Our Platform

No Excuses

Fix What’s Broken

“Sir, no excuse, sir!” “Ma’am, no excuse, ma’am!”

During Plebe Summer at the Naval Academy, we learned this as one of our five basic responses. The lesson was simple: 1) you have a job to do, 2) your shipmates are depending on you to do that job, and 3) there is simply no excuse not to do your job.

Albany's job is to fix what's broken for New Yorkers, and we’re all depending on Albany to do its job so we can thrive. With close to Democratic supermajorities in both chambers of the legislature, there should truly be no excuses.

Our NO EXCUSES platform lays out a bold vision for proactive, pragmatic, progressive, and patriotic leadership in Albany across issues in three critical areas: Affordability, Opportunity, and Democracy.

Together, we will make New York the State of No Excuses.

Affordability

Focus Albany's attention on proactively addressing growing unaffordability in healthcare, housing, and other everyday costs for Western New Yorkers:

  • Healthcare: Pass the New York Health Act or similarly transformative legislation to fix a long-broken system and bring down healthcare costs for all New Yorkers. Have a bias for action in moving forward with meaningful reform supported by majorities of New Yorkers even if those reforms do not go as far as the NYHA would go in instituting single-payer healthcare. End New York State’s arbitrary Medicaid global spending cap, which puts necessary healthcare services and patient outcomes at risk. Fully fund Western New York’s hospitals (especially safety net hospitals) and nursing homes, and ensure just, fair compensation for caregivers of the elderly and people with disabilities.

  • Housing: Enable and incentivize an increase in housing supply across the range of affordability. Ensure proper calibration and streamlining of construction red tape to reduce time and resources required to build or convert new units. Reinvest in social and public housing. Protect renters and would-be homeowners from corporate and hedge fund price-gouging and speculation. Close regulatory loopholes and hold large-scale corporate landlords (and all landlords) accountable for maintaining safe and livable housing conditions for tenants.

  • Child Care: Bring universal childcare to Western New York by ensuring that the first upstate pilot program is launched here in District 149.

  • Energy: Pass the NY HEAT Act, which will save ratepayers billions of dollars every year on avoided gas infrastructure costs. Invest in green energy research and capacity, including solar, wind, and nuclear, to bring down energy costs for families while positioning New York State to power the future.

  • Fairness: Progressively tax the very wealthiest residents and corporations at higher rates to raise revenue needed to support high-priority, high-impact investments aimed at increasing affordability for the vast majority of working- and middle-class Western New Yorkers.

Opportunity

Lead the rest of the country in renewing access to the American Dream for all New Yorkers through pragmatic, progressive reforms:

  • Labor & Workers’ Rights: Make the minimum wage a living wage. Give labor law teeth to hold employers accountable and invest in efforts to ensure workers know their rights. Expand prevailing wage law while also ensuring small businesses have opportunities to participate. Create more careers in the trades and strengthen pathways to the middle class through investment in and prioritization of apprenticeships. Fix Tier 6 to ensure fairness in our public pension system.

  • Education: Fully fund and prioritize public education so that every student receives an education that sets them up for success. Invest in school-to-apprenticeship pipelines and better inform students and families around careers in the trades as a path to success and stability. Strengthen teacher recruitment and retention, including by fixing Tier 6 and ensuring pension fairness.

  • Nutrition: Provide healthful meals in schools, with as little ultra-processed foods as possible. Invest in New York State's farms' capacity to produce fresh foods and reduce reliance on ultra-processed foods.

  • Mental Health: Act to protect New York children’s mental health by holding social media companies accountable for safety on their platforms. Ensure access to mental health resources in schools.

  • Climate Action: Provide leadership to the rest of the country in slowing climate change, including through a cap-trade-and-invest program (including income-targeted household rebates). Take action to protect Lake Erie and our waterways.

  • Innovation: Unlock the immense talent and Yankee ingenuity of the people of Western New York by ensuring that Albany sees our region for the limitless potential that we possess and invests accordingly in building the economy and careers of the future right here.

Democracy

Prove that New York State and Democrats are patriotically dedicated to strengthening our democracy and defending our State and U.S. Constitutions:

  • Good Neighbors: Pass the New York for All Act or similar legislation to keep state and local resources focused on public safety and limit exposure to liability from Constitutional overreach by federal agencies including those under the DHS.

  • Civil Rights: Maintain New York State as the nation’s strongest beacon for civil rights, from voting rights, to bodily autonomy and abortion rights, to LGBTQ+ (especially trans) rights.

  • Data Privacy & Surveillance Accountability: Ensure that New Yorkers' data privacy rights keep pace with rapidly advancing technology by establishing clear limits on government and private sector data collection, retention, and sharing (particularly in communities that have historically been subject to disproportionate surveillance), and champion Community Control Over Police Surveillance (CCOPS) legislation.

  • Choice: Reform state election law to reduce barriers to ballot access and prioritize giving New York State’s voters more choices. Build support for ranked choice voting and other pro-democracy reforms.

  • Transparency, Accountability, and Efficiency: Increase transparency of government offices and programs to better measure impact and return on investment (ROI). Exercise oversight over state agencies to ensure they are not only transparent but accessible and responsive to Western New Yorkers’ wants and needs, as in the question of highway removal and restoration of the Scajaquada Creek and Humboldt Parkway, favored by growing numbers of Western New Yorkers. Ensure that your Assembly District’s office provides top-notch constituent services by hiring multilingual staff who can assist residents in their preferred language, establishing formal service level expectations, and transparently reporting data that measure our office’s efficiency, efficacy, and reliability in addressing residents’ and community needs.

  • Brilliance at the Basics: Prove that a blue state like ours can translate our higher tax rates into more reliable delivery of basic necessities such as high-quality infrastructure (e.g., roads, bridges, public transportation) that help all residents and businesses thrive.