KAROL MARKOWICZ: Democrats declare needless emergencies — on COVID and maybe climate change — to grab power.-

Gov. Kathy Hochul has been extending her “emergency” powers monthly since she declared a state of emergency in November in response to the Omicron variant. (That was after declaring a “statewide disaster emergency due to health-care staffing shortages” in September.)

The governor’s office downplays her extensions by saying they give “the state the flexibility to troubleshoot hospital capacity issues.”

But that’s not all. As Albany’s Times Union reported last week, “The order suspended competitive bidding for certain contracts as well as the normal contract review and approval process conducted by [Comptroller Tom] DiNapoli’s office, which oversees state government spending.”

This is a big deal. The state spends our money recklessly at the best of times — but with this “emergency” in place, it doesn’t have to answer to us or even pretend to give expensive contracts to anyone but friends.

The family of Charlie Tebele, owner of Digital Gadgets LLC, has donated almost $300,000 to Hochul’s gubernatorial campaign. By great coincidence, surely, the state has paid Digital Gadgets $637 million for at-home COVID-19 test kits. No bidding, no problem. It’s an emergency, you see.

Read the whole thing.