New York state legislators return to Albany in a few days for the start of the session. Assemblyman D. Billy Jones, a Democrat who represents northern New York’s 115th district, sat down with North Country Bureau Chief Pat Bradley to discuss his expectations for the session and his opposition to a new election law Governor Hochul signed this month:
I have a lot of bills that have been around for a little while. We talk about the UTV registration bill that will create a trail fund as well. But you know what, for the first couple or three months, priorities will be around budget concerns and we're facing a budget deficit. But my priorities are always helping the North Country up here. But there's one issue I really want to, I want to emphasize and chat about, and that's our crisis that's going on in our home health aides and in our nursing homes. Every day I hear from people that are trying to get placement of a loved one in a nursing home close to them, trying to get home health aides even. And let me draw the picture for you. If we can't get home health aides in our homes, you know, people being allowed to age in place, then the alternative is to go into some kind of assisted living or in a nursing home, right. And we don't have the resources in the nursing homes. We don't have the resources for home health aides. This is an issue that we need to tackle head on. Several colleagues of mine are making it a priority this year, and we need to. We need to provide those resources for the nursing homes. We need to provide home health care aides the opportunity to make a living on it. You know, if we need an affordable way, which to give them, they're taking care of our neighbors, our loved ones, they're doing so much for us. So we need to address this issue and the state needs to step up and help out with this.
It seems to me in the past this issue has come up and the legislature has reviewed other bills. Has something changed where they'd be more amenable to funding more money or providing more resources?
Well, I think we did make some, I mean to hospitals last year. You know, the Medicaid reimbursement and everybody thinks, you know, oh, you're talking about Medicaid. No. We're talking about reimbursing the hospitals so that they can pay for their staff and pay for resources to help our residents out. So, you know, the Medicaid reimbursement we had historic levels from 1%, I think we ended up at like 7% last year, six-and-a-half, 7%. That's a pretty significant increase, but more still needs to be done. And I'm talking about the overall health, you know, especially in our rural areas here. I have legislation out there that helps with travel reimbursement because with our home health aides, they have to travel many miles and the distances are, you know, few and far between, actually. So they're traveling a lot of this. So I have legislation out there. Have had it out for several years to help with travel reimbursements, to help with other things. But I'm telling you what, if we don't address this issue, we're going to see more nursing homes close, which only applies more pressure to the existing ones that are there and their staffing levels. They don't have the staff. I visited many nursing homes in the past several months. And to hear their concerns. We need to do something about this. But also, when we're talking about overall, we need to do something with the home health care aide system. There is a waiting list, continues to be a waiting list, and it's only getting longer here. Hey, you know what? It's an issue that some people may not want to talk about because, eh, it's not one of those, quote unquote, sexy issues. You know, it's not, we're not talking about something that's going to get a headline? Well, I'll tell you what this is going to affect everyone. If you don't think it's affecting you now, it's going to affect you and we need to address it.
D. Billy Jones, one of the other items that has been on your radar for a long time, and it came up last year, didn't really work out that well was the issue of housing and funding for affordable housing. What do you anticipate in this upcoming session for affordable housing, not just for New York City where it seemed to be focused last session, but for all of the state and this district in Northern New York?
Absolutely, Pat, and I talk about it a lot. I just talked about it last week with some people. What we're seeing here in the North Country, and you talked about overall, and we're talking about the governor's housing proposal that didn't go anywhere, it fell on deaf ears, a lot of that was from suburban people in Long Island and other areas. And we had some objections here to it. Whenever you're talking about zoning the state coming in, quote unquote, you know, talking about taking over zoning priorities in doing this local officials, locals anywhere in the state, you know, they get nervous about that. Don't blame them. I come from local government. I know what they're talking about. But I think it was a top-down approach that the governor had. It didn't go over very well with a lot of towns, villages and legislators actually statewide. I think a bottom-up approach, like you say, how do we help the North Country. The issue we're having here in the North Country, there is a lot of affordable housing places going up. Its housing affordability here. We're talking about not necessarily the high income owners or the lower income owners. We're talking about that middle class, right. And this is what I talk about. This when people come to me all the time, realtors, whoever, families looking to buy. We don't have the housing stock here to take in that range. You know, I hate say this because it's a cliche, but that middle class, the middle income earners, and it's not even the middle income earners, it's earners of anything that can only afford what used to be $100,000 house, unfortunately, now it's a $250,000 house, $300,000 house or whatever it is. But we don't have the housing stock here. We just don't. So some kind of incentive, some kind of program to help with that new construction, to help rehabilitate some of these dilapidated properties, to get them into, to get these families a chance at affordably buying these and getting the stock there. You need the stock there to have a family be able to buy it. So if they have that opportunity. That's what we need to concentrate here. That's what I'm hearing from a lot of people. I’m not saying we have conquered the affordable housing, you know, ability for people to get into affordable housing. We do have projects on the horizon, but we still don't have that place where people have the opportunity to buy their first or second homes. That is really missing here. It all comes down to housing stock.
D. Billy Jones, the governor has been signing a slew of legislation at the end of the year here. And one of the ones that she has signed is one that you voted against. And that was.....
Imagine that. I voted against a piece of legislation.
You're a Democrat and she's a Democrat.
Yeah. Okay.
And you voted against it. Yes, that was the law for local elections to be moved to even numbered years. And I think there's still some confusion about this, because I'm looking at the law and it says it applies to towns. But the bill states “...any town completely coterminous with a village shall continue to elect its officers, including town justices in odd number years, if both such village and town last held such elections in an odd number year prior to January.” So a couple of questions along those lines. Does that mean that places like North Elba and Lake Placid are exempt from the law? And does it mean that cities are exempt from the law?
Cities are exempt from it. What you have just stated there I believe there's a timeframe on this. I think the people that are most affected, but I know the people that are most affected by this law are our towns and villages. Let's say county sheriff or county attorney, I believe, are not affected by this law. County executives are. So it's been a, you can understand my hesitance towards this bill anyway. I understand the premise of what people, the founders, behind this law wanted. They wanted a higher increase on the even years. And we've seen it. We know. We know that in even years, presidential years, the last governor's race, the numbers go up getting people to the polls. My issue with it is, is I think local issues will be lost in the mix. Because to me coming from local government, to be honest with you, whether you're running for U.S. Senate or whatever you're running for on a national level, and sometimes on a statewide level, those issues don't affect you as much as taking away garbage service from the village of such and such or taking this. You know, those are the issues that are on the ground to you. They're tangible. Right. So my issue is getting those elections where we elect our local officials lost in the mix, so to say. I think local issues need to be brought out, need to be discussed. You're also talking about ballots, right? I mean, you're going to have a full ballot and don't even get me going on ballot redesign because we need to do something there since we're doing this. But you might have to flip over the ballot to see your local officials on the back. How many people flip over their ballots? It's been proven not a lot. I just feel that those local issues are going to get lost. The officials and the people running for local offices, it's going to get lost in the mix. And we need to really make sure there's more concentration on that. That's why I voted no.
Do you think that this will be revisited in the legislature?
I think there's certain, you know, some of us that want to see it to revisited and we'll see. But you’ve got to also talk about what I mentioned before: ballot redesign. Are we going to have a drop off? It's been proven. It's been proven, right? Presidential years, yeah, people will go in and vote for president and vote for a couple of them, then it's dropped off. Why? Why is it that people will vote, you know, even in my race, less than they do for the presidential? Because it's called ballot, it's called drop off. So if we see a considerable drop off there, I think that makes a good argument to readdress this as well. But going back to what this does, I think our local issues will get lost in the mix of these national elections.
Democrat D. Billy Jones is serving his fourth term in the New York state Assembly. The new session begins January 3rd.
