Last week's “blue wave” swept across many parts of New York, including State Senate District 39, which encompasses Newburgh, Beacon, and Poughkeepsie, where Democrat Lisa Kaul beat incumbent Republican Rob Rolison for the seat. Kaul spoke with WAMC's Lower Hudson Valley Bureau Chief Elias Guerra about her plans for the months ahead to tackle affordability.
INTERVIEW TRANSCRIPT
Editor's note: This conversation has been lightly edited for clarity.
Kaul: At the doors talking to people when they were talking about affordability -- and this was an issue that people across the socioeconomic spectrum were talking about -- there were a couple of different things that people were pointing to when they were talking about what was hurting their wallets.
One was housing, one was healthcare, one was utility bills. These were sort of the three main things. And of course, grocery prices and transportation.
So, in terms of housing, rents are skyrocketing in this area. We have a shortage of a variety of housing options, which is one of the main reasons that drives up rent. So personally, for me, I'm looking to do programs from the state that would incentivize, say, accessory dwelling units, just building up a housing stock. So, thinking about how we can convert existing malls that are not being used or other places that are not being used, how we can repurpose them into housing options for folks. Definitely, placing more money into the housing voucher access program because it's much more expensive once we have to start looking after folks who have become unhoused. So, keeping people in their houses as long as possible is what government should be aiming to do.
And that goes hand in hand with thinking about the protections we have for renters in this area. So, there's one particular bill in the state, it's called the REST Act, which provides some protection for renters [and] allows municipalities to decide whether and when they need to enter into sort of some kind of rent stabilization. But one of the nice things about that bill is also that it has a pool of money for landlords, especially small landlords, to continue to do maintenance work. Because one of the downsides of you know freezing the rent sometimes can be that landlords then say, ‘but we don't have the money to do maintenance’.
At the end of the day, we want to ensure that our policies are not disadvantaging or disproportionately negatively impacting the very people that we're trying to serve here, both landlords and renters. So not necessarily big companies, but you know, we have we have a lot of small landlords who genuinely are doing right by our communities.
In terms of utility bills, which is another huge issue in my district, we have one corporate monopoly. And hence people have no option to go elsewhere. I will be one of the people who is going to be holding Central Hudson [Gas and Electric] accountable. I am also a strong proponent of replacing it with a public authority, the Hudson Valley Power Authority. So, working with the Senator Michelle Hinchey and Assemblymember Sarahana Shrestha, both of whom are in this district, to see how we can move that forward.
Especially, we have to work a little bit harder on getting union support because we have to make sure that we have workers moving alongside us [on the] the green transition. I would like to see us from the state provide--
Guerra: Actually, if I can jump in right here, I want to ask you about the, you know, a public utility. Cause that is something that has been talked about before and attempted as a solution to this-- I definitely hear about that a lot, about the high utilities that people are struggling with. And I wonder if you could talk to me politically, strategically, what it would look like to get that passed. As you mentioned, you know, getting union support has been a challenge in the past. And just talk me through what getting that passed would look like.
Kaul: I think you're pointing to all the right questions, of getting union support, buy in. A big piece of this is really public education. And not taking the Long Island Power Authority as the model, a public authority, which did not work out or has proven to be very expensive. There was there was a very particular set of circumstances why it didn't work out.
We need to look at the models around the country that have been successful. And there are plenty of models around the country that have been successful. I think it's like something like 30% of the country that gets its energy utilities from public authorities. And we need to look to them to see why that's successful. A lot of public education on the ground. And we also have to see that the current system, the way it's functioning right now, gives Central Hudson the authority basically to charge us rates that are untenable. And we have to question this particular model.
And the fact that we have a corporate utility that is beholden to its shareholders, right? So, its entire structure of the way it makes profit, the way it makes money, is all answering to shareholders. And I personally think electricity, this a utility, [it] should be public. It's a public good. These are foundational things that we need in order to function as a society, for any individual to function.
And in this district, we have people making choices between whether they can pay the electricity bill or get groceries. We shouldn't have those choices in the richest country in the world for people to make. It just feels just feels wrong to me, fundamentally wrong to me. As an economic driver too, it's wrong because it keeps people from being able to do things that they would otherwise do.
So I think education is the biggest piece of it. The fact that you have several electeds from this area who are supporting this is going to be huge. So having another senator from this district who is also supporting this bill is going to be a big piece of the puzzle. We didn't have that support previously. And education, having people understand how this will impact their bills. The fact that we will be able to borrow through municipal bonds, which are much more cost effective, is going to be really, really important.
Guerra: And I want to talk about another affordability issue that you have campaigned on and talked about is the New York Health Act and universal health care. And that is definitely an expense that people are considering or have to consider. Can you talk to me about what universal health care would look like in New York? [And] what passing that would look like and also, it's possible that the governor might not be on board with that. And what moving through that would look like.
Kaul: So that's a bill that's not new, that's been around for a couple of decades and it's been evolving over the years. And we have seen more and more people gravitating towards it because we're beginning to realize just how much money we spend on healthcare with some very, very poor outcomes.
Currently far too many people are stuck in employment situations simply because of health care. When you have a model where your healthcare is dependent on your employment, then you are sort of really stopping people from, from my perspective, from exploring new avenues for growth. You might be stopping people from trying out --somebody might want to be an entrepreneur and they don't do that because they're worried about their health care. We have far too many people then not accessing preventative care, which ends up being much more expensive in the long run for everybody. Our hospitals get stressed. Or people use the ERs as their only sole source of healthcare.
So, I think for me personally and this is something I'm hearing from people, is people like Medicare, it works. This is not so different. This would just mean that everybody has access to healthcare. We would be less reliant on insurance companies. Right now, I think we have insurance companies who are the middle person, who are bloating costs for us. And very often they're the ones who stop healthcare from being provided to people. So--
I'm gonna go back a couple of minutes. So, we're at a point when we have to think very carefully about why we have government and what the role of government is and who government works for. And it's very clear that the government needs to work for people, which means providing care for people. And when we have a model of government that is not centering care, then we often end up with systems as we have right now, a health care system which is not providing what it's setting out to do for the people that it's supposed to be providing for.
So, in this particular system, to me, this is like a systemic change, but a change of also orienting the way we think about government and how we work to make sure that government works for ordinary people. In the long run, I think this is actually going to reduce costs for a lot of people. For example, if you look at school districts, right, or municipalities, we spend a lot of money on healthcare. And those costs would now be moved away because we would have universal health care. So, I could imagine a real change in our school taxes, for example, because the overall budget for school districts is going to go down. At a time when we're seeing cuts from the federal government, this is something we really need to step up to do.
Guerra: And as I understand from what I'm hearing, you're describing a government that is more responsible for providing services. And of course that that brings up the question, like you said in the long term it's going to reduce expenses, but in the short term how would we go about paying for that? And I know you have talked in the past about a more progressive income tax? Is that eluding [to] or are you talking about taxing the rich when you're saying that?
Kaul: Yes. So, I wanna go back to the point that you made about the government providing more services. It's not just the government providing more services, but it's government providing services with the view of caring for people. So, it's not just the quantity, it's the quality which improves substantially improves, the quality of life for people such that people may no longer be dependent on these special services for people.
Because right now we have a model where we're keeping people dependent on so-called services as sort of a more of a charity model. But what I'm talking about is much more of a nurturing model which then allows people to do whatever they need in order to have the springboard to do what they want to do. So, it's a fundamental difference over here. But it's a model that's really mindful of the needs of us as human beings, as opposed to the few of us who are not in a position or need a greater helping hand.
All of us need a helping hand. Think about child care. Like everybody needs that, elder care. A lot of us are in that sandwich generation, taking care of kids, taking care of elders. You know, until we're human beings we will need that kind of care.
And yes, I do believe that we need to think about people paying their fair share of taxes. That is something that we really, for some odd reason, we're seeing the rich get richer and those who are not so well getting working two and three jobs and yet being unable to make in.
So, I am supporting those bills and I think the package of bills is called Invest in our New York. And I I really see this as an investment. It's an investment in our collective future.
Guerra: Understood. And we will see how that goes. You know, with the governor I feel like she might be a little reluctant on some of these issues and--
Kaul: We do have a supermajority. And I think we need to look at the supermajority as the collective mandate of the people. So, it's not sort of a muscular trying to force somebody's hand, but it really is saying this is this is what people want, right? And, I know the governor has to manage many, many different priorities, but here I think she's getting a mandate from all of us.
And you know, [she] might have a greater sense of confidence and [see] this is the way forward, as she's seeing more people want the same thing. And we've seen that in some of the more progressive policies she herself has put in place with childcare, for example.
