My thoughts on the 2020 State of the State Address

As I read through articles and watched live coverage of Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s State of the State Address last week, I was pleased to hear some topics he touched on in his 2020 agenda.

Like many others, however, I was left wondering why he did not hit on other important topics.

I guess we can start with some of the positives I took from his address. I do think it is a good idea to expand antidiscrimination protections in the state constitution, especially with more and more hate crimes occurring in the state and across the world.

Another positive I took from his speech was when he announced initiatives intended to lower the cost of prescription drugs. Coming from a family with family members needing prescription drugs, including myself, it would for sure be nice and beneficial to many people, especially senior citizens on limited incomes to be able to more easily afford prescriptions they really need.

Other positive notes for me included guaranteed paid sick leave time for more New York workers and expanded universal pre-kindergarten. I think every employer should have guaranteed paid sick leave since being able to leave your job without the risk of losing it should never be a concern for someone going through an illness or a family member going through something.

Education is always important and something that pretty much everyone can agree on so having universal pre-kindergarten only makes sense so that more children can access education at a younger age.

I also think 2020 could be the year that New York finally comes around and realizes they can make profits from recreational marijuana like many other states have been already doing. I think legalizing marijuana could also be an easy way to help the state’s $6 billion budget gap.

I would have liked to hear more about his proposal for recreational marijuana this year, especially since the state did not get around to passing legislation for it last year.

Now onto more of the things that I wish Cuomo mentioned or spoke more about and those proposals I am not a fan of.

It seemed like many elected officials from both sides of the aisle agreed they wish the governor talked about the state’s criminal justice reforms, which took effect Jan. 1 and has been a controversial topic.

Before the new reforms went into effect, I wrote about my take on it and seeing the law in effect still does not completely make much sense to me.

It’s so odd seeing people being released after they were charged with committing crimes like robbery or even people charged with manslaughter. It’s even crazier seeing criminals being released and then going out and committing more crimes just to be released yet again.

I’m hopeful that with a lot of the backlash that state officials will take a better look at revising the reforms as soon as possible this year.

Another topic I do not agree with and I wrote about a few months ago has to do with the ban on flavored vaping products. I do not think the state should be telling people what they should or should not smoke, especially when tobacco is legal for people of the age to purchase it.

I will be curious to see how 2020 plays out for the state and what the state Legislature does this session.