Corrupt Agenda in Albany Fuels New York's Affordability Crisis

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0:30 Speaker 2 Well, what is the final numbers and the on the state budget in Albany? Well, what is today Center? George Barrello and Senator I talked to you the other day and you were very much concerned that there was some last minute things that just got ramped through and that people should know about them. Can you fill in everybody

0:54 in New York State? Well?

0:57 Speaker 3 Yeah, first of all, thank you John for having me back on. And yeah, there’s no doubt in my mind that people in New York are not served by the fact that in the last five days of session we ram through more than six hundred pieces of legislation, more than one hundred bills a day. Most of those bills

1:13 were dropped overnight, you know, midnight or later, and then we were voting on them hours later. The next day, no time for us as legislators to review and properly do our due diligence for the people that we represent, but certainly no time for the people of New York State to know what’s in these bills. And this is

1:32 off of just spending a two extra months to our budget was two months late, two hundred and sixty eight and a half billion dollars with a b and yet New Yorkers aren’t being served anything to make life more affordable here. So right after that budget debacle and the final adopted budget, you know, the following week, we had

1:53 a race to the finish line for the end of the New York State session and in that were some very damaging things. In the last day of session, in the middle of the night, we debated a bill that would essentially restore partisan jerrymandering in New York State. New Yorker spoke through a constitutional amendment twice, not once, but twice,

2:16 saying they wanted to eliminate partisan gerrymandering and create independent redistrict and commission. And the Democrats in charge and the governor introduced a bill to change the constitution again to allow them to to change these districts that will literally every two years as they want, Uh, this will have to be passed again in the next year in a

2:39 new session and then put on a ballot referendum. So I hope that people of New York State will will reject this. But these are the kind of things that happened in the in the waning days when they know people are she hasn’t signed it yet, but we’re told that she’s going to do that, you know. And the

2:59 excuse was that they have to enter this national fight on redistricting because of other states. Well, first and foremost, our obligation is to the people of New York State not to enter some national fight that they’re talking about. But secondly, the first time this happened was back in twenty twenty two during the Biden administration, and they tried the same thing.

3:18 So that’s just an excuse to push forward this corrupt agenda. They even passed a bill that would change would take away the ability for the language on that ballot away from the Board of Elections, the bipartisan Board of Elections Committee and then put it into the hands of the majority of the Democrats in charge so that they can

3:39 craft the wording so as to be deceptive, to deceive the people of New York State, and make the language on the actual ballot, the initiative that you’re voting on, to fit their agenda. So it’s really egregious. And again, if you can’t win by supporting the policies and putting forth policies that make New York State better, more affordable,

4:00 and safer, then you know there there, you know, their mo is to is to ensure that they have rigged the system in their favor to stay in power. And and that was what the end of session was really all about.

4:13 Speaker 2 Wow, that’s one I can say, is well, and uh, I hope that the governor doesn’t sign it. And uh the fact is you can’t have those kind of bills going through every.

4:25 Speaker 3 Year, exactly absolutely. And look, you know when you’re you’re standing there looking at a calendar that has you know, one hundred and six bills on it, for example, in one day, and then a few hours later, another calendar of bills has dropped on to us with another one hundred bills. There were there was you know, in one day,

4:47 we we uh we had to vote on and debate you know, two hundred bills. How how is that possible. You know, this is why you know I voted no on the budget for the same reason. You know.

4:56 Speaker 3 We have ten budget bills that that dropped tens of thousands of pages of budget. And how is we are we supposed to know every single word and the impact of every single line item in that budget in a matter of hours before voting on it. This is just it’s corrupt, it is non transparent, and the people of

5:15 New York State should be outraged by the process. And look at the results. I mean, New York spends more than any other state per capita. If spending more money, maybe New York more affordable and better. We should be the best, most affordable.

5:27 Speaker 2 State in the nation.

5:27 Speaker 3 But we’re not. People continue to leave this state and droves, and we lose businesses and families and productive people every single day in this state. And it’s because of the bad policies out of Albany. So passing things in the middle of nite isn’t making things better, it’s making it actually far worse.

5:45 Speaker 2 Well, you’re one hundred and ten percent right. Anything else you want to tell you, American people will own New Yorkers on a Sunday money.

5:53 Speaker 3 Well, I will say that we did have some wins John, and this in this session here because of our advocacy. We have a delay now in the electric school bus mandate, which you and I have talked about. There have been some delays in the damaging radical climate agenda. Again, it’s an election year for the governor and for everyone in

6:11 the legislature, so these might just be electioneer tricks, but we’re going to continue to push back and fight on behalf of New Yorkers. So we will continue to do that. And it’s an election year, John, so it’s time for folks to vote for change and restore balance. And we need better, more responsible, common sense leadership and all the day.

6:32 Speaker 2 Senator George Barrello, thank you for filling us in on a Sunday morning, and we’ll catch up with you again real soon.

6:38 Speaker 3 Thank you as well,