State lawmakers from northern New York agree with Governor Kathy Hochul that affordability is the watchword as the legislative session continues. But they have some disagreements about how to accomplish it.
At the North Country Chamber annual Legislative Breakfast, regional businesses and leaders got to hear from and ask questions of the region’s representatives in Albany.
State Senator Dan Stec of the 45th district and 114th district Assemblyman Matt Simpson, Republicans, and Democrat D. Billy Jones of the 115th District stepped up to relate what has been happening in Albany and their expectations for the session.
Concerns over tariffs between the U.S. and Canada overshadowed much of the conversation. Chamber president Garry Douglas noted that issue transcended all others in their latest survey.
“Our business community in the North Country understands our connection with Canada. Ninety-seven percent declare that tariffs must be avoided on Canadian goods crossing the border. When do you get 97 percent on anything?” Douglas posed. “So our business community understands that a mistake is being made, a very serious mistake.”
A sponsor of the event is the UVM Health Network’s CVPH and Alice Hyde Medical Centers. Chief Financial Officer Matt Kollar said the political and economic environment is distinctly different than last year at this time.
“There’s a great deal of uncertainty about how major changes will affect our businesses in our communities. We’re worried about a couple things. First, how are changes in international trade and sticky inflation going to affect our supply chains and the cost of care that we’re providing? Second, how proposed programmatic changes to major programs like Medicaid and Medicare have the potential to devastate our finances,” Kollar said. “At the same time, we’re hopeful that this year’s state level budget will recognize the many needs of the North Country. Not just health care, but manufacturing, transportation, housing and so on.”
Assemblyman Simpson reported that affordability is the primary concern in Albany.
“We need to go deeper and look at what’s happening from a higher level because our programs are growing, requiring more money, and we’re still failing. We have businesses that are still struggling to keep up with over regulation, the high cost of doing business in New York,” Simpson noted. “We have everything we need here. We have Canada to the north. We have the workforce we need. We need to continue to invest in it. But we also need to keep in mind we need to be competitive with all the other states.”
Stec reported on his visits to prisons in his district during the wildcat strike by corrections officers and then echoed minority Republican conference criticism of state priorities.
“On affordability, our conference leader has coined it this way and I think it’s an accurate way to put it. Look if spending our way to affordability could be done, we’d be the most affordable state in the country. But the problem is that we have a $250 billion state budget. We spend too much money,” Stec asserted. “And between that and some of our policies that is adding to the cost of doing business and the cost of building. That’s not to say there’s not places in the budget we need to make more investment. I think there are. But I think there’s certainly other areas that we need to examine.”
Questions ranged from legislation to allow wine in liquor stores to childcare investments. But a question on tariffs posed by Town of Plattsburgh Supervisor Michael Cashman and the response by Assemblyman Jones, chair of the Task Force on New York Canada Relations, drew applause.
“How do you think New York state can be a player in helping addressing all of the compounding issues from housing to health care to tourism to our manufacturing to local government?” Cashman asked.
“I am fully against the tariffs. Full stop. There’s no daylight there.” Jones continues following applause, “We as a region are going to see immediate impacts on this. When it costs you more to get equipment, parts, anything, goods, services, agriculture, construction. A lot of that comes from our friends and neighbors to the north. They provide a lot of our economy here.”
Douglas cited a Ledger poll that found 40 percent of Quebecers now consider the U.S. their enemy.
