In early July, New York state Assemblyman D. Billy Jones was at a fire station in Plattsburgh speaking out against proposed changes to Occupational Safety and Health Administration rules regarding fire department and EMS training and equipment requirements. With the extended deadline for public comments now past, the Democrat tells WAMC North Country Bureau Chief Pat Bradley he remains concerned that the new rules will be implemented:
We're not trying to compromise any firefighter safety. That is of utmost important to us. But these regulations would hit particularly hard on our volunteer firefighting departments, our EMS providers as well, more regulation, more mandates, more expense, more training put on individuals. It will hurt with recruiting and retention. It will hurt the local tax base because they will have to pay more. And certainly, you know, there's enough burden put on our local volunteer firefighters and our local volunteer firefighting departments that we do not feel that this is warranted. And people one day when they wake up and they see the doors closing in one of their fire departments, volunteer fire departments in one of their communities, you know, they're going to say what happened? And the answers are what we're talking about. And these new OSHA requirements and regulations we feel are unwarranted. The Congressional delegation now seem to be firmly pushing back against these as well. So hopefully OSHA will listen to all the concerns that we have had and we'll, we'll, we'll work with it.
Assemblyman, what's your impression, what are your thoughts on the latest round of prison closures? It seems every year we have a new round. The North Country tends to get hit quite a bit, but not so much this year it seems.
Not in my district. I'll always advocate for the correctional facilities in my area. I have six in my assembly district and it gets harder and harder every time when we're talking about those closures. First and foremost, I want to say my heart goes out. I've been through this. My local correctional facility in my hometown, before I even got this position, was closed. And I know what those, you know, families and those employees, those workers are going through and those communities are going through. So certainly, my heart goes out to them first and foremost. But we were relieved and happy that the correctional facilities in my district did not get hit.
Unfortunately, I can't remember which one it was, but I saw Governor Hochul talk about refurbishing one of the downstate prisons that had been closed. And one of my thoughts was, hey, what about up here? They've been closed longer.
Exactly. And I believe it was Bayview and refurbishing that for housing. That's another issue we have here and you've heard me talk about repurposing these dormant facilities. I mean, we have Gabriel's. I have Lyon Mountain. I have my own hometown one in Chateaugay, where the state just kind of closes them and says, well you know what? We're going to try to sell them. We can't sell them and you know they're just going to sit. We have to come up with a plan before we close these correctional facilities. And I have a piece of legislation actually that tries to address that when any state facility closes that we need a plan to redevelop and refurbish that. Because it's really incumbent upon the state to try to help these communities redevelop these facilities.
One of the other thoughts I had was, well, if you're going to refurbish one downstate for housing, housing is an issue all across the state. You could do that in all of the prisons that you've closed.
Absolutely. And the issue we have certainly in the North Country, I would say, is a little more unique. We're looking for housing affordability. We're looking for housing stock. People just can't find homes. We have teachers. We have nurses. We have people in any field moving into our community not being able to find, not even being able to find housing, and we need to come up with some solutions for that. And certainly working with the state on these dormant facilities is an option there.
Another issue that came up that on the face of it seems a little bit quirky and people might look at it and say what?? is rules from the CDC regarding dogs crossing the border. But it's actually raised quite a few concerns particularly from the tourism industry here. The CDC wants to require microchips and dog import forms before you can bring your dog back and forth across the border. How big an issue is this D. Billy Jones?
We live in border communities along here. My district covers a lot of the of the northern border here. It is an issue. We've heard from constituents on it. Seems as though we have a theme going on: a lot of federal regulations coming through in the past couple of months. My ask to the CDC and some of our officials were what warranted this concern? Because, personally, I haven't heard of a lot of a big rabies outbreak anywhere honestly in North America. It's going to hurt a lot of our day trippers, a lot of our campers over here, going back and forth, people going to Canada, or Canadians coming down. It's going to hurt tourism, second homeowners, all these people that come over here because we live in a border community. I've heard from some of my residents that like to go up north. They're going to have the issue when they come back down, when they come back through. So trying to get CDC to ease some of these regulations. I just don't know what happened, where is this coming from. Certainly when you showed up at the border before, you handed the customs agent your papers, your vaccination papers for your dog. It's been working for decades now. What caused this to come in? You know, we want to see them ease these regulations. They have come out with something that says they don't have to have a government veterinarian sign off on it, so it'll make putting the information in the portal a little a little better. You can use that for six months. But I just don't see why this or how this is warranted or what the reasoning behind this is, only to be a pain in the butt to dog owners. You know, this is the kind of stuff that when government agencies do certain things, it affects people's lives, and that's what really ticks people off, for no reason. That is why people get fed up with government, with these agencies, federal and state, when they're doing some of these things. This is a federal ruling, I will say again, and I know that our congressional delegation put in a letter for this to try to delay this so they could work with the CDC on this. But this is the kind of stuff that just ticks your local, everyday person that's just trying to live their life, trying to travel back and forth to the border, especially here on our border towns, that it just takes them off. And I understand that. I completely understand that. For no good reason we're putting in this blanket proposal. If they were having an issue with some kind of, I don't know, dog cartel sending in unvaccinated or illegal dogs then go after that. Don't go after every citizen that has frequent border crossings or that just wants to go over and come back. It disrupts the flow of cross border traffic as well.
Did you secure some money for the Strand recently?
Absolutely, yes. And you know, certainly the Strand is an integral part of downtown and the region as far as the arts and entertainment and everything else. And I had read where they were in need of some funding for an overall project. And in particular they needed some funding for an elevator. So we went down and talked to them and awarded them some funding which is needed. When you can put certain funds into an area where it's really going to benefit the public at large we like to do that. So happy to secure funding for that.
Now, I understand it was $175,000. Why do you need that much for an elevator?
Elevators are expensive, Pat, and I guess I hadn't realized that before I got this job. But a lot of times these elevators don't have the parts that they need and they have to manufacture parts that come in. And it was really inhibiting their ability, and the Strand's overall ability, to do an overall project to update. So, you know, I thought we could help them out and it was great to see how grateful they were.
D. Billy Jones is a Democrat representing the 115th Assembly District in northern New York.
