NYS legislative session was 6 months from hell for upstate taxpayers
Here’s the good news: the six months from hell for Upstate New York is over!
Barring an extraordinary session later this year, the 2019 legislative session is finally over, which means the radical, extremists who have hijacked the state legislature can’t do any more catastrophic damage to Upstate New York’s economy and quality of life than they’ve already done.
The bad news is that taxpayers have yet to grapple with the total disaster this new Senate Majority and the total domination of our state government by one party from one region of the state has wrought.
I’ve served in both the majority and minority during my legislative career, and with the exception of 2009-10, there has always been a check and balance in state government to ensure that both Upstate and Downstate had their guardian angels. Without a doubt, this has been the worst session I’ve ever seen in terms of having a negative impact on the concerns of Upstate taxpayers.
Instead of common sense, bi-partisan solutions to turn our state’s economy around, ease the tax ache for New York’s overburdened taxpayers and small businesses and help create an environment for private sector job growth, the extremist Senate Majority has focused on radical social experimentation and pouring resources into downstate special interests —- just as I warned would happen last year. Unfortunately, you didn’t have to be Nostradamus to predict what happened. The Senate Democrats have done exactly what they said they would do in turning our state upside down. The Amazon Fiasco During this time, we lost 25,000 Amazon jobs and $27 billion in new tax revenue because of the epic incompetence and utter buffoonery of the Senate Majority. They raised taxes by $1.4 billion in this year’s budget and scheduled $4.6 billion in new taxes for next year.
A Criminal’s Bill of Rights
They ended cash bail for dangerous criminals and made changes to criminal discovery that as the self-described ‘progressive’ Democratic Albany County District Attorney David Soares has recently written, is ‘dismantling order’ and ‘transformed the justice system into one in which the only actors handcuffed are judges and prosecutors.’ This essentially became a criminal’s bill of rights to put more emphasis on the rights of violent criminals like the brutal MS-13 gang than crime victims and honest, law-abiding citizens. Now, some of the Senate Democrats members who voted for this ‘criminal justice reform’ are trying to walk it back by introducing fake bills to amend the process, which they cynically know will never pass.
Driver’s Licenses and Free College Assistance for Those Here Illegally
They passed legislation to ignore the rule of law and give driver’s licenses and free college tuition assistance to those here illegally.
All-Out Assault on Upstate Small Businesses and Economic Growth
In just the past two days, they passed a Farmworkers Bill that will utterly devastate small, family farms Upstate and essentially codified Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s radical Green New Deal that will have a negative impact on Upstate’s economy in terms of a loss of economic investment and expansion.
Upstate Concerns Left Undone
Meanwhile, if you’re one of the 1,100 former St. Clare’s Hospital pensioners who deserves justice for the sudden loss of their pensions, a struggling small business owner or a senior citizen or family that is facing New York’s increasing high tax burden, the radical extremists have basically said to go stick it. The legislature failed to prioritize passing limo safety laws in response to the terrible tragedy in Schoharie that claimed the lives of 20 people, several of whom were from the 49th Senate District. While the tax cap was made permanent, there was no mandate relief or regulatory reform to help reduce local property taxes and help reduce the load on our overburdened local governments or workers’ compensation reform to help our small businesses create jobs. Upstate’s above ground and underground infrastructure has been left to deteriorate by a lack of attention from either house as billions are poured into the subway and downstate infrastructure. And there was nothing done to expand broadband and cellular coverage for large swaths of upstate including in Saratoga County where in an emergency, you practically need smoke signals and homing pigeons to communicate.
More than 189,000 people escaped from New York over the last year and one million over the past decade. Meanwhile, a new study found that New York State is the number one state that millennials are leaving from. The radical extremists who’ve taken over state government have done nothing to change this. In fact, they’ve supercharged the pain.