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New York state legislators considering Governor Hochul's budget, support 'bell-to-bell' phone ban

New York Governor Kathy Hochul
WAMC
/
Ashley Hupfl
New York Governor Kathy Hochul

After New York Governor Kathy Hochul unveiled her $252 billion budget proposal this week, local state lawmakers appear to be on board with a new ban on cell phones in schools.

Republican Assemblyman Robert Smullen of the 118th district calls the spending plan released Tuesday “eye watering.”

“A quarter-of-a-trillion dollars—the highest per-capita spending in the entire nation, it’s absolutely unbelievable. Some of the policy things, her focus is on affordability. You know, let’s talk about affordability by really giving genuine tax cuts to people so they don’t have to take as much of their income to give to the state to redistribute. When you look at the aggregate levels of taxation in New York, we spend almost as much as California, and California has almost twice as many people as we do. We spend as much as Texas and Florida combined even though those two states have more people than [New York]. It’s no wonder people are actually migrating out of New York, they literally cannot afford the tax burden,” said Smullen.

As part of Hochul’s so-called “affordability agenda,” the state would send sales tax rebate checks of up to $500 to millions of New Yorkers, totalling $3 billion in spending, as well as an income tax cut for those making under $323,000 a year.

Tied to her proposed ban on cell phone use during the school day, Hochul has also proposed $13.5 million in funding for school districts to enact a process to store phones during the day. Smullen supports phone bans, but:

“What I would like to see is that each school board, the parents that elect to those boards or the citizens of the district, have the option to how they go ahead and make that ban go into effect. I don’t know that a one-size-fits-all approach—really tends to not work well,” said Smullen.

Republican Assemblywoman Mary Beth Walsh, from the 112th district, says she was anxious to support a state-funded “bell-to-bell” phone ban, but has come around on the idea.

“Reading about it a little bit I do think that it’s a good thing to do on a state level. Being a parent of six and seeing, particularly my younger children having great difficulty. And we’re already dealing with so much learning loss from the COVID years that I think we need to reduce the distractions in schools and I see that the teachers’ union is supportive of it. So, I’ll be supportive of it, I think it’s time to do it and maybe assist those schools that haven’t quite done it yet,” said Walsh.

Walsh is also in support of Hochul’s focus on affordability, but says the definition of that word is in the eye of the beholder.

“You know our revenues are up so my question would be why is there a plan to spend those revenues and additionally raise taxes. To me, that and the overall size of the budget just make you think in what world is this comforting to taxpayers that are interested in affordability. I’m all about putting more money into people’s pockets and I do think that, how do you make all these numbers work,” said Walsh.

Hochul’s budget also includes $35.4 billion for New York’s Medicaid Program and $694 million for healthcare workforce development.

Democratic Assemblywoman Carrier Woerner represents the 112th district. She supports the budget’s priorities.

“Education and healthcare are the biggest, by far, components of the budget. So, I’m really looking at how we’re spending our education dollars and how we’re spending our healthcare dollars to make sure that we’re taking care of nursing homes, which I’ve been advocating for for a long time, upstate hospitals, dental care, primary care. And then just making sure that our schools have the money they need and that we’re supporting our community colleges,” said Woerner.

Hochul’s budget also includes $370 million for gun violence prevention programs, and $1 billion to support the state’s clean energy transition.

A final budget is due April 1st.