Long-blocked Reproductive Health Act, Comprehensive Contraception Coverage Act and Boss Bill Signed into Law
In January the new Democratic majority Senate was seated in Albany. Joining the Democratic-led Assembly the Empire State can expect long-awaited legislation from this young and diverse group of law makers.
Under the leadershp of Andrea Stewart-Cousins, New York State’s first woman Senate Majority Leader, the senate has already tackled Voting Reform, Reproductive Rights and Women’s Health, LGBTQ protections, and is poised to pass the Child Victims Act which would extend the statute of limitations for victims of childhood sexual abuse (see Rally for Child Victims Act, TDC Vol.1 No.1 page 1). All of these issues had been blocked by previous Republican majorities, most never making it to the floor for a vote after passage in the Assembly.
At the January 20 swearing-in of Senator James Skoufis at the Monroe-Woodbury Middle School Leader Stewart-Cousins promised that New York willl be a progressive trailblazer and that the whole country will be looking to New York as an example.
To be sure, the rapid pace of change in Albany and the Progressive agenda that it supports is only possible because last November New York’s voters overwhelmingly declared that we’re “mad as hell and (we aren’t) going to take it anymore!” As a result fourteen new Democratic Senators were elected–two in Orange County!