HOPES AND GOALS
Assemblyman McDonald discusses 2020, looks ahead to 2021
ALBANY, N.Y. » State Assemblyman John McDonald III, D- Cohoes, took some time to chat about his hopes and goals as the calendar turns to 2021. From helping small businesses get back on their feet to distribution of the COVID-19 vaccine, McDonald touched on a plethora of topics.
“Today [ Monday, Dec. 21] is my Christmas. I always look at the winter solstice as my Christmas because it’s the shortest day of the year, and every day is going to get brighter. I think that’s kind of the metaphor for looking at leaving COVID-19 behind us,” McDonald remarked on having a positive outlook to the new year.
“As we look to see the vaccine starting to be distributed, and we are hopeful that we will not go anywhere near the challenges that we faced [in 2020]. Whether it’s either personal health, community health, and of course the business community also in many circumstances struggled and had to adapt and adapt very quickly if they were allowed to be opened,” McDonald continued on how life was altered for many this past year.
“I’m more optimistic that I think once we leave COVIDbehind us and it’s going to be like an ocean wave receding very slowly at times, I think that
we are going to start to see the economy pick back up. You’re going to start to see more opportunities as people will start to acclimate to the new norm,” McDonald noted on the slow shift out of the pandemic.
McDonald reached back into his medical background ethos on a prescription for moving forward.
“I think the one thing that really needs to be a central theme throughout 2021 and this is pointed back at me and my colleagues in the legislature and the governor’s office is “do no harm,” McDonald said.
“Just do no harm, because COVID has really identified a lot of weaknesses, a lot of areas where people come up with these well-intentioned ideas but they can be very catastrophic if implemented. So we want to be very careful about that,” McDonald explained on resisting the urge by some to overreach.
“Wereally needtoworkcollaboratively to deal with this huge tsunami that’s lingering out there, which is the unemployment insurance,” McDonald said.
“If someone’s laid off then that has a negative experience on your rating [as a business owner] for unemployment on your unemployment insurance and would cause bills to go up dramatically,” McDonald said. “This year is the worst of all because COVID-19, for many businesses, they had to lay people off, particularly in those businesses that weren’t able to have access to PPP.
“Depending on who you talk to, whether you talk to people at the FIP, whether you talk to the Business Council, there’s an estimate that 25% of small businesses are on the brink.
“Many of them, I think the restaurant industry in particular who had to close, not because they wanted to but because they were told to. To put that burden on them you might as well just write them off and it would be foolish for the state to do so because it would be a debt that will never be collected.”
“I think we need to be very sensible on how we look at this,” McDonald said on the climb out of the pandemic.
“It’s not the business’s fault nor the government’s fault that COVID-19 hit. Therefore we continue advocating at the federal level for some kind of loan forgiveness on the unemployment insurance or some kind of way to push this out over a much more extended period of time so that way we don’t really see a major impact on businesses,” McDonald noted.
“We need to be very sensible about these well-intentioned regulations that people want to implement,” McDonald said. “I look at things conversely, what I’ve advocated for with our leadership is there’s a lot of executive orders out there that the governor has instituted, some which have actually provided relief to industries, for example, a simple one in the restaurant industry, allowing takehome alcohol so that the bars could still make these drinks so that people could take them home and drink them.
“It doesn’t have a negative impact on the wine and liquor stores because they’re not making cocktails there. So let’s look at can we extend something like that in perpetuity, is that something that makes sense?”
McDonald also spoke about legislation that he, Assemblywoman Pat Fahy, and Assemblywoman Carrie Woerner championed in placing caps on third-party apps gouging small businesses and restaurants for delivery charges.
“There’s definitely roomfor improvement there. I found it offensive as a business owner that an entity would basically lift a menu off a website of a company and go out there andstart promoting it without their permission and without some kind of terms to operate. It’s just wrong,” McDonald commented on exploitation by the third-party apps.
“My legislation is focused on giving those business owners protection but also the opportunity, if they choose to engage with a GrubHub or DoorDash or UberEats, have at it. What was going on, which was promoted as helping businesses actually hurt businesses because behind that was the increase in the fee from the typical 15-20% to up to 30%,” McDonald explained.
“A lot of small restaurant owners are following their dream, they may not all have business backgrounds but they are great culinary experts andthey’re all into retail and customer service. When you have your business on the line during COVID-19, many are going to panic and they’ll jump into something thinking, OK this is what I’ve got to do to survive but what was happening was actually putting some of these businesses in a terrible position where they were just moving food and moving volume but losing money,” McDonald added on small business owners falling prey in desperate times.
McDonald also spoke to the need for forgiveness on PPP loans for small businesses. Especially those being tasked with buying extra equipment to stay safe and open.
“Many businesses are getting themforgiven and that’s a blessing but don’t forget something, they stayed open when everybody was closing and they stayed open because they were an essential business and so it shouldn’t be counted as income is my point,” McDonald explained.
“I can’t even begin to add up the costs that we incurred to make our place safe for our staff and our patients. $3040,000 buying at top market prices,” McDonald added regarding also buying with short supplies at high- demand.
McDonald said he could also see tax credits or targeted incentives to support small businesses, restaurants, tourism, and the arts as well.
Additionally, McDonald also touched on the issue of rent and the ripple effect being felt by renters and small landlords alike.
“I get it, I’m very sensitive to individuals who cannot pay the rent. In the same token, I’m extraordinarily sensitive, particularly as a former mayor, to the impact this is having on small landlords,” McDonald remarked.
“Those small landlords own many properties in my district and in the cities [I represent]. They all have properties that are not public assistance, are not high-rent, they’re kind of in that low-income area and you have tenants who are COVID-impacted and you also have those who were never impacted, well those are the property owners who are struggling the most in not paying the rent,” McDonald continued.
“In the commercial market place when it comes to multiple units they can look at the sale value or they can look at the income value and when they see the income value has dropped, they’re going to have a very legitimate case to lower the value of their property and that means the taxpayers overall are going to pick it up because a lower tax base means the tax still needs to be spread across a larger population,” McDonald added.
McDonald also delved into what else might be on the forefront of the 2021 legislative agenda.
“I think the difference this year with the supermajorities will be that I think the governor’s approach is going to be a little bit different,” McDonald said. “The governor knows if he pushes his agenda too hard at some point depending on what’s said and implemented and what’s being proposed, he’s got to be careful that he doesn’t put the final straw that breaks the camel’s back which would cause the members to rebel. I think it’s going to be more of a conversation about things. I think the whole discussion about taxes, it has to be very thoughtful. I think there’s an expectation something’s going to happen but I think there was also an expectation that Washington was going to come through because they actually are the ones that can print the money. To date that still to my disappointment has still not happened,” McDonald continued.
“I understand that it’s important that we help those who are really on the margins but government also provides a lot of support services for those onthe margins and I think there’s going to be an inability to continue to dosounless something is done in the early months of Joe Biden’s presidency,” McDonald noted on the need for more federal support as well.
“Whether we will raise taxes or not remains to be seen,” McDonald remarked.