By JEFF MORRIS//
Meeting at the Bedford Hills Community House, state senators Pete Harckham and Shelley Mayer held a joint town hall on July 16, reporting on the legislative session that ended in June and taking questions from constituents. There were about 40 people in attendance.
Harckham represents the 40th Senate District, which includes Bedford and Lewisboro; Mayer represents the 37th Senate District, which includes Pound Ridge. Both are Democrats. Harckham is chair of the Committee on Environmental Conservation, while Mayer is chair of the Committee on Education.
In a summation of the budget season that just passed, Harckham said, “We were playing defense on all fronts.” The main challenges he and Mayers faced, as part of the Democratic majority in both houses, were dealing with cuts in the budget proposed by Gov. Kathy Hochul, also a Democrat, he said. The legislature revised the budget to restore many of cuts.
Harckham noted that for the past few years under Mayer’s leadership, the state had fully funded Foundation Aid to school districts, with total education aid to Bedford Central up nearly 40% and to Katonah-Lewisboro up 31% since Democrats became the majority. But this year, he said, “the governor cut (aid to) half the school districts.” However, he said that with Mayer leading the effort, legislators were able to restore the funding, with Bedford Central winding up with a slight increase.
Mayer explained that the governor had imposed a cut for districts that had already received what they were owed in Foundation Aid over the last three years, which meant a net reduction for half the state’s school districts. She noted many districts had used federal COVID funds to hire social workers to deal with social and emotional needs that had developed during the pandemic, and loss of Foundation Aid would have been in addition to the loss of those federal funds.
Harckham went on to list other reductions that had been in the governor’s budget, including half the funding cut from a $500 million per year bipartisan water quality program — one that he said already did not meet the demand because of a $60 billion backlog — and $1.2 billion cut from Medicaid funding, which he said was really a $2.4 billion cut because it meant a loss of federal matching funds.
“A lot of what we were doing was really playing catch-up,” said Harckham. “This was not the year for new initiatives.”
Other highlights of the legislative session cited by Harckham included restoration of funding for the Environmental Facilities Corp. for clean water, increasing the middle-class tax cut, saving the Department of Transportation capital plan from cuts, restoring money for work on the Interstate 684 corridor, increasing local road paving money and funding road projects to improve Route 35 from Bedford to Cross River, Route 9A and Route 22 from Brewster to Dutchess County.
On the environmental front, Harckham said close to 100 bills passed out of his committee dealing with climate change, water quality, environmental enforcement and air quality.
Mayer focused on achievements in education. She also highlighted legislation that both she and the governor supported expanding the list of hate crimes, which elevate charges if there is hateful conduct coupled with the crime that was committed.
The two legislators fielded questions from constituents throughout their districts, most of which were town-specific, and dealt with issues ranging from library funding to disability services.
Many of those in attendance were under the mistaken impression that the forum was to be about a Medical Aid in Dying bill. That bill would allow terminally ill adults capable of making their own health care decisions, with a prognosis of six months or less to live, to request a prescription that they can self-ingest to die peacefully in their sleep. It has been the subject of nine years of legislative debate.
Harckham and Mayer noted the bill has not yet been voted on, and the legislature is not in session again until next January. Harckham said he is a co-sponsor of the bill. Mayer said she is not a co-sponsor, but has committed to vote in favor despite having some reservations. She said many of her constituents have expressed religious and other concerns over the bill. Some revisions have been incorporated into the legislation, she noted, and that in the last legislative session the bill had moved much closer to passage. Harckham said he was aware of the many complicating issues, and that the current bill has been significantly changed from earlier versions.
One of the constituents on hand was Sharon Ballen, chair of the Town of Bedford Prison Relations Advisory Committee. She spoke about how increased educational opportunities could help reduce the recidivism rate among the prison population, and also discussed the need for heat mitigation in prisons, particularly in the two women’s prisons in Bedford Hills.
Harckham noted that he has a bill that has already passed both houses that would call for heat mitigation plans for both those incarcerated and prison staff. In fact, that very day he had renewed his call for Gov. Hochul to sign the legislation. Pressed by Ballen about the need for a longer-term plan rather than the annual solution proscribed by his bill, Harckham said, “We’ve got to walk before we run,” and noted the cost to retrofit all the state’s facilities would be enormous.