ESFPA E-News

Forestry Awareness Day 2025

This year's Forestry Awareness Day will be held on Tuesday, March 4th, 2025. The event will be in the Well at the Legislative Office Building in Albany. As many of you already know, Forestry Awareness Day gives ESFPA members the opportunity to put a face on our forests and wood product manufacturing sector; educating legislators and policy makers on the importance of forests and harvested wood products, and the contribution we have in New York's economy, environment, and the quality of life of all New Yorkers. 

There will also be vendor booths featured at this year’s Forestry Awareness Day. These booths will focus on education and outreach from participating organizations. We are also encouraging our company members to bring booths. It will be a tremendous opportunity for networking and outreach to legislators, staff, and others. 

We will have more details available in the coming weeks. We will also be sending out registration forms for both vendors and FAD participants, so please stay tuned and keep an eye out for updates!

2025 Invasive Species Expo

Join us on September 14th - 16th, 2025 for the 3rd biennial New York State Invasive Species Expo.

This is a fully featured conference all about invasive species that combines indoor and outdoor space within the unique historical architecture of beautiful Saratoga Spa State Park.

The Expo will feature classic presentations and creative use of outdoor space to offer an interactive, hands-on experience featuring:

• *Unique presentations
• *Interactive demonstrations
• *Hands-on workshops
• *Classic presentations
• *Small-group discussions
• *Field trips & outdoor activities

The Expo will be open to the public with no cost for general attendance. Registration and call for abstracts coming soon!

Click the link below to visit the expo website:

Governor Hochul’s State of the State Address

On Tuesday, Governor Kathy Hochul delivered her 2025 State of the State Address.  After 45 minutes of what seemed like a musical cabaret, she kicked of her remarks doubling down on affordability and safety boldly stating, “your family is my fight”.  She then went on an hour litany of tax cuts, tax credits and expenditures for childcare, education, public safety, housing, mental health, health and social services. You can find her full State of the State Message here. 

On the economic development front she did spend time on support for small businesses and bringing technology and AI to businesses.  ESD will partner with New York’s network of Entrepreneurship Assistance Centers (EACs) to provide AI training to entrepreneurs and small businesses across the State. We will have to see how this unfolds in her budget. There was a lot on AI and Semiconductors, all of which demand a lot of energy, but very little on how to meet those energy demands in the near future and in a cost-effective manner.

She talked a lot about addressing New York's critical housing needs.  This is the third year in a row she has highlighted New York’s housing crisis but that has not really translated into a lot of new housing startup, at least in upstate New York. While New York can spur some affordable housing needs, this is really a national housing market problem and one which needs both federal and private sector solutions to.  We may see some benefit in housing retrofit based on home energy solutions, but funding for these has been slow to date.

Governor Hochul made reference to a “climate ambition green light” directing the state to embark on the single-largest program of climate investment in the history of the State budget, directing over $1 billion in new spending towards achieving a more sustainable future. Governor Hochul’s investment will span different sectors of our economy and across the state’s geography. By retrofitting homes and incentivizing the installation of heat pumps, New York can help cut energy bills. Governor Hochul will also deeply invest in ensuring our public infrastructure can serve as hubs of sustainability, including building out thermal energy networks at SUNY campuses.

Over the coming months, the Department of Environmental Conservation (DEC) and the New York State Energy Research and Development Authority (NYSERDA) will take steps forward on developing the cap-and-invest program, proposing new reporting regulations to gather information on emissions sources, while creating more space and time for public transparency and a robust investment planning process. We had fully anticipated cap-and-invest to come out earlier in 2025 but now we are hearing that we may not see cap-and-invest until after the 2026 election.  Governor Hochul did mention in the State of the State that DEC would be developing new reporting regulations to gather information on emissions sources.  The Climate Scoping Plan from 2022 did call for a much broader emission reporting program so we can expect to see much lower thresholds for emissions reporting to be rolled out in the coming months.

To meet this growing demand for dispatchable clean energy generation, The Governor is proposing New York to develop a Master Plan for Responsible Advanced Nuclear Development that will guide any nuclear projects. As part of that process, New York will help lead a multi-state Consortium on Nuclear Energy focused on driving down costs and risk-sharing.

Adverse weather events can severely disrupt small businesses, causing damage to inventory, reduced consumer demand, and employee layoffs. Governor Hochul proposes modernizing the Jobs Retention Tax Credit Program to better support businesses in disaster-affected areas. The updated program will lower the eligibility threshold to include businesses with ten or more employees, allowing small businesses to participate for the first time. The Governor’s expansion also removes industry-specific limitations, allowing all affected businesses to seek support after an emergency event.

Not a lot of excitement or detail in this year’s Sate of the State. The Governor has promised a lot of tax cuts and credits some significant new expenditures and committed state agencies to undertake a lot with no new resources. There is no guarantee the Legislature will agree to this and already the Legislature is laying out different priorities. None of which cost less or reduce taxes.

Next Tuesday the Governor will release her Executive Budget which should hold more detail. On the other hand, there is not a lot of damage or threat to business in this State of the State! We are off to a fast start for 2025.  Stay tuned!

First Hundred Days—What’s in Store on the Federal Policy Front

From The Hardwood Federation

As we begin a new year, a new Congress and a new Administration, much attention has been paid to what will happen in the first 100 days of a second Trump Administration. It is fact that the GOP controls both houses of Congress and the White House, but the margin of control is markedly slim, particularly in the House. With a couple of House Members departing for roles in the incoming Administration, the GOP will only have a 2-seat margin of control until special elections are held to fill those seats. Add in the fact that there are factions of House Republicans with differing priorities—for example, Northeast and Pacific Coast Republicans that want state and local tax (SALT) deduction relief v. fiscal conservatives that wish to curtail spending—and the path forward begins to look complicated. With that said, the new (and returning) Republican leadership and President-elect Trump have been very clear about policy items they wish to address beginning Day 1 of Trump’s second term, including the following:

Tax

Making the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act (TCJA) business tax deductions permanent is a lead talking point for the incoming Republican leadership and will be a centerpiece of legislative action in 2025. As we know, the ability to fully write off research and development costs in the year in which they were incurred expired in 2022. Now those costs have to be amortized over 5 years, essentially making the cost of R&D more expensive. Full expensing—also known as 100 percent bonus depreciation—has taken a considerable hit, phasing down 20 percent in 2023, another 20 percent in 2024 and a 20 percent haircut at the beginning of this year. That benefit, which allowed companies to fully write off the cost of machinery and equipment in the year in which they were purchased, will phase out completely in 2027 without legislative action. Also looming is the 20 percent deduction for S-Corporations and other pass-through structures. That deduction expires at the end of this year.  Already this year, the House Ways & Means Committee has held a hearing on the importance of restoring and extending these tax benefits.

To raise the 5.5 trillion necessary to cover the cost of legislating in these areas, a one pager was released this week outlining potential cuts to existing programs. Among them was repealing green energy tax credits, reforming federal nutrition assistance programs, repealing the electric vehicle mandate and ending the student loan forgiveness program.

So how is this all accomplished? When a single party controls both houses of Congress and the White House, the parliamentary procedure known as budget reconciliation comes into play. It is how the Affordable Care Act, the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act and the Inflation Reduction Act were passed. The appeal of this process is it allows for a simple majority vote in the Senate instead of the usual 60 vote threshold in the upper chamber. While there are restrictions on what types of policy may be legislated through reconciliation, Congressional staff over the years have proven to be fairly creative in checking the right boxes to secure the Parliamentarian’s approval. The way the process works is that a set of reconciliation “instructions” will be developed by the budget committees that will direct policy committees of jurisdiction to begin drafting legislative language. Once the policy committees have produced their legislative products, they will be sent back to the budget committees and be rolled up into a single package.   

Members of Congress and staff that we have met with are predicting that budget reconciliation instructions will not be ready until April or May at the earliest. Recall that the TCJA was enacted at the very end of President Trump’s second year in office so these efforts are complicated and take time to mature. The other issue under discussion is whether all of the issues outlined above should be combined in one large package or cleaved into two reconciliation measures, with tax proceeding on its own after the measure addressing immigration, energy and military readiness moves. The situation is fluid.

Immigration

The President-elect and Republicans in the House and Senate campaigned throughout last cycle on the need for tightening the border, particularly our border with Mexico. Threading the needle on immigration reform in Congress has proven to be elusive, however. One of the complicating variables is that so many sectors—including agriculture and forestry—rely on immigrant labor to perform critical work like crop harvesting and hand planting tree seedlings following timber harvests. While these workers are in the U.S. legally on foreign guestworker visas, labor unions and anti-immigration groups claim that these workers are taking jobs from U.S. workers. We expect executive orders outlining border security measures to be issued during the week following the inauguration, but Congressional action will come later this year as part of a larger legislative package discussed below.

Energy

A prominent feature of many campaigns last year was the assertion that increased costs on everyday items is a direct result of rising energy prices. Again, we anticipate there will be numerous executive orders promoting increased energy supply and permitting reform to expedite fossil fuel projects. Permitting reform—specifically modifying the National Environmental Protection Act (NEPA) review process to make it more streamlined and efficient—was a priority for House Natural Resources Chairman Bruce Westerman (R-AR) last Congress. He and incoming Energy and Natural Resources Chairman Mike Lee (R-UT) will be prioritizing legislative action on this front in the early going of the 119^th Congress.

And Not Least - Tariffs

Hovering around all of this activity is the issue of tariffs. The President-elect is well known for his embrace of tariffs as an effective trade strategy. In social media posts and in interviews he has signaled that he is interested in pursuing tariffs once he takes office, but products and targeted countries are currently unclear. To prepare for a worst-case scenario where hardwood products become subject to retaliatory tariffs like we experienced during the first Trump Administration, the Hardwood Federation has been convening meetings with our executive leadership to discuss advocacy strategy as well as a potential funding formula in the event we need to seek government relief.

The bottom line is that the first 100 days promise to be action packed for both the Executive and Legislative branches of our federal government. Whether Congress will produce any meaningful legislation in that timeframe remains to be seen, but if history is any guide the table will certainly be set for action later this year. As always, the Hardwood Federation team is on hand and engaged to ensure our sector’s interests and policy priorities are front and center and we look forward to a productive 2025.