with a Zoom call last week with reporters before she took off from JFK.
After an unrelated event in Albany on Monday, a reporter asked Hochul again who funded her travel. She said the state was picking up the tab for her state police detail, but wouldn’t say who is covering her travel costs as well as those of the four staff members who accompanied her.
When a second reporter followed up, Hochul again declined to say.
“I just said I have to get over there, follow all the ethics rules and get me there,” Hochul said of her conversations with staff. “There wasn’t a lot of time on my end to be involved in that, but my team would be very happy to get back to you.”
Deanna Cohen, a state police spokesperson, declined to say how many troopers accompanied Hochul on her trip or what it cost. She directed a Gothamist reporter to file a formal request under the Freedom of Information Law for the information.
Small, the governor's spokesperson, suggested more information would be available after COELIG completed its review.
"The Executive Chamber has provided all relevant information to the Commission on Ethics in Lobbying and Government and will release additional details once the Commission's review is completed," he said in a statement.
Hochul spent much of her trip with top officials from UJA-Federation of New York, a major Jewish philanthropic organization that covered part of the costs for Mayor Eric Adams and his staff to travel to Israel in August.
In a letter posted Friday to the organization’s website, UJA CEO Eric Goldstein wrote of speaking with victims’ displaced family members at a kibbutz hotel in central Israel with Hochul and UJA President Linda Mirels.
“The governor's 36-hour wartime trip — her first ever to Israel — was extremely meaningful to all she met,” Goldstein wrote. “Many of the victims' families want to bring international attention to their stories, and, on a simple human level, there is comfort that comes in connecting through the grief.”
A spokesperson for UJA did not respond to emails asking whether the organization agreed to fund Hochul’s trip.
Tagged
new york city
Kathy Hochul
new york state
Politics
Jon Campbell
Jon Campbell covers the New York State Capitol for WNYC and Gothamist. Prior to that, he covered the Capitol for more than a decade for the USA TODAY Network. He has twice earned the Walter T. Brown Memorial Award, an honor given annually by the Legislative Correspondents Association alumni for outstanding state government coverage. Jon grew up in the Buffalo area and graduated from the University at Albany. Got a tip? Email Jon at [email protected] or Signal at JonCampbellNY.90.
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