From WXXI news.

This is connections.

I'm Evan Dawson.

We continue our series of conversations with your elected state leaders this month.

Now that there is a budget proposal from Governor Kathy Hochul, and it's a chance to hear from the elected leaders at length about what they think about this proposal, what priorities they want to see, both in the budget and in Albany this year.

What they don't want to see.

And we're going to talk about what you want to talk about a lot of our listeners throughout this period, hearing from lawmakers, have wanted to know if our elected leaders have found the actions of Ice appropriate in their districts, what they make of what they see in Ice and other places, and if there should be any changes, how Ice operates here.

So we'll talk about all of that more.

My guest this hour is Assembly Member Jen Lunsford from Assembly District number 135.

Welcome back to the program.

Thank you for being here.

Happy to be here.

Now, there's a lot of different places we're going to take this conversation this hour.

But I do want to start with ice.

Just because that's always what our our listeners wanted to start there in the series of conversations.

So I will start with this.

I'll just put it the way I put it to your colleagues.

The killing of Rene.

Good.

The killing of Alex.

Pretty.

Is there anything that you see in those videos that tells you those were justified killings?

Absolutely not.

And I can say that as someone who has handled cases involving police misconduct, I have handled cases, handled cases throughout my career at various times, involving appropriate police tactics.

And in both situations, those shootings which we have from many angles, which we have plenty of witness statements for, were murders, without a doubt.

You put the word murder in.

Okay.

Are you surprised at this point that there are a number of lawmakers here?

So far, your colleagues on the Republican side have appeared on this program and kind enough to do that.

We appreciate that.

Have said that they just they haven't seen enough to say that, you know, and it's also not their jurisdiction.

It's not their state.

Are you surprised at that given the magnitude of this this story nationally?

I mean, I generally try to stay out of making, legal determinations or assertions about cases where I don't have all the facts.

But these situations are different because they were recorded in real time by multiple people from multiple angles.

And perhaps my Republican colleagues did not watch all of the videos.

I think that, you know, I didn't want to watch those videos.

They are upsetting.

But I felt it was my duty as an elected official who knows that ISIS in my community to see, what tactics were being used and, to lend my legal expertise to the situation.

So I guess to the extent that they're avoiding information on it.

Sure.

But.

Okay.

And now I guess the question becomes, what?

What's the appropriate response, if any, from New York State.

And so we've heard a number of ideas on this.

One of your colleagues on the Democratic side said they'd like to see some sort of movement towards trying to block ice from masking, for example, when they're operating here.

Is there anything in the jurisdiction of the state to try to do that?

That's a really challenging one, because and I've looked into it.

We do have a bill.

But we are limited in what would be construed as controlling federal law enforcement uniform forms.

So to the extent that that is considered part of their uniform, I think that it creates, challenges with enforcement.

I think you're seeing that in California, where they passed a similar law, that they're having trouble enforcing it because that's really the standard that that's part of their uniform.

Is it part of the uniform?

It's a mask.

I think facial cover.

Yes.

I, don't think law enforcement outside of certain circumstances, like, I mean, we have people here who, law enforcement directs traffic in the dead of winter.

You want to wear a balaclava?

I hear you, it's very cold.

That's fine.

To prevent disease.

Sure.

You know, when you have facial coverings for, because you're wearing a riot helmet.

Whether you should be wearing that or not.

Different question.

But when it comes to obscuring your identity so that you can not be traced back to the situation you're in, it is fundamentally, unconstitutional.

We have badges and badge numbers for a reason.

Law enforcement officers are agents of the state, and I don't get to pretend I'm not who I am when I engage in my official duties.

And I don't think law enforcement should be able to do that either.

Bovino said he's not going to let people in the American public dox his agents.

It's not doxing.

They're agents of the government.

They are people.

They're doing their job.

And if people feel like they can not identify themselves and their association with the work they're doing that I think you need to examine why that is law enforcement, all kinds of people.

I face harassment every single day.

I face threats.

I had to put cameras on my home.

I don't get to not be a public facing person.

These are not bureaucrats who work in an office.

These are people who engage with the populace.

And it is a fundamental right of citizens to be able to know who they are interacting with.

I mean, just from a safety point of view, we had two state senators murdered by someone who was pretending to be a police officer.

And when you have in Minnesota, Minnesota, and when you have people purporting to be law enforcement while wearing, frankly, things they could buy at Party City, Hawaiian shirts and masks, what's to stop some lunatic from pretending to be an officer and abducting people?

I wouldn't be surprised if that is happening.

You know, it is a fundamental safety issue to not know whether the person you are dealing with is actual law enforcement or not.

And then there's for me the question of how they are behaving.

And I don't just mean their behavior, their actual conduct being legal or not.

Some of it looks plainly illegal.

And I'm not an attorney and you are.

But there's a judge in Minneapolis who clerked for Scalia.

This is not a progressive judge.

This is not a judge who has ever been called an activist left judge.

And that judge came out recently and said this on at least 96 times that Ice is behavior has violated laws.

And he's essentially appalled at the way they are acting and breaking laws.

Some of those actions include physically interacting with people in violent ways for absolutely no reason.

Some of them are telling people they cannot shoot video of police.

We not only can shoot video.

To me, it strikes me as, you know, an American thing to do.

If you want to record police, police should be comfortable with that.

It is a protected right under the law and Ice is telling people you can't, and they're smashing cameras out of people's hands and they're knocking them down sewer drains, and they're throwing them on the ground and they're and they're detaining, you know, people's property.

So you get a judge saying, this is illegal, but we're in this weird place.

I want to ask you, as a lawyer, I at what point does it actually make a difference because they continue to behave this way.

I in a minute we'll talk about if you're concerned how they're having here, but they seem to be continuing to behave this way.

What is the consequence for telling people you can't shoot video when you can, taking people's property and smashing it when that's there's no reason for that being violent?

What when do we actually say there's a consequence for this?

Just to go back briefly, because I find the hypocrisy around this to be particularly obnoxious, the exact same authority that law enforcement uses to use drones, to use facial recognition, to use cameras in public, to record anyone on a public street is the exact same right?

People have to record officers when they are in public.

You have no right to privacy in public.

These same officers that are taking pictures of people's license plates, who are recording them and saying, well, now you're a domestic terrorist.

They're creating a database based on the license plate they were able to take a picture of while you were recording them, that same right that they had to take a picture of your license plate, that to list you as a domestic terrorist.

But to take a picture of your license plate is the same, right?

You have to record them back.

But the reality is, is that in a functional government, the remedy is the courts.

That's what you do.

You sue.

And, one of the things that we are looking to do in this budget is to create a right of action for residents of New York state to sue agents of the federal government for violations of state law in state courts.

So if you are violating your Ice, you are in my community and you are violating a state law, you are going to be held accountable in the courts in the state of New York.

Do you think you can win that?

I do, why?

Because it is the 10th amendment and I can hold you accountable.

Are they going to be qualified immunity arguments?

Sure.

But when you, the vice president, says they have essentially full immunity despite attending Yale University, I have some questions for the people who give diplomas at Yale based on some of the things he has said.

The there are cases and we have seen them where officers act so outside the scope of their duties that they are held accountable in criminal court.

We have seen not as often as we probably should, but officers held accountable for unlawful killings.

We have seen it all across the country.

Qualified immunity isn't a universal shield to all a legal action.

So I think that there, you know, there's going to be pushback.

We won't win them all, but there will be situations.

And when, agent of the government is violating your civil rights, there's a separate action, a 1983 action that you can bring against the entire agency for violation of those rights.

And we are seeing violations of rights, particularly in Minnesota.

Our internal memo directing people to violate someone's Fourth Amendment right.

It was a policy.

How are you going to defend against that in court when it was policy?

But when you've got someone as high as the VP telling the entire agency you are essentially immune, doesn't that encourage more of the kind of behavior we've seen?

Absolutely.

And we're going to see more of it.

I would I would assume I agree okay.

So we may have to in your sort of describing of it, test that idea in court.

Yes.

Okay.

Are you concerned with ISIS behavior in your own district?

I don't know how much activity there's been.

There's been some I have heard that they are present.

I have not luckily heard of any, cases of, violence or things that I felt that I needed to intervene in.

I was on site a when, I was on Westminster, over the summer.

Roofers and.

Yes.

Who I mean, just sometimes people see those stories and they don't find out what happened.

The roofer that was taken, that was here on a valid work permit that had been in the country for 25 years, that had worked for that roofer for five years, was released.

He was released and not deported.

Just so everyone knows how that ends up.

And I know you're going to have some callers who heard what I just said and they're going to say, oh, well, our our courts are bought and sold.

Our courts aren't working either.

And that's also just not true.

I have a, report from the attorney general right now.

I asked them, could you give me a list of all the money we've gotten back from the federal government when they have taken it unlawfully, or they have taken it in violation of agreements?

And we are constantly winning.

The media tends to report on the bad things that happen when they first happen, and then we don't get a lot of follow up when we win in the courts.

So I want to reassure people that our courts do still function and we are still in a maybe not as firm as I would like it to be, but still a functional system where you can have the courts address your action in a way that is, for the most part, still following the Constitution.

All right.

So let me close the loop a nice with a couple other points here.

One of the arguments from I think your political opposites is that Democrats have propped up cheap labor.

And what will happen is when we see more mass deportation of people who are undocumented, then Americans who are unemployed will take those jobs.

They won't necessarily do them for the the dirt cheap rate that some employers get away with paying undocumented labor, and that will force wages up.

And it's your party that's suppressing wages.

What do you think?

I am having trouble even following that logic.

I don't know in what way Democrats prop up cheap labor.

I think the fact that our entire agricultural industry is premised on what is essentially an indentured servant class, because we lure people here with H-1b visas to do this work, and then they have to live in constant fear, even though they are here legally, even though they are here with the government's permission that some goon squad is going to come and decide that they don't get to deserve to be here.

And if people think it's our farmers and our restaurant owners that are Democrats, I would like them to speak decent farmers and restaurant owners.

Okay, then I just want to address the idea that there's just a duality, that there's a bifurcated set of choices.

There's either you've got ice in its current form or you've got open borders forever.

We did have eons before ice.

Ice came after 911.

Do you support a system of a regulated border deportation in the case of violent criminals, do you support open borders?

I, of course, support a system where people are vetted before they come into our country.

A functional border where people are checked for not just criminal activity, but, you know, to collect duties.

We have a border patrol for a reason.

People who commit crimes while here on a temporary basis should be deported.

Of course, people should also get due process.

And I think I have this argument online a lot.

Everyone gets constitutional rights.

Even terrorists get constitutional rights.

Because if you don't give constitutional rights to everyone, then no one has them.

And someone might say, but they are undocumented.

They are here illegally.

They don't get rights.

Then who's to stop the government from saying you're here illegally and you don't have rights?

Everyone needs due process and that is why when Barack Obama and Joe Biden deported millions and millions and millions of people, they didn't need some Gestapo style goon squad to do it.

They use the courts like the Constitution allows.

All right, last thing here, then.

I've had this idea for years that functionally, nothing will break the bipartisan or the partizan holds on ideas and issues, that if you're on one side of the political team, whatever they do, you support whatever's on the other side you reject.

This is one that looks like it's breaking through to me.

I don't know if your office hears from people on this issue.

You hear from people on a wide range of stuff.

I know that every office of an elected leader does.

How about this one?

They are a ISIS name is mud right now.

But among your sort of Democratic supporters, everyone in your district, you really believe that?

I hear from them.

And I think that there's always going to be I'm going to say it's 30% of people on either side, but the middle generally operates in some version of reality where they can look at a situation and say, this doesn't seem right.

This seems not what I voted for.

This is antithetical to some basic tenets of the government.

And the thing about the overbroad enforcement of Ice is that they are doing things like harassing off duty NYPD police officers, and we are hearing from off duty officers who understand very well what the appropriate way to interact with someone in a law enforcement capacity is that their rights are being violated.

And this is only happening to our black and brown officers.

You are seeing people with authority and credibility speaking out about how this is wrong.

And I know many Republican people in my life who are my friends, who I've known for years, who have long said, are we are the party of law and order.

We are the party who believes in the Constitution.

And if you get them in a quiet room, they'll say, this ain't it.

Talking to Jen Lunsford, Assembly member from district number 135, as part of our series of conversations with your elected Leaders following the issuance of Governor Kathy Hochul budget.

And now the legislature takes it up.

Then they get it done.

They always get it done a little early before April 1st, usually sometime mid March.

If I am I getting that right?

Look, I'm I am optimistic the budget will be timely.

I have some plans for that second week of April.

Oh, I see they're not out of town plans.

I'm not stupid, but my husband is going to travel for work, so I hope that I don't have to bring my son to Albany again.

I see well, so this is a place that.

So my colleague Jimmy Veal kind wrote a piece right when the budget came out and said that every year there's these sort of internecine fights in the Democratic Party.

The Democratic Party tends to control power and state government.

And a lot of the the recent years the fight's been over school funding, the governor will Cuomo and then, you know, different flavors of of governorships have proposed school funding.

The legislature on the Democratic side tends to want more.

That becomes a fight.

In recent years, it's been child care.

We'll talk about that in a moment.

But Jimmy, if you can, says this year you got auto insurance and I'm going.

At first I was like, what?

Then I saw that Governor Hochul has been saying that we have some of the highest rates of auto insurance in the country because, in her view, we all pay more for our premiums because it is too easy to sue for pain and suffering.

The it is too broad a window.

Damages are too high and it pushes everybody's number up.

And then we got to get more in line with the rest of the country.

And you are an attorney.

In fact, what kind of, attorney and legal work have you done?

I was a personal injury attorney, and I have personally handled hundreds and hundreds of car accident cases.

And when I was in college, I worked for a subrogation insurance firm where I had many examples of true, honest to God, criminal enterprise, staged motor vehicle accidents.

You will be hard pressed to find another legislator in the New York state government that has the direct professional experience I have on this issue.

So the governor is right or wrong?

To the extent that the governor believes that our insurance rates are higher than they need to be because of lawsuits, I think, that is misplaced.

I do not think that that is an accurate representation of the main drivers of our car insurance issues.

But, you know, I mean, it's my job to say, well, of course you would say that you are you are an injury attorney.

I haven't practiced in six years.

I do not make any money from the practice of law.

I basis entirely on the fact that I have handled these cases.

There are two provisions in particular.

So to go back briefly, the majority of the governor's package, which is I think 90% of it is about fraud.

It's about creating a state task force.

It's about creating some new, specific criminal laws around actually, like true criminal fraud, staged accidents like this.

Is it pretending you got more hurt?

This is making up an accident that did not occur.

That's great.

How about it?

How often does that happen?

Actually, there have been true criminal rings.

I was, in a subrogation firm on Long Island where we had a lot of, cases out of New York City.

And at the time, this would have been in to date myself.

2003, 2002, a true criminal enterprise where you would see people literally towing wrecked cabs to intersections.

Someone would get hurt.

It would be a car with four people in it front, backside, side.

They'd all go to a doctor's office where there was a pain management specialist, a chiropractor, an orthopedic and a neurologist, all in the same building, all on the same floor.

Everyone, regardless of their position in the car, would have the exact same injuries.

They would all be treated by the same doctors.

And as I recall, they were eventually busted in a massive like Rico case.

This is a thing that does actually happen.

Is it as big of a factor in the calculation of your rates as, let's say, just the cost of repair?

The fact that all of our bumpers are basically laptops attached to the front of our cars, such that there's no $150 fender bender anymore.

Every time you hit your bumper, it's a couple thousand dollars.

That's, of course, a much more substantial, contributor to your rate.

But that's also not unique to New York.

That is something that is statewide.

New York does have higher auto insurance rates in other places.

And I do think addressing fraud as the governor wants to do it will help.

It will shave around the edges.

I don't know how much people are really going to feel that.

I think there's other things to do.

But the provisions that the governor is seeking to address that specifically deal with lawsuits are two provisions that I am very well versed in the serious injury threshold and comparative negligence.

I'm going to try to do this quickly and not for people too much.

Okay, I have explained this roughly 1000 times over the course of my career in New York State.

You have no fault insurance that covers your basic economic loss up to $25,000 of your lost wages and medical.

You can buy above that.

And you should you should have insurance.

That's just a pro tip for everybody.

Doesn't cost that much and it covers you above that.

So if you're in a car accident, regardless of fault, you get that basic economic loss.

If you get more hurt than that, you exceed the $25,000.

The only way to sue for pain and suffering an additional economic loss is if you meet one of seven categories of injuries things like fracture, dismemberment, death, loss of a fetus, things like that.

The very last provision is something called the 9180 rule, which says that if you are disabled from your, usual activities of daily living for 90 of the 180 days following the accident, then you can trigger the serious injury threshold.

What that practically means is usually people with a traumatic brain injury, post concussive syndrome, the migraines.

That tends to be how we see it.

In 12 years of practice.

I established one case using the 9180 rule.

It is very rarely used, however, for that class of people who need to use it.

It is their only access to the system.

It is the only way they get in.

So the fact that it affects such a small group of people might be an argument for getting rid of it, but it's also an argument for the fact that it's not going to affect your rates in any meaningful way.

I don't even think it would be a rounding error.

I don't even think you would notice it if we got rid of the 9180 rule.

Except one day your mom gets in a car accident.

She has post concussive syndrome for three years and she can't, you know, participate in any of the things she was doing for you before.

She can't get access to that system.

The comparative negligence piece says that if you are more than 50% at fault for an accident, you can't get pain and suffering.

That means you are, making an illegal left.

I am speeding, your legal left is 80% of the accident.

-20%.

We both get hurt.

You can't collect pain and suffering as a result because you caused more of the accident.

The problem I have with that is there is no other area of law, philosophically, where a person's percentage of fault forecloses them from accessing certain remedies.

The system works fine.

There's absolutely no way this is a meaningful amount of money to affect your rate.

But I think that these two provisions are the places you see exploitation in these true criminal enterprise.

Staged accidents.

It is throwing the baby out with the bathwater to get rid of these, and will not actually translate to meaningful rate decreases for people.

So why would we harm legitimate consumers and people actually injured in car accidents?

If I'm not going to see that on my bill as the non-lawyer in the room, can I argue with you a little bit?

Absolutely.

Okay.

Because this is not my expertise.

You don't say.

Why?

If I am making an illegal move and I end up injured, why should I have any?

Support for for my recovery.

Because the other person was also wrong in this situation.

The other person was also.

I would be more wrong.

You were more wrong.

So I let's use a different example, a real case that I had a nine year old boy walks between two parked cars jaywalking across the street.

A speeding car hits him and he dies.

The jaywalker was more at fault.

He gets his family, gets nothing.

Oh, I see, I see, I see and I that's not even getting into our draconian wrongful.

That's like a really that I had that case again.

That was a real thing.

Oh man.

I'm really sorry.

First of all, it's awful.

That's a real thing.

And okay, I mean, like, I hear you there, I think the average person will hear that case and go there with you on that one.

The person turning left should never have turn left.

So I mean, like, I don't know I don't know how the public is going to see this one.

So but I'll tell you, here's the thing.

You're foreclosing the opportunity on the second case to deal with the first case that let the courts sort that out.

And if it's not going to translate into savings for you, meaningful savings, why are we doing it?

I also, as an aside, don't know that it's constitutional, but that's going to require far more information than I'm going to give right now.

But here's the thing.

There are other things that we can do that will have a far bigger impact.

One of the provisions, the governor, has in her budget, which I agree with in New York, you're required to pay out your no fault claim as an insurance company within 30 days.

If you're investigating fraud, it's really hard to make that full investigation in 30 days.

So she gives them a window to say, hey, if you legitimately think there's fraud, you can get a delay on that 30 day payment.

I think that's great.

I think that actually will help a little bit.

There's going to be a state police task force to investigate fraud.

You want to, you know, curb some of these true criminal enterprises.

Sure.

We should be having conversations with manufacturers about ways to reduce repair costs.

But I think another issue is the fact that in New York State, there is very, very little transparency over what is contributing to rate increase requests that go to the state for approval in auto insurance.

Right now, if you go online, you can see medical insurance applications and why they are asking for an increase.

You can go and look at utilities and see why they are asking for an increase.

If you try to search an auto insurer and see why they are requesting an increase, you cannot read their application.

So is there a proposal to make that transparent?

I am putting one in.

Okay.

Is there any groundswell for that?

I, I don't even have the LBD yet, but the conversations that I'm having is if you want to really make a difference in the the impact of car insurance on individuals in what we pay.

I mean, I just got my re-up for my six months and the number I received was eye popping.

Truly astounding.

Then we need to be able to assess what's contributing to that.

I was actually just on the phone with the superintendent for the Department of Financial Services.

New York State doesn't have a Department of insurance.

We have a Department of Financial Services that sees insurance, banking, some other things altogether.

And I asked her, are we still basing here locally in Monroe and Erie, our, theft rates on the key markets?

That was only a few years ago.

And if you look at what contributes to regional differences in car insurance rates, theft rates are a major factor.

And we had massive theft rates here about three years ago.

She said she doesn't believe so.

She thinks it's based on 24 rates.

I will tell you that from my conversations with brokers in all parts of the state, I have heard that those numbers go back further.

So I'm not convinced that we aren't seeing that.

And when rates do go down, when you see across the country rates going down, they don't go down for current premium holders.

They go down for new premium holders.

There is generally no mechanism for me as a current customer of a particular insurance company, to get a rate decrease.

I stay even or go up, but if I switch, that's how I'm going to save my 15% or whatever it is, because typically there is just a discount for switching.

So you're actually encouraging shopping among car insurance, companies because they offer different discounts to new customers.

I have some issues with the idea that we approve rate increases that don't necessarily get paid back to the premium holders for insurance companies that pay dividends to shareholders say, you know, I don't I don't want to prohibit that.

That's how insurance works.

Insurance a lot of people think, sorry, I'm on my soapbox.

Insurance isn't a shoe box where you put premiums in and you take claims out.

It's a finance company where you give them money.

They play in the stock market and they grow that money because that's part of how they keep their rates down.

They invest the money to make more money off of it so that they can pay out their rates.

And the the goal is to make more money than you pay.

These are for profit companies.

So I don't begrudge them that.

That's how the insurance market works.

That's always had the insurance market has worked, but we have to consider the fact that the premium holders, the premium payers, are the ones that bear most of the responsibility, and we have to figure out how to better address my.

Okay, so I grab a phone call on the subject.

You.

It sounds like you don't disagree that something should be done to try to address the fact that New York has pretty high auto insurance rates.

Of course, it's just the question is, is of remedies?

Yes.

Okay.

Keith, on the phone with Assembly member Jim Lunsford.

Go ahead.

Keith.

Very interesting.

So, especially with your guest comments.

There are many factors that play into, auto insurance rates, but, I remember a time when, injury attorneys could not advertise on TV.

And then you see the explosion of ads with, attorney saying they can get you the money that you deserve.

And that's a quote I have seen this firsthand by, my experience, volunteering over 11,000 hours in EMS.

When you get called for, motor vehicle collision, and you just know what the, occupants of the car are starting to lay the groundwork for when it's just, my rear fender bender.

And they have this huge amount of pain and you just know what's going on.

Would you support having an injury, attorneys or not, advertising in New York State again.

So I'm going to take this in two parts, and I'm going to answer the first one.

I worked for one of these, law firms that advertise, and I kind of don't like the commoditization of law, like where I have to advertise, just like I'm selling mattresses.

I don't love that.

I think it's hard to put that genie back in the bottle, but I kind of don't care.

I don't practice law anymore.

And I think that people have other ways of finding attorneys.

There's lots of states that don't allow that kind of advertisement.

I also think that that's an enormous cost to insurance companies as we level the playing field where no one could advertise, it would make it easier.

I do also want to say that there are prohibitions in New York State that if you find out someone was in a car accident as an attorney, you're not allowed to actively reach out to them for 30 days.

They have to reach out to you.

So you don't have literal ambulance chasers in New York.

I can't read about a, accident in the newspaper and then send a letter to that person.

That's not the law.

But because of the serious injury threshold that I discussed earlier, it is actually very challenging to bring a lawsuit for a car accident in New York, because in the 70s, we had this mass, influx of whiplash cases, soft tissue injury cases, and the courts were flooded.

You couldn't get into court.

So they changed the law and created no fault so that the vast majority of people who are injured, who go to the emergency room, they lose a few days of work.

Your insurance just covers that.

And there's only, I think, 11 no fault states.

I mean, I've heard some people suggest we get rid of no fault entirely, which I think would increase lawsuits because if you were to sue for every dime, though, I mean, you really want to talk about it.

You know what decreases car insurance?

Universal health care?

Because if I could take all of the health care costs out of your insurance, that would solve that problem.

But that's for another day.

The reality is, is that unless you have a broken bone, you, were dismembered.

You were disfigured.

Or this very edge case where you meet the 9180 rule.

You can't bring a lawsuit for more than your basic economic loss.

So it's even if you're crying about your neck in the car, unless you fail six weeks a week and get an MRI.

And I can see that you actually slipped a desk you need surgery for.

You're not getting that case in the court.

Okay, so you think that's an urban legend that that's just easily abused?

In the 70s it was easily abused.

And that before I was born, we fixed it.

And let me just get an email.

Thank you.

Keith.

And on the subject of ice, since we covered ice earlier, then what we'll do is we'll take a break, come back, we'll talk about other things, cause it turns out there's a lot of going on right now.

David writes to say, that so many Americans willingly accept employment by Ice is the best testimony I've ever seen.

That Ernest Hemingway was correct when he wrote his, in his book, For Whom the Bell Tolls.

There are many who do not know that they are fascists, but we'll find out when the time comes.

That is Hemingway quote I don't didn't know offhand.

I'm going to assume David is quoting correctly.

And that's a strong statement.

Are we hiring?

I mean, the culture that we described about with Ice, is that a result of hiring, quote unquote, the wrong people?

Is it, having poor standards?

Is this what Ice and the government want?

What do you see?

It's a combination of all three.

So I know people anecdotally who I know in my life who say, my brother in law, who failed the NYPD test three times, finally got hired by Ice, and he gets to live his dream, a high school bully who gets to bully professionally.

And he's exactly the wrong kind of person.

So I think sometimes ice has been the, institution of last resort for people who want to exercise authority over other people.

I also know people who are like, hey, I'm not going anywhere in my career.

The signing bonus is huge.

This seems like an easy enough job where I can make substantially more money than I am right now.

And this is the right decision for my family.

And I don't know that those people fully appreciated the situations they were going to be put in.

This is not what Ice was.

This isn't I mean, you can go back and have conversations about post 911 ice.

And again, the fact that this is only existed, since 2002, we successfully deported people before that, that I don't know that everybody who signed up for Ice realized that they were going to be, Trump's personal goon squad.

And now they are potentially stuck in a financial situation they can't get out of.

So I'm not going to write every single Ice agent, off or paint them with the same brush, but it has certainly created an opportunity for certain kinds of people with certain kinds of views to enact certain fantasies.

We're going to come right back with Assembly Member Jen Lunsford from district number 135, talking about what's going on in Albany, priorities in Albany this year, and answering your questions as well.

Coming up in our second hour, we're meeting a travel preneur a woman who was supposed to go on a girls trip, but then the trip fell through.

She went solo and formed her own business as a result.

Now she helps people see the world and her story is a remarkable one.

My colleague Raquel Stephen brings it to us as part of her focus this month, and local black leaders whose stories you might not know but should.

That's next.

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This is one of those hours where we kind of need to, but we're going to try to keep squeezing in for one here with Assembly Member Jen Lunsford, because there's a lot else going on in Albany.

You've been working on the issue of child care for years.

You and your colleagues have been hard at work on this.

There's been a lot of talk about, obviously, what happened in New York City, first week of January.

You've got the mayor elect and the governor standing together.

Now, what's going on in the rest of the state?

That's not New York City.

And are you are you happy with what you're seeing so far with child care?

Absolutely thrilled.

This is, yet again, a year where child care is going to be the crown jewel of this budget.

And, I want to applaud the governor for just including rest of state in her budget so that this didn't have to be the fight we had.

But the road map for achieving truly universal child care is something we've been working on for a few years.

There was a working group, and as this rolls out, we are being very deliberate as, you probably know, Monroe County has been, the recipient of, one of the awards to be a pilot program and where, I will say that I wish there was a little bit more guidance around that, because I think what's going to happen is you're going to have three different counties kind of doing wildly disparate things.

And I don't know, necessarily how much information we will derive from that, but it will certainly increase access in those counties, in different ways.

I mean, $20 million in Broome County goes a little further than $20 million in Monroe County.

But I'm optimistic.

And I think the big piece here, though, was the UK getting that rate increase for Yup'ik for those who don't know, universal pre-K in New York City was reimbursed at a $10,000 per pupil rate.

And today rest of state is only reimbursed at roughly $5,400 per pupil.

The governor's budget increases that rate to 10,000, creating a priority we've been fighting for.

And that's going to be a matter a massive game changer for, children and school districts that are trying to launch these programs.

So and there's this interesting question about why people are having fewer kids.

And we certainly know that that's true.

I mean, we're we're not at the replacement level.

I mean, and that's often Republicans who talk about their concern.

Most about that, not not only Republicans, but often that's a concern they raise.

They want more kids, bigger families, etc., etc.. And so I occasionally hear from Republicans and some of your colleagues in the Republican caucus come on this program and say, you know, the state can't be everything for all families.

We maybe can't afford everything that the governor is promising there.

We got to be really careful about that, that there is a dollars and cents component to this.

So how do you sort of square up, first of all, how far the state can go to help a child care and how much does that affect eventually the decision that families have or couples have to have kids or not.

You think, affordability is the number one reason people do not have children.

It is also one of the most common reasons people have abortions is that they can't afford children.

The you know, you have women in their 30s who already have three kids choosing to have abortions when they accidentally get pregnant because they can't afford another kid.

So if you are a pro-family Republican dealing with affordability issues around access to health care, child care, education, nutrition, these should be things you're doing.

Because the more you support that, the more people will have children.

That's just a fact.

When you look at things like Yup'ik, the same argument can be made around seventh grade.

Why do we pay for everyone's kid to go to seventh grade?

Why do I pay for everyone's kid to go to first grade pre-K has been demonstrated for decades to be an essential part of childhood education, and adding it in to the public school system as a, program that is provided is a natural continuation of our attempts to have a well-educated and cared for populace.

Have you told your Republican colleagues your view that, hey, if you support more funding for for child care in various ways, you're going to see the abortion rate go down?

I scream it from the rafters.

What do they say?

Generally there is a tut tutting.

If you are the sort of person who doesn't believe that, typically there's no response.

I think that generally speaking, they'll agree that if people were better supported, they'd have more kids.

But for people that are truly anti-abortion, they don't want people to have that option at all.

I think there's there's a cohort of people who are anti-abortion who also say, I'm pro personal responsibility.

You shouldn't be having kids unless you can afford kids.

And that's your choice.

That shouldn't be put on my backs.

My back as a taxpayer.

I think that it is shortsighted to view the entire cost of, say, children, children with disabilities, children who have, adverse childhood events and the economic cost we pay and increased Medicaid and increased people won't talk to you about youth crime.

You can address this in early childhood education by appropriately treating kids, by giving them the early intervention services they're legally, allowed to have.

They're legally required to have by, ensuring that people have access to quality child care so that, yo, no one wants to work anymore.

Why not?

Because women are our direct service providers are caregivers, our waitresses.

Low income service jobs are disproportionately borne by women, and when low income women can't afford childcare, the entire economy falls apart.

It is a pro economy.

Positive revenue, consideration to provide affordable childcare.

You mentioned Medicaid.

I want to ask you about Medicaid.

On the program last week, we had your colleague Stephen Hawley from the Republican side.

He talked about his view that this state is way too profligate in spending on Medicaid, said that, you know, you lump Texas and Florida together, and we're spending more than them.

I haven't done the math, but I okay, I mean, I didn't challenge him in the moment.

I assume we have a pretty high level of Medicaid spending vis-a-vis other states.

So I asked him, where do you want to draw the line?

Then what do you want to excise from what the state offers for Medicaid?

And he didn't have an answer.

He said he would need several months to work on that, but I invited him to come back and say, if you do that, I'd like to know.

I think it would be valuable to know where we're going to start cutting Medicaid, because his district and yours and many others, of course, have a lot of people on Medicaid.

Are we spending too much on Medicaid?

And do we need to narrow what the state offers for Medicaid?

I do not think we spend enough on Medicaid, because Medicaid is what pays for direct service providers to, care for your grandparent in a nursing home to take care of your young adult who lives in a group home, who care for, people who live at home to keep them out of the hospital.

Medicaid is the, funder for salaries for women who are disproportionately heads of household.

It lifts people out of poverty because those are the people that do that work.

Medicaid, while not ideal, is still cheaper to people than paying for, in market insurance.

That, is prohibitively expensive.

And it also just has the function of, you know, creating healthier people who can access health care.

Also, our hospitals rely on Medicaid.

When you cut the number of people who are on Medicaid, the overall reimbursement rates for hospitals go down.

So every time there are massive cuts of people off the Medicaid rolls, our entire health care system loses money.

And you might think, H.R.

one, the big beautiful bill, it's just going to take some of those freeloaders who could otherwise pay into the marketplace.

The have some the working poor, the people who are just above the poverty level to qualify for Medicaid.

They will just end up uninsured.

And when the, that population isn't insured, hospitals like Noah's or EF Thompson are rural safety net hospitals.

They will suffer.

They will close their emergency rooms, they will stop doing elective surgeries.

Others won't be open on the weekend.

And then what happens when those people need care?

They don't just not get care.

They come to strong.

They come to unity.

They come to our RH and you will go with your employer health insurance plan or your Medicare because you think you're having a stroke, or you have broken your leg and you will sit on a gurney for three days in the waiting room, because we will not have a system that can support all of the people who need care.

How much more should we spend on Medicaid?

We should ensure people at the rate that we are currently insuring them while also, raising rates.

I don't have a number right now, but I would say, we are probably looking at.

A few more billions, which again, we're dealing with a state that has $260 billion budget.

Billion.

Sounds like a scary number to people.

But when I talk to my nursing homes who say that in order to break even, in order to not be losing money, they need a 40% increase in their Medicaid rates.

And we've been getting them 6 or 7.

I'm saying, what costs more, putting, disabled and elderly people on the street and having them flood our emergency rooms in ICUs or paying a little bit more to ensure that they have a safe place to live.

So where's the money come from to add to it?

This is the problem, though, isn't it?

Because that's what we should do, and what we should do and what we can do are different things.

And this federal government has cut our femoral artery in a way that I can barely even explain in the short amount of time we have.

H.R.

one, when it passed, eliminated a waiver that we use for the essential plan in New York.

The essential plan is a program that is available through the ACA.

Only three states have it, but it ensures the population of people just above the Medicaid rate, people up to 250% of the poverty level.

And it also ensures, the allies population, which are legal, to be clear, legal immigrants who have not yet qualified for Medicaid, like pregnant women who struggle to wait five years for medical care, I found.

And children are and we are required legally to, ensure that population due to a lawsuit in New York called LaSalle.

So even if this completely disappears, we're still on the hook to provide care.

The loss of that waiver amounts to 7 or $8 billion.

And while we can limp along for a little while, if we can't replace that waiver with another waiver, we are going to have a hole blown in our Medicaid budget in the middle of the year.

That's going to have drastic effects on every single person's access to health care, which is also why I support the New York Health Act, because this is dumb.

This is not how anything should work.

We should have socialized health care.

We should have single payer health care.

Is there a way to stop that whole from being blown in the budget?

If the federal government will give us a 1331 waiver, we can.

Who decides?

Oh, that would be, the federal, Department of Health who will determine if we get that waiver or not?

And we'll find out sometime in the summertime.

What are you expecting?

We are planning to receive it.

Okay, okay.

Last couple of minutes, the new mayor of New York City was very critical of Governor Hochul this week, talking about, his frustration that she will not get on board, what you might call a super wealth tax, an ultra millionaires tax.

And Mayor Mamdani says he's going to have to put in for a bigger tax increase in New York City because the state won't do more.

Do you want to see a super wealth tax?

So I have always supported a tax on millionaires, and that's that's people who earn $1 million per year or more.

It's a shocking number of New Yorkers, by the way.

We're not talking about people who have $1 million in assets or people who have a home that's worth more than $1 million.

I mean, your income is $1 million a year.

I'd be hard pressed to find someone in my district who earns $1 million a year.

But considering that that population received a tax break from HR one, to the tune of roughly what, $12 million, I think we could get that money back.

I would like to see that money come back to us.

I know that some of my colleagues support a, wealth tax or, high earners, tax bracket that starts lower than that.

I do not support going down to say, $300,000 a year, which is what some of the bills do.

I think that's too low.

But $1 million a year or more?

Absolutely.

The governor says we don't need it.

Why do you think the governor says, I don't know, because we need to do.

Okay.

Well, I think the governor is also endorsing some of the concern that eventually you start chasing people out of the state.

Are you worried about that?

Considering that, both, new Jersey and Massachusetts have higher, max tax brackets than we do for that class?

I'm not terribly concerned about it.

I know that people will say, oh, we're losing people to Florida.

But if you look at pure numbers, more people leave New York for Massachusetts, Connecticut and New Jersey collectively than they do to Florida.

So people aren't moving because of personal income tax.

They wouldn't move to those other high tax states.

If that's what's happening.

They're moving because of affordability.

They're moving because they can't buy houses in New York City.

Our time is up.

But, you know, it turns out there's a lot going on this year.

And I hope you'll come back soon I will.

Assembly Member Jen Lunsford from district number 135.

It's part of a series of conversations that we're having with elected leaders in response to the governor's proposal, what they think of the proposal, what they want to see, what they don't want to see, and we'll see what happens to it's always an early budget, so we'll have plenty of time to digest it.

Now it'll be around April 1st, and then we'll we'll talk again.

Thanks to Assembly Member Lunsford.

More connections coming up in a moment.

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