Starting today, Gov. Hochul is engaging in an expensive political gimmick of mailing out to 8.2 million New York households checks of $100, $150 or $200, touted as energy rebates. While Hochul is wrongly sitting out the state’s new public campaign finance matching funds program (the only statewide candidate of either party to do so), she is instead using state resources as a political advertisement for her reelection campaign.

Passed by the Legislature last spring as part of the state budget, the payments are called Protecting Our Wallets Energy Rebate (POWER) checks. The clever name doesn’t disguise the blatant politics of mailing out money to voters weeks before Election Day for Hochul and the 213 legislators.

While the checks themselves won’t carry Hochul’s photo or name, the mailing says: “Gov. Kathy Hochul and the New York State Legislature are sending $1........

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