Cheers:
to the New York State Senate and new Majority Leader Andrea Stewart-Cousins. In the first two weeks of the new legislative session a backlog of bills that had been passed in the Assembly in previous years—in some cases every year since 2009—were pushed through to the Governor’s desk. Among these bills are Electoral Reform, LGBTQ protections, Education Reform and laws protecting reproductive rights. It’s hard to remember a time when any major legislation passed both houses in Albany before February.
In addition Leader Stewart-Cousins’s choices for key leadership roles in the Senate demonstrate that business as usual will have a different look going forward.
Jeers:
to Colin Schmitt, the newly elected member of the Assembly from the 99th District, the seat held by James Skoufis for the previous six years. On the very day that the New York State legislature approved a series of landmark bills making sweeping changes in election laws, Assemblymember Schmitt released photos of himself accepting his winnings (a box of donuts, a growler and a pie) from a wager on the Army-Navy Game. Schmitt cast a no vote.
The next day Schmitt joined fellow Orange County Republican Karl Brabenac in voting against the Gender Expression Non-Discrimination Act (GENDA). The bill, passed in the Assembly only to die in the Republican Senate annually since 2009, adds gender identity as a protected class in housing, employment, and public accommodations.
The following week Schmitt voted no on a package of bills including the Reproductive Health Act, the Comprehensive Contraception Coverage Act and the Boss Bill which will prevent an employer from dictating healh care coverage based on personal religious grounds. The RHA codifies Rowe v. Wade in New York. Before this bill was signed into law abortion was still illegal in New York State. In voting no on the RHA Scmitt called it “a radical bill that conflicts with the values a majority of New Yorkers and residents of my district hold” as he repeated the falsehoods used by Republicans to block its passage in the past.