A Big Win for $15, but $150 Billion Failures to Confront Ethics
April 1, 2016
Big news -- this morning, after an all-night session, we passed a budget that will raise the minimum wage to $15 and create Paid Family Leave in New York.
Almost three years ago, I lived for a week on the budget of Kareem Starks, a young man trying to get by with a minimum wage job in New York City. It was a searing experience. With it in mind, in January 2014, I introduced New York's first $15 minimum wage bill for big businesses across the state. I thought of Kareem as we passed the budget this morning.
As chair of the Senate Democratic Conference Policy Group, I was excited we also passed Paid Family Leave, which the Policy Group pushed in our Pre-Natal to Pre-K package. It's impossible to overstate how big a deal this will be for parents, kids, caregivers and our economy. We also got new dollars for evidence-based maternal home visiting programs, which I have long campaigned to make universal in our state.
Unfortunately, the Senate Republican Majority again blocked ethics reform, which would begin to rebuild people's trust in Albany. Again, and again, and again, and again, I pushed to close the LLC Loophole (which allows near-unlimited, often anonymous corporate dollars to flood our political process), and asked "where's the ethics!?"
I am also concerned about funding to keep our subways and buses running. The budget made progress, but I'm still concerned we don't know for sure that the needed dollars will be there. Letting the system fall apart, or paying the bills by raising fares, would both be unacceptable.
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