O’Mara, Senate GOP highlight ‘Freedom Agenda’

Albany, N.Y., March 28—State Senator Tom O’Mara (R,C-Big Flats) and members of the   Senate Republican Conference today highlighted their agenda to establish a “more free New York State.”

The GOP plan includes restoring New Yorkers’ constitutional rights, doing away with excessive government overreach, and rebuilding faith in government by increasing accountability and transparency. O’Mara said that a more free New York is a core tenet of the Senate Republican “Rescue New York” 2023 legislative agenda, which the conference unveiled at the start of this year’s legislative session.

New York continues to lead the nation in population loss as hundreds of thousands of residents relocate to states that are safer, more affordable, and more free from governmental overreach, the legislators said.

O’Mara said, “New Yorkers across the Southern Tier and Finger Lakes regions I represent, and statewide, are worried about the direction this state government keeps heading under one-party, all-Democrat, extremely liberal control. They see New York becoming less safe, less affordable, less economically competitive, less responsible, and far less free and hopeful for the future. We need to rebuild respect for the Constitution, restore legislative checks and balances, get out from under extreme executive control, and reestablish the importance of local decision-making."    

Deputy Senate Republican Leader Andrew Lanza said, “New Yorkers deserve to live in a state where they are free – free to walk down safe streets, free to make the choices they feel are best for their families, free to decide how to heat their home and cook their food, free to exercise their constitutional rights, and free from crushing taxes and overreaching government that hampers their quality of life. We lose more and more New Yorkers every year to other states – we need to reverse the trend of big government and burdensome mandates and create a state that is freer, safer, and more affordable.”

O’Mara and his colleagues highlighted several proposals in their Rescue NY agenda that focus on priorities to help create a more free New York State, including:

• retaining local control and standing up against excessive government overreach, especially proposals from Albany bureaucrats attempting to supersede local control;
• Protecting private property rights;
• Promoting parental rights by ensuring school officials are transparent, communicate properly, and include parents in decisions regarding their child, as well as standing up for school choice to empower families to make education choices that work best for their children;
• Upholding the state and federal constitutional rights of New Yorkers and opposing unnecessary and inappropriate government mandates;
• Restoring accountability and transparency in state government and improving oversight by fully restoring the ability of the State Comptroller to review state contracts, limiting the use of messages of necessity, and removing non-fiscal policy matters from being enacted part of the annual state budget.