By The Epoch Times | Created at 2026-09-14 19:32:05 | Updated at 2026-09-14 20:26:49
1 hour ago
New York Gov. Kathy Hochul announced on Sept. 14 that the state will begin mailing energy rebate checks of up to $200 to 8.2 million households on Sept. 21, with deliveries continuing through December.
The checks come from a one-time $1 billion Protecting Our Wallets Energy Rebate, or POWER, included in the state’s enacted fiscal year 2027 budget. Recipients do not need to apply or sign up.
“Relief is on the way,” Hochul said at an announcement in Rochester on Monday. “Starting from one week today, September 21, we’re mailing out energy rebate checks. Energy rebate checks to 8.2 million households.”
Joint filers with incomes under $150,000 would receive $200, and joint filers with incomes between $150,000 and $300,000 will receive $150. Single filers with incomes under $150,000 will receive $100.
Eligibility is determined from 2024 tax returns. To qualify, a taxpayer must have filed a timely New York state resident income tax return, been a full-time state resident, reported income within the qualifying thresholds, and not been claimed as a dependent on another return. The rebates are being issued as advanced credit checks.
The mailing begins seven weeks before Hochul, a Democrat, faces Nassau County Executive Bruce Blakeman, the Republican nominee, in the Nov. 3 election. It is the second consecutive year the state has sent rebate checks to taxpayers in the fall. Last year’s inflation refund
checks, worth up to $400, went to the same number of households beginning Sept. 26, 2025.
Hochul said the rebate would not resolve the underlying cause of high energy prices.
“I know $200 isn’t going to magically change your lives, but I know this,” she said, referring to last year’s inflation refunds. “If people get $150 back of those rebates, people come up to me and say, you know what, it just helped that little bit at the end of the month. And that’s what we’re just trying to do.”
The governor attributed higher fuel costs to the war in Iran and to federal tariffs.
“The gas price is going up since Donald Trump started the war with Iran,” Hochul said. “The average price of a gallon is $4.35, and I hope to God you don’t need diesel because that’s upwards of $6 as well, the highest in history. And this is what I'd call an unforced error.”
National averages by the American Automobile Association (AAA) on Sept. 14 put regular gasoline at $4.32 a gallon, up 17 cents from a week earlier and up from $3.18 a year ago—with a $4.39 average for New York.
AAA listed diesel at $6.23 a gallon on average nationally and identified that figure as the highest recorded national average for diesel, set the same day. The previous record for regular gasoline, $5.02, was set in June 2022.
Hochul’s office said in a news release that New York gas prices have risen 45 percent since the war began at the end of February, and put diesel in the state at $5.98 a gallon, a 49 percent increase over the same period.
Blakeman’s campaign did not respond to a request for comment from The Epoch Times on the rebate checks on Monday.
In a June 12 campaign release, Blakeman said he would lift the state’s ban on hydraulic fracturing to bring down energy costs, pointing to natural gas reserves in the Marcellus Shale.
“The solution to New York’s affordability crisis is sitting right beneath our feet,” Blakeman said in the release. “The Marcellus Shale holds more than 9 trillion cubic feet of clean-burning natural gas, but Kathy Hochul’s fracking ban keeps that prosperity locked in the ground.”
“As Governor, I will bring fracking back to New York, unleash our energy economy while protecting the environment, and cut utility bills in half.”
Blakeman said the Hochul administration had approved 48 utility rate increases and raised energy taxes, and said Pennsylvania’s use of natural gas saved families nearly $9 billion on energy bills last year.
Hochul also said the state is holding to a one-year moratorium on new hyperscale data centers, which she said are driving demand on the grid.
“We have applications for 30 hyperscale enormous data centers,” she said. “They consume an enormous amount of power, enormous amount of energy. And we’ve said right now we’re in a pause, we’re in a moratorium for a year.”
She said data centers that come to the state after the moratorium ends would have to generate their own power, pay into a statewide fund supporting transmission infrastructure, and show that local ratepayers’ bills were going down.
State Department of Taxation and Finance Commissioner Amanda Hiller said the agency is moving quickly to distribute the money.
The fiscal year 2027 budget also created a Ratepayer Protection Plan and a RATES Commission. Under the plan, utilities requesting a rate increase must demonstrate that capital projects are necessary and present a budget-constrained option holding operating costs below inflation, and regulators get 14 months to examine rate requests.
Utilities are barred from passing the costs of lobbying, public relations campaigns, political donations, and luxury travel on to ratepayers, and utility executives’ salaries will be benchmarked to affordability goals set by the Public Service Commission. The RATES Commission is tasked with examining the causes of rising utility bills, utility profits, and energy market design.
Hochul said the state will announce a second utility program on Sept. 15 that she described as continuous rather than one-time, and did not give details.
