With election day quickly approaching, and the legislative session in Albany to follow, Democratic Assemblywoman Carrie Woerner of New York’s 113th district says she is prepared to defend her seat against Republican challenger Jeremy Messina. She spoke with WAMC about her legislative priorities and challenges her constituents face.
You know, the issues that my constituents are talking to me about at the door is not dissimilar to the issues that I hear when I go to pancake breakfasts or see people at the fairs. You know, it's about making sure that that young people have opportunities in this area, that they have the ability to settle here and build a life here. The lack of homeownership opportunities for young people, as well as downsized home ownership opportunities for older folks who are ready to get out of the big family house, that continues to be an issue. The cost of childcare and the availability, or rather, the lack of availability of childcare is a real is continues to be a challenge. So, I'm hearing much of the same things that I that I have been hearing, and things that we have again attempted to try to address in the last sessions, and we'll continue to focus on going forward.
Woerner, in office for a decade, says one of her priorities from last session remains unsolved: poor access to dental healthcare options throughout her district, which encompasses Saratoga, Warren, and Washington counties.
When babies, young people, older people, don't have access to regular dental care, it opens up the door to a lot of downstream chronic illnesses. And we just don't have dentists who practice in our rural communities, and we really don't have dentists who will accept Medicaid patients. And if you’re poor or you're elderly or you are a person with developmental or physical disabilities, to not be able to find a dentist who will take your insurance is particularly frustrating, and so we have wanted to make some headway with this. We certainly raised awareness in the last session. We have a package of bills we're working on this fall. We're working on refining them, understanding where the objections came from, trying to improve them and address the address the objections and be ready to go in the beginning of the year.
In addition to her own race, November’s ballot includes Prop 1, the Equal Rights Amendment, and Republicans are campaigning statewide to defeat the measure. Woerner says it’s key to enshrining lasting protections against discrimination based on gender, race, and abortion.
This is simply about saying the government can't discriminate against you under any circumstances. And that that is of value. And I'll just give you an example of why, sort of being broad in this perspective is important. My grandparents immigrated to the United States from Germany and during World War II, you know, they first had green cards and then then went on to get their citizenship. But in World War Two, my grandmother had to go to the post office every day to get the mail because they didn't deliver. And the postmaster harassed her for being German every single day. And that is the kind of discrimination that ought not to ever exist. And this was a government official discriminating against a woman because her country of origin was Germany. Different time, different context. But that's the kind of thing that ought never to be allowed, and where people should have a form of—a way to redress that by having their rights protected in our Constitution. And that's what this does. And I hope that that when people actually see the ballot, turn it over, read the language that what they're going to read is that all this says is each of us have a set of rights, and that the government can't discriminate against us.
New York Governor Kathy Hochul has been on a statewide tour studying the issue of cellphone use in schools and is expected to announce her findings soon. Woerner says reduced phone use in schools would benefit the mental health and learning outcomes of New York students.
Where I want to make sure that we don't take this conversation is that it shouldn't be up to the classroom teacher to decide how to do that. That the district should have a district wide policy, and that the district and the school administration in each building should be responsible for the enforcement of whatever the school's policy is. I think that if we can begin to break the dependence that young minds have on having that phone in their hand, we have to do that. As adults, we could all benefit from putting that phone down and put it in a drawer and not pick it back up again until the next morning. We could all benefit from it. But I think particularly young people should have their days filled with having fun with friends, learning in the classroom, being free of those distractions, as well as the threats that they can pose.
In July the state Department of Corrections and Community Supervision announced that Great Meadow Correctional Facility in Washington County will shutter November 6th. Woerner is opposed to the closure.
What I find most disappointing is there does not appear to have been any detailed analysis. No compare and contrast between facilities that that went below the level of, ‘well, where do we have, where do we have a higher staff to inmate ratio that we can distribute the incarcerated individuals as well as the staff to try and shore up the short staffing we have in other facilities?’ It's very superficial analysis. And as a result of that superficial, simplistic analysis that didn't take into account any economic impact, any potential reuse of the facility, any way to leverage the existing facility in the overall corrections context, any analysis of the likelihood of them being able to retain staff that have been displaced. There was no detailed analysis done. We've asked for it, and they've, ‘well, we don't, we don't really have it.’ So just because they were given the permission to make the announcement 90 days before the closure, really shouldn't have relieved them of the responsibility to do a thoughtful analysis to make sure that they were making a reasonable decision. And that is where I really feel like we need to make sure that we fix that. That we have to require that they do, and hopefully there'll be no further closures, but they have to do a detailed analysis and make that analysis available to the legislature, to the to the bargaining units to the community leaders. They have to.
WAMC has requested an interview with Woerner’s Republican opponent, Jeremy Messina.