From WXXI news.

This is connections.

I'm Evan Dawson.

This hour, we're continuing our series of conversations with New York state lawmakers, elected leaders, giving you a chance to interact with them.

New York State recently passed a budget, and we're talking about what was in it, what was not.

We're talking about what state leaders want to achieve next, what their priorities are.

And this hour, we're glad to be joined by Assembly member Josh Jensen sharing his perspectives on the budget.

Everything from taxes, childcare, affordability, health care, economic development, and more.

Josh Jensen represents Assembly District number 134.

Right before the program began, I was trying to tell you the I screwed up your microphone.

Yeah.

Now it's got to come down an inch.

Look at this.

Look, if you're whether you're watching on YouTube, this is senseless.

Well, that's when you have somebody who's seven foot three on before me.

It's going to throw it right off.

Patrick is I don't think he's seven three, but he might be close.

I watched him when he came down the stairs, and I laugh all the time because he had to like he had.

He looked like a draft, trying to drink water coming through the doorway because he's just so tall and going through the doorway.

Like you can tell this is an older building because he he definitely had to dip down.

Yeah, yeah.

Yeah.

This, he's the tallest person who's been in the studio in a long time.

You're a normal height.

Yeah, I was six.

The year were six.

I'm right around six.

Five.

I can't remember which comedian wrote the joke, but he's.

He always said I'm between five seven and six three, depending on what convenience store I live.

So.

But no, I'm.

I'm right around.

Yeah.

Right around six, five.

Welcome, by the way.

Thank you for making my picture.

Any time, to.

I'll start with this here.

I mean, you're is a member of the minority caucus.

It's going to be it's always a challenge when you're working in Albany and you know, you're up against it on a number of, issues.

But at the same time, there are places where you're going to find crossover support, bipartisan support.

And we're going to talk about some of those issues in general.

Is there a headline that comes out of this budget to you?

Do you say, hey, this is this is the big this is the thing that I think is most important.

This is a good thing.

This is what I'm worried about.

And yeah, I mean, certainly this this was a weird budget year.

Not just because it was close to six weeks late.

But it wasn't really.

There wasn't a big outstanding thing that that sucked all the oxygen out of the room, like we've had the previous four budgets that that I've been a member of the Assembly for.

And that was the biggest change this year.

But the thing that was really the most surprising thing for me this year was how many of the budget bills I voted for, for your listeners, the New York State budget, just not one beautiful bill that gets passed at not one big beautiful.

No, but it's it's it's ten separate pieces of legislation.

And we have a separate vote on each of those pieces of legislation.

And I actually voted for five of the bills this year, which is more than I usually do.

And it was mainly because, you know, when I went door to door last year asking for the people of Greece to put their faith in me to, to be their voice for another two years.

One of the big things, the biggest thing they talked to me about was affordability.

There was something that the governor, when she unveiled her budget proposal, really put, a bullet point on.

And in this year's budget, we actually saw the state taking steps to look at issues of affordability.

Do they go as far as they probably should or could?

No.

But when the state takes steps in the direction that, legislators like myself, from both parties have been calling for, and more importantly, the people of our state have been calling for?

I think that's that's a good thing.

And we should, work to say, listen, this is the path we should be going.

And while doing that, by having the highest amount of spending in state history was something that I think was, a little surprising, but good to see.

Hold on.

Okay.

And so let's get a little more specific.

And when it comes to affordability, so you're talking to constituents.

Affordability is a problem.

What with food, with housing, with the cost of supplies.

If you're building something with pretty much everything.

Right.

Yeah.

I mean, the thing the most and this is the thing is that I think people's frustration with affordability is really rooted in frustration.

By and large, they get their property tax bill.

They're frustrated by that.

They go to Wegmans or they go to Tops, or they go to any grocery store and they see the price of produce.

They're frustrated by that.

They see the cost of cereal going up.

They're frustrated by that.

They look at their, paychecks.

They're frustrated by the taxes that are coming out.

But all in all, it's frustration.

And what I hear more often is like, it's hard to be a New Yorker.

It's tough, especially when they hear from people who live in Tennessee, North Carolina, Florida, other states that are seemingly viewed as as no tax, low tax havens.

I get a lot of people who I represent saying like, why should I stay here anymore?

Because they think they see opportunity elsewhere.

And I think more and more the state can do more, has to do more to show people that we have opportunity right here in New York.

And whether that's here in Monroe County, the Finger Lakes, the North Country, Southern Tier, New York City, Long Island, it doesn't matter.

We need to make people understand that they can live a comfortable life.

They can live an affordable life.

They can live a life of opportunity.

No matter what color you are, no matter what age you are, no matter what region of the state you call home.

And so when it comes to affordability, what has what is in the widow's in these budget bills?

Yeah, that is designed for that.

And yes, take me through good and bad and anything else.

Yeah.

So the one I mentioned, I voted for five of the budget bills this year, and one of the ones that I voted for for the first time, I think, in my five years was the revenue bill normally because there is some sort of tax increase in that this year, that was not the case.

This year's revenue bill, we saw a middle class tax cut.

Now, was it the largest middle class tax cut in the state's history?

No, but it has brought the middle class tax rate for earners, joint filers below $323,000.

It brought it to the lowest tax rate in about 70 years.

And it wasn't a huge cut.

You're not going to, you know, you're not going to do your filing next year and think, oh my goodness, look at all the money I have now.

But it's something.

And anytime we can return money back to people and and that's the thing we talk about tax rates.

But we really have to talk about tax takes because tax rates are just a percentage.

But what people actually see is the money that tax they're taking out of the money that they've earned.

And I think that's where a lot of that frustration boils to.

But they don't understand it because politicians like myself are always saying, well, this is the tax rate.

We're doing this.

It's percentages, blah, blah, blah.

What happened?

Do you think the Democrats thought there were tax increases and you just fooled them?

No, I mean, I think you look at last year's elections, especially at the federal level, and we saw that affordability was, essentially what drove a lot of people's voting behavior.

And I think, shockingly, politicians respond to, demands of the people they represent.

And I think when we do, that is a way that this is something in New York that I've heard people calling for that we represent.

It's I think finally we've kind of taken onus on that.

Now, that was only possible because we saw greater, levels of sales, tax revenue and other money coming into the state than we had before.

So we had that flexibility.

But I'd much rather see us saving that money with tax cuts than choosing to spend it on reoccurring programing.

That's going to need reoccurring funding.

Now, getting past my snarky comments about your colleagues in the Democratic caucus, let me ask you a real serious question.

The certainly, there's still a lot of Democrats who want to see more aggressive taxation on the wealthiest New Yorkers.

Whether you're making $1 million in new revenue a year, 4,000,005 million more, etc., Governor Hochul has said that she is not going to go for that.

But there's plenty of Democrats who want to go in that direction.

I suspect you do not want to go in that direction.

Well, and that's the thing we we saw in that same bill.

We saw the millionaires tax that's already on the books extended.

So we didn't raise the amount of money.

We just said, okay, was due to sunset.

We're going to extend it for me, a tax that's already on the books, we're going to extend for me was, you know, was was something not objectionable?

I don't have a ton of millionaires calling my office every day, asking me to cut their taxes.

I also don't have any of them calling me and telling me to raise their taxes.

Okay, I be honest, I don't talk to a lot of millionaires on a daily basis.

But that is, I think.

And this is what Texas is the price you pay to live in a civilized society.

And, you know, somebody always told me there was a John F Kennedy quote that I don't think it's real, but I'm going to pretend it it's for for the money.

But the crisis is crisis at hand dictates the appropriate response.

And if you want services, if you want things, they cost money in an office, in a civilized society.

You've got to pay for that in the way we pay for it is through taxes.

Now, what I think we can do a better job in New York is making sure when we have that tax take, we're spending the people's money in the most efficient and effective manner.

You're sure you're a Republican, though, right?

Yes.

Okay.

I'm in New York State Republican.

You're a New York state Republican.

Okay.

So so this bill and and and that's not to interrupt, but just going when I was on the town board in Greece, I would go door to door and I'd have a lot of people complain about the taxes in the town of Greece.

I'd say, yeah, but this is what we get for the service.

You look at our community in Senior Center, it's amazing.

You look at the program we have.

You had the best plowed streets in Monroe County.

It's going to be in the town of Greece.

You want to make sure that happens.

It costs money to provide that service.

Now, where my Republican conservative viewpoint is, is that you only should take the money you need and no more depending on what you need it for, because you might have to outlay something for future.

Sure.

Yes.

But you take it for what you need for the programs that are out there.

And what the people are calling for.

But you also have to have a cost benefit analysis.

Is the money you're spending really worth it?

But but it's interesting because I think part of what you're doing is you're trying to connect for people the taxes they're paying, whether it's at the local level, the state level, etc., to the services they're getting or should be getting or want to be getting and I think a lot of people are struggling to see that connection.

And I'm not saying that connection is not there.

I'm saying that sometimes it does require, making sure people do see the totality of this is how we're spending your money.

This is why we think it's wise as opposed to, feeling disconnected from that or feeling like I'm just not getting a return on this investment.

And that's one of the things where I've been a little critical of the way the state spends their money a little sometimes in the economic development perspective, we always look, it seems like first shot at the biggest, sexiest, programs and projects that are coming to the state, you know, spending billions of dollars, hundreds of millions of dollars to bring in these employers who are going to maybe create thousands of jobs or hope to, you know, do they always know?

Are there clawbacks sometimes.

And those projects are important.

You look at what's going on in micro in Syracuse.

That's that's a big deal.

It's having a big impact on right locally.

But one of the philosophies I talked about is, yes, we need the macro, but we should also be using economic development dollars on micro projects.

You look at parts of the city of Rochester where if you build community infrastructure, a neighborhood park in the state is playing a larger role and saying, hey, listen, we think we can build up vibrancy in impoverished areas of the state, whether they're urban, rural, in between, maybe economic development.

It's not just based on jobs, it's based on quality of life.

And if people have a more comfortable form of living, they're going to want to come here.

Which goes back to the whole thing about let's give people reason to come to New York, stay in New York.

So, I want to talk to you more about affordability in different places.

We're gonna talk housing a little bit here.

But just in general, one of the big one of the big reasons that your colleague on the Democratic side or on Mamdani might end up being the next mayor of New York City is affordability.

He's been talking about, creating city or publicly run grocery stores.

He's been talking about housing and really aggressive ways, I suspect, in ways that maybe not perfectly aligned with where your ideas are.

And what government should or shouldn't be doing.

But he's talking about, I think, where you and he would agree is that people are not feeling like they can afford enough, and that there has to be some kind of change.

Now, the solutions might be different.

Number one, how much do you interact with Mamdani at all?

I mean, even from a different parties.

Yeah.

No.

So we we actually we were both elected in 2020, which is funny that with the exception of, Harry Bronson, the entire Monroe County delegation was all elected in 2020.

And we came in together.

And so when it was, you know, the first two years where Covid was limiting the amount of legislators in Albany, we actually spent a lot of time, it was actually there be card games with, with Zoran and Mike Lawlor, which is they love the ugly.

They look very similar.

But yeah, I mean, he's he's a very personable individual.

He's, he's he's very connecting.

He's he's always got a smile on his face.

You know, you see him in the hall?

I've been calling you Mr. Mayor for the past three months.

When I see him, I.

When I saw him in Albany.

You didn't think he was going to be doing it until the end?

You.

No.

But that is.

But he he had a message that resonated with the electorate in the Democratic primary.

And when you have so many people, young people especially turn out he was able to find a way to connect with them on a message that they were receptive to.

Now, I think he's a very intelligent, elected official, politician, that he was completely, be lining for the affordability argument.

I think some of the other beliefs he may have that he's talked about in the past, that he didn't necessarily put out there on his great comms operation, I think will be something that a lot of New Yorkers, both in the city and across state, would be concerned with.

But you talk about an issue, you know, city run supermarkets.

So I don't think that's the government's job.

However, I don't live in a place like New York City, where sometimes the only place where you can get food is in a bodega on the corner where fresh fruit and fresh produce is a hard commodity to come by.

I have a Wegmans three minutes from my house, and I have three in my town, so there's not that supermarket grocery store doesn't like me exist in New York City.

I've never lived in New York City.

I don't know what day to day life is in the five boroughs.

I know what it's like in the town of Greece, in the Monroe County.

So he's got a message that resonates.

Do I think it's the right message for the entire state?

I do not, okay.

I mean, it's going to be interesting to see for sure.

And one of the things we talked about last hour, I mean, if he is, if he is elected and there's still a ways to go to November, we're going to learn a lot about whether these ideas work well.

And a lot of the things that he's saying he's going to do, he needs the state legislature and the governor to sign off on it.

Interesting.

So he can freeze the rent on the rent stabilized apartments in New York City.

He could do the city run grocery stores, everything else he's going to have to get state approval to do in.

The governor has already said, yeah, that she's not on board with some of the tax increases he wants to do.

My guess is the majority of the majority, would have concerns about those same issues, especially in an election year.

So I think it'll be interesting to see how, you know, you campaign in, in poetry and you govern in prose.

So it'll be interesting to see how if he is elected come November, how he makes that transition, from from poetry to prose.

I think it was Mario Cuomo who first said that.

But I could be wrong.

But regardless, you know what they should name after.

Name a bridge after him.

Very good.

See?

That's cheeky.

Now, you were elected in 2020, so you start in January 2021.

I'm trying to remember Andrew Cuomo was governor until he resigned.

When?

In the middle of 21st August.

Yeah.

August 21st.

So in your first year.

So when you went to Albany, he was still the governor?

Yeah.

Somebody recently in Democratic politics said to me, he said, nobody likes Andrew Cuomo.

A lot of people fear him.

Was that your experience?

I'll be honest with you.

I mean, I know you're Republican.

You're going to hang out with them.

Well, the the next interaction I have with Andrew Cuomo will be the first will be the first one that I've had as a in the summer when I worked for Joe Rowback.

You know, I would have when he came to town, you know, we'd cross paths or he'd say hi when I was with Joe.

But as an assemblyman, I maybe met him when he came to the lakefront when I was a councilman.

And there's a flooding along the lakeshore.

Yeah.

I may have met him at one of those, but as a member of state government, there was never any interaction.

But I'll also, you know, I have a great relationship with Governor Hochul.

Regional team.

With the Department of Health, who, you know, being the ranking member of the health department.

I interface with them a lot, you know, a lot of state agencies, but there's also not a lot of conversation.

Between the governor, the current governor and myself, which is probably, because of the different initials after our names.

Yeah.

I mean, maybe so, I'm just curious to know if that was Andrew Cuomo's reputation.

Why?

Why would you think he was going to win in New York City just because of political clout and name?

I'm going to be honest with you, I was shocked he even ran in the first place.

Yeah, because he always came off to me as somebody who was hyper concerned about reputation and always never showing weakness.

And potentially losing would be the end of his career, as we're probably going to see.

So I was I was almost surprised he did it in the first place.

It's like the old story.

I feel like I'm just telling anecdotes a lot today, but it's like the story of the prince who goes around and says, you know, one day I will be king.

You don't want to be the king.

You always want to be the prince, because you one day you will be king.

That's almost like when I thought Andrew Cuomo would be like, I could run for mayor.

I'm not.

I could be the governor.

I'm not going to run again.

I could do this, I could do this.

I could run for president.

Correct.

And never actually pull the trigger, because you don't want to open yourself up to embarrassment and failure.

So there's cachet in being the guy who could be anything.

I, I would think so, but there's risk in losing it.

No, that's that's a really interesting analysis of that.

We're talking to this.

Let me remember Josh Jensen from district number 134.

Let me grab a phone call from Jack in Greece who is on the line with us.

Hey, Jack, go ahead.

Hi, Evan.

Representative Jensen, couple of questions for you and a couple of thoughts.

I can recall it was a couple of years ago that the New York State Legislature was going to investigate the declining population of our state.

We're losing representation in DC because we have had a declining population.

I don't recall seeing the results of that.

And I wonder if you could give us an update of that and let us know what changes you've made as a result of that.

But to continue, the I know this is not under your control.

I understand that, but, Medicaid costs is included in the great, big, beautiful bill that's working its way back to the to the House, for approval.

But as we look at the impact of us and say, my, the impact on me, your impact on others in New York State, like me, there in the middle class, and we're looking at, if Medicaid costs are removed from people and I don't want to hit a political answer because the reality is hospitals are going to have to take care of these people.

We're not in some third world country, but we're going to just let people suffer.

So they're going to take care of people that are seriously ill.

They're going to go to emergency rooms, which is going to drive up costs for the for the hospitals.

So as a result, it might not be tomorrow, might not be six months, but what's going to be the impact on my insurance cost, my health care insurance?

I carry health care insurance and it's very expensive.

And so, you can't ignore that fact.

It's going to show up and hit people like me.

The wealthy people are going to pick up the cost because they'd rather pay for lawyers to find ways to find loopholes.

Now that the IRS has been defanged, they don't have the resources to go after the wealthy.

It's not going to happen.

The burden is going to fall on people like me.

So, and also the national debt, the Republican Party has decided that it's okay to raise the national debt by $5 billion so we can give this huge tax, trillions.

Yeah.

If $5 trillion, I'm sorry, trillion dollars.

And, that's going to raise the cost for all of us.

And, I just don't get it.

How you want to hand over a bag of money in cancer support that.

So, Republican representative, my representative, how you can stand there and support that when we know it might take a while for that to show up.

But as we watch, our credit rating could go down, which it was threatened to go down just recently.

When you when you add all of this up, how am I going to be better off long term?

All right, let me just jump in.

I'll, let's work backwards here.

Now, Assembly Member Johnson is a state, representative.

You didn't vote on the big beautiful bill?

No.

Okay, no, but I will say.

And, Jack, you know, Jack is one of my 134,000 favorite constituents.

So I appreciate him calling in.

And I'm not going to give you a politician answer because I'm not a politician.

I'm a public servant.

But I agree, the the the National that I have tremendous concerns about.

One, it's it's saddling my kids, my grandkids, future generations with unsustainable financial insecurity.

We talk about people want services, things cost money.

But when you're trillions of dollars in debt, future generations are going to have a harder time fulfilling their obligations societally if they have that debt hanging over their head.

Additionally, our debt is a huge national security risk.

When you have hostile nations like China buying up our debt, they can turn off the switch and call in that debt anytime they want.

And so I do have tremendous concerns about the country's debt load.

I'm not a federal member of Congress.

I don't have a say on negotiating with the president, with the Senate, with the speaker of the House, thank goodness.

But I do have concerns.

And I do have the same concerns on the impacts of Medicaid, something that I've made clear to my friends in the federal government.

Being the Assembly ranking member on the health committee, pretty much health policy is the thing I focus on the most during legislative session.

And Medicaid is a critically important social safety net.

And the state in this year's budget spends $126 billion on Medicaid.

57.5% of that Medicaid spend in New York comes from the federal government.

So any reduction in federal resources coming for that program is going to affect us.

I think one of the things that we've seen, shockingly, the politics being played by both sides, but especially when we hear a lot of the doom and gloom, it is the worst case scenario that if everything happened as bad as it could, this is what it would be.

It would be about an $8 billion impact to New York.

However, part of that is just $8 billion coming from what the federal government gives us.

One of the big populations that would be affected by the action in Congress would be to do with legal immigrants in New York.

Right now, there's about 730,000 of those individuals who receive health care through Medicaid funding.

About half a million of them would come off the federal payment system if the bill passes today or tomorrow, whenever they're going to vote on it.

However, that doesn't mean they go complete without health care.

A two, 2001 court case says that the state is obligated to provide them with health insurance.

So even though there's not federal money coming for those half million people, the state will have to pick up the dime for that.

And that was one of the concerns I had with the budget that we weren't doing enough to safeguard for the rainy day.

If these cuts do come to fruition.

How many people do you expect to be impacted on Medicaid?

So the governor's office and the Department of Health are saying 1.5 million in the state in the state.

That includes the half a million I just said.

But it also doesn't take into effect the biggest part of the population, which is the work requirements, which would mandate that people who certain people who are on Medicaid would have to either be looking for a job, working, going to school, actively volunteering for 80 hours a month, or caring for a small child.

The state has not provided any data on how many of those 1.5 million New Yorkers would satisfy the existing work requirements, so we don't have a true number about the impact.

And if people are adhering to those requirements, then the state continues to get the Medicaid funding.

So what we're getting a lot from the state capital is the worst case scenario.

The reality is going to be, I believe, not nearly as impactful, but I also understand why people are concerned, especially our hospitals, not nearly as not nearly as impactful as in not as many people losing Medicaid coverage for the reasons you're describing.

And, I'm just trying to make sure I understand your level of concern.

So you think it's not going to be as bad as we've been kind of told, but some people could be affected.

I think it's inevitable when, you know, when you're taking potentially up to $8 billion out of a program and you are having because the way the work requirements work is every month, the state has to provide verification.

There could be people who fall through the cracks.

That's inevitable.

In a state of 20 million people, that's going to happen.

There's going to be hiccups.

And so I think that's a concern that it might not go as smoothly as possible.

I don't think the number is going to be as high.

But I also think this is why this as a state and this is something I've been calling for for five years, is that we should be doing more to rightsize our existing Medicaid system.

And if that means providing premium assistance for people on, buying insurance on the marketplace, I think we should be doing more things to get people off of Medicaid having true eligibility screening.

That would have lessen the burden, that we're now potentially facing on the subject of New York state spending on Medicaid, this is Robert in Fairport.

Hey, Robert, go ahead.

Yeah.

Thanks for taking my call.

Hey, one thing that really needs to be said about Medicaid is New York is the spending champion when it comes to Medicaid spending, the state portion of Medicaid spending.

And this is according to the, Empire, justice.

Let me see.

It's, 10% of center, $48,500 per capita.

That's double the national average of $835.

And not only that, the gap has risen.

If you looked at this gap in 2019, the gap between, the, the New York state and the next highest state has expanded since that time.

And the national average, it's gone from 61% to 82%, between 2019 and 2023.

So this we're spending an insane amount of money on Medicaid.

There seems to be no, effort to try to regain the sense.

Well, yeah.

And that's one of the things that we do in New York, not just, you know, you look at the population is that we have a larger population, but we still spend twice as much, I think, as Texas.

And Florida combined.

And they have twice the population we do where I think are Medicaid and I haven't studied their their Medicaid system in depth.

But we do have a very generous Medicaid system in what it covers.

And we continually in the Health Health Committee and on the floor vote to expand what could be covered.

And they come is is one off piece of legislation is very hard.

When they come before us, when you hear from populations who could be affected to say, well, I don't want to grant Medicaid coverage for that.

And it seems like every every health committee meeting, I say, well, this is it.

I'm not doing any more Medicaid expansion.

Then something comes up like, well, that makes a lot of sense.

I'm going to vote for that one.

But that is one of the things that we cover a tremendous amount of things through our Medicaid system.

But the also the problem is that we don't actually fully fund anything.

You know, if a pediatrician accepts more than 25% of their paramedics as Medicaid payers, they risk their doors closing.

I think the Eastman School of Dental, Eastman Dental School has a 36 month wait for cleaning for Medicaid population, 54 months for dental procedures.

And a lot of that is because the reimbursements are so bad, that it doesn't make sense to take Medicaid payers within the paramedics.

And so that's where the and I don't want this to be the case, but I think I'm hoping that if this is the case where we do see the state affected by the federal action, that maybe next year there's enough oxygen in the room to say, let's actually do a real thorough look at the state's Medicaid system and figure out how we can make it better, how can we make it more effective, and how can we make it more efficient?

Does that mean covering less procedures?

I don't things I don't know, but I think that's I think.

The New York state legislators in the Senate, in the same way we've two year terms, the governor has a four year term.

Any widespread, structural changes to our Medicaid system are going to take time and they're going to be politically difficult conversations to have.

And it's just the nature of people who are in elected office.

They don't want to do those things.

They don't want to do the hard things.

Some of us do, but a lot of us don't.

And especially when you're having to, you have 24 months to to do the job that you've been trusted to do it.

It's tough to sink your teeth into these well, and then you're running for reelection again.

So it's easier to expand coverage than to tighten coverage.

Maybe it's it's easier to expand coverage for things than it is to actually look at the system and make sure you're doing it in a efficient, effective manner.

Would you agree with Robert in Fair Ports description, that New York State spends an insane amount of money on Medicaid?

I mean, you look at us spending $126 billion out of a $254 billion budget.

Almost half of our state budget is spent on Medicaid.

I would say that it is an insane amount of money.

Yes.

After we take our only break, I've got some more.

Your feedback for Assembly member Josh Jensen.

We'll talk a little bit more about health policy.

We're going to ask the Assembly member if he, if he was running the government, which he is not, as a member, as a Republican in Albany, it's always an uphill battle.

But what is on the health policy list that either is happening or in his eyes, should be happening?

We'll talk with him about that.

There is a recently passed budget.

This is a part of our series of conversations with elected leaders.

And Josh Jensen represents Assembly District number 134.

We're right back on connections.

I'm Evan Dawson.

Thursday on the next connections, a proposed project in Genesee County has been creating buzz, as reported by my colleague Gino Fanelli.

It's the Western New York Stamp Project, and it's a controversial tech hub.

We'll talk about it in our first hour.

In our second hour, Rochester City Council member Mary Lucien joining a panel of colleagues talking about the recently passed city budget.

Talk with you Thursday.

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This is connections.

I'm Evan Dawson.

Let me get through more of your feedback before we jump back into health policy.

Had a question from a listener, and this dovetails with a conversation we had, I want to say, a month ago, it might be two months ago now on this program, about Francesco's law that would establish violations for the failure to safely store rifles, shotguns and firearms in the presence of a minor or a prohibited person.

It would require the Office of Gun Violence Prevention to collect and analyze stats and other information and data with respect to injuries or deaths of minors, resulting from failure to safely store a firearm, raffle, or a shotgun.

And we talked to pediatricians and those who are supporting it.

And from what, just looking up the state database, I saw you as a no vote on Francesca's law.

Can you tell me about that?

Yeah, I think so.

Francesco's thought was was an interesting one.

Because it came up and it came towards the end of session, so didn't go through the normal committee process, which that's something I already we have a limited committee process is we don't have hearings like other states do.

So there's not a lot of time to get, witness testimony, impact testimony.

And it came up very quickly.

But when I was reading the bill and I was reading, the existing law and what the bill did, I didn't see a whole heck of a lot of difference between what the bill was doing and what the law already was.

It was really just tweaking it around the edges and whenever possible, taking the time to write new regulations have, DC CJS have to re, reimagine existing regulations when already we have almost identical language on the books.

I thought it was going to be a lot of government time for something that wasn't a drastic change that that we have to ensure that we're keeping children safe, especially when we're talking about soaring, storing firearms in your home.

You want to keep it out of the hands of children.

I know one of my colleagues talks about all the time about, you know, children's thumbs are too weak.

And so a lot of the gunshot wounds come because they're they're trying to use the the pressure to pull the trigger.

And it's facing themselves.

And that's a story that resonates with me.

But on that bill, I didn't see how it would do anything drastically different to improve safety of children than what we already had on the books, which we already have some of the strongest gun control legislation in the country on the books.

Okay.

And, got a question about Snap.

Wanted to know if you agree with some Republican efforts to roll back what snap covers.

Now, let's again, we may be mixing federal and state and whatnot.

So I get it.

As the only Republican, currently serving in legislative office in the state or federal government from Monroe County.

I also understand that this is sometimes the the burden I carry on on, in our community about responding for federal issues.

People will ask you about it, right?

Yeah.

I will say this, that email, reminded me of a piece I read.

I'm just pulling it up now from April in the Atlantic with this headline, Republicans are Right about soda and Nicholas Flor co wrote a piece, that said public health groups are tying themselves in knots over a Republican crackdown on sugary drinks and basically concludes that this should be a common ground place that Republicans and Democrats should be able to come together and say that government benefits to to purchase food are not a bad thing.

But if you are purchasing food that is causing you health problems, that is a bad thing.

And soda should be at the top of that list and soda should not be covered by snap.

Do you want to weigh in on that, or do you think that's a no?

I mean, I think I think there has to be more rhyme or reason.

I think snap should be going for healthy foods.

You look at what food banks, especially food link in our own community, the, the, the help that they're doing for people who have food insecurity, I think is tremendous.

But we should be focusing on the healthiest foods fruits, vegetables, other produce, healthy grains, things like that.

And I'm not I don't want to parrot RFK Jr bite, you know, make America Healthy again.

But I think we can all do a better job of of making sure we're eating the healthiest food.

I'm a prime example.

You look at me on the on the YouTube broadcast, I don't look like the healthiest person which the health rankings other ironic, but.

And I think that's something that my own family struggles with.

I you know, I have a Diet Coke with lunch every day and with dinner.

So it's I think snap.

It's something I don't I'm not getting up in arms or upset about limiting what snap money can be spent on.

Okay.

So I hope that covers that from listeners there.

Joel wrote in to ask about he says, is new nuclear power in this budget?

It was not in the budget.

The governor did give it direction to Nyserda to build out New York State's nuclear generation capacities.

There's an indication that she's going to act as, nice.

So which is that I think that's the acronym, the state's power generation, to look at building a new nuclear power plant in upstate that is something that I support is the cleanest, greenest form of energy, provides the most power.

Wow.

Well, more than, solar or wind.

We already have nuclear in this community in upstate New York.

The community, and a lot of the communities that already have it are asking for more that they will happily take a nuclear power generating plant in their community.

I think it's the right decision.

We should have never governor Cuomo should have never closed Indian, Indian point power plant.

Down in the Hudson Valley.

I agree, and we should be doing it.

Is there, by the way, is there political momentum for that?

It's actually no where the when the governor announced it a week ago or two weeks ago, she had more, platitudes from Republican elected officials than she did, Democratic elected officials.

Interesting.

So where do you think it's going?

I'm the new nuclear power plant.

I'd.

I've heard Oswego wants it to go along with the three.

They already have.

I heard Chautauqua County may want it.

You know, I don't know if Guinea has the capacity to expand for another, do you think it's going to get held up in political fights, or do you think that could happen?

I think it should happen.

I think it could happen.

And we have clean energy mandates.

This is the best way to accomplish it, if that's what the the New York state government wants to do, then this is the best way to do it.

All right.

This is Alan in Rochester on the phone next with Assemblyman Josh Jensen.

Go ahead.

Alan.

Hey, Mr. Jensen, I am, certified ombudsman.

And I work under the office of the aging, and I'm assigned to assisted living facility, and I'm concerned about the, the, Department of Health regulations regarding diet and the quality of food served.

And I think they have not been updated for close to 30 years.

And I wanted to bring that matter to your attention, basically.

No, I, I appreciate that.

I am the I think I'm the only member of the New York State Legislature currently serving who's ever worked in long term care.

I worked in a in a local nursing home.

And what I've always said is that our long term care air quotes industry, whether it's nursing homes, assisted living, is not in the 21st century.

That's the the actual physical space, the way we provide care, the food you're bringing up.

Some people do it better than others, which is an ombudsman you're probably seeing every time you go into a facility.

Depending on which facility you're in.

And, and so I think that's something where we had, a reimagining long term care task force that the legislature proved 3 or 4 years ago.

It has never met.

It was an act of the legislature.

The governor signed it.

She made us do a chapter amendment on it.

And then it's never been convened because we had this master plan for the aging to solve all this.

But if we would have actually followed through with the Master Plan for aging or not, the Master Plan, the long Long-Term Care Task Force, these are the things that subject matter experts would have been able to share with us.

And I continually and frustrated with the Department of Health and the governor's office, that that never actually came to fruition, especially since the Assembly minority appointee from that was somebody from our own community working in the Long-Term care field.

Anything to add their own?

Yeah, I guess is there any way, Mr. Jensen, that, I, as a citizen and as an ombudsman that I could somehow, encourage that committee to start meeting?

Well, I think it's actually even though it's never met, it's actually, already expired.

I think it had a two year, two year runway to provide recommendations to the legislature.

And it never met.

And the two years have gone up, but certainly I can, I'll make a note of this now.

And I'll make sure that I dig into it.

And whether we get an answer now or we wait till, the new session that I will get answers for you and contact his office.

I'm sure they'll be glad to hear from you.

And I say that honestly.

That's what they do.

Constituent service.

By the way, I just, I nursing homes a couple other points.

News10 NBC has done a series of reports on Waterview Heights that's up in Charlotte.

Is that just outside?

Just outside?

Just outside or just outside?

Have you seen those reports?

I did, and I did have a conversation with the with the Department of Health, the last week of session about the steps that they were taking.

I do have concerns.

I have constituents who have family members there.

I have constituents who work there.

I've heard from both employees, from family members, and from a couple of residents who live there, about the issues that are there.

That's something that I'm greatly concerned about.

And certainly seeing in touch with the Department of Health, I should mention I have been there and volunteered there myself, and I want to be transparent about that.

I mean, not often, but, I've been inside there.

And so that series of reporting was like a sledgehammer to me.

But it wasn't a surprise.

Yeah, I have to say.

And so, I think, you know, I should probably bite my tongue, having been in there, but, I think and this is one of the things that I, you know, I'm not going to I'm not going to talk out of school on on the conversation.

Yeah, I got you, I got you.

But that was one of the things where with the steps that is currently taking, I would like to know what other steps we have at our disposal to ensure that we're providing the best environment for the individuals who call that place home.

And I think that from every indication, I don't have a lot of confidence that it's going to improve on its own.

I think just, you know, having to say that they can't accept any more residents.

Yes, it will.

It will ease.

It will lessen the burden by having more residents there.

But that also provides a financial impact, which is going to hurt the ability to invest in the facility.

And also doesn't guarantee any improvement.

Yeah.

Kudos to Deanna Dewberry and News10 NBC for outstanding work, consistent work.

Wherever you are.

You deserve to get your medication on time.

You deserve decent meals, and you deserve a minimum standard of care.

That's all.

I'll just say.

Beyond that, just in nursing homes in general, how are things going?

Yeah.

So things could be better.

In last year's budget, we we passed an MCO tax, which I talked about on the floor is a legalized federal money laundering scheme.

It's where we were going to tax managed care organizations put their money up for a federal match, give them their money back with a little bit extra as a thanks for doing business, and then use the revenue from that to really fund Medicaid increases for nursing homes, assisted living, other providers.

The one of the concerns I had last year when we did it was that we had a presidential election coming in, no guarantee that a new administration, if it was Republican, would.

Keep the waiver for the three years time, as was unfortunately, that was the case.

And so right before we passed our budget, the federal government, CMS, and the Department of Health and the federal government said that they weren't going to fully fund the MCO waiver.

So we were expecting $3.7 billion in revenue over the terms of the waiver.

It's been reduced by $2 billion.

So 1.7 billion over the life of it through through next fiscal year.

And this is the money, this is the revenue we were using to provide increases for nursing homes.

And we have no backstop on actually how to ensure that these facilities and these providers are getting the money that we said they needed, that they've told us they desperately need.

And even then, it wasn't enough to actually fulfill what you just said about allowing these individuals in long term care to have a basic standard of living.

Because Medicaid only pays about $0.73 on the dollar in New York State nursing homes.

And that's something where they have to cover the cost of doing business, whether they're for profit or not, for profit, which means they're gonna have to raise costs on everybody else who's going there or find alternative revenue streams, which unfortunately is going to mean we're going to have nursing homes, especially in rural areas, close at a higher rate than what we've seen over the past decade.

And so what's the next step in dealing with this?

Just hope for a federal solution that I think I don't expect a federal solution.

So what can the state do?

I think that in this year's budget, we and this is something that I did not support, but we gave the Division of Budget Authorization to deal with to to move up to $2 billion of money for unexpected shortfalls.

The legislature has ten days to veto it, if you will.

I think we're going to have to come back in this session probably sometime in the fall, and we're going to actually have to make tough decisions as a legislature, as a state government, to deal with not having the money or the resources we thought we were going to have.

Mainly because we didn't spend and, we spent over a quarter of $1 trillion and we didn't keep anything extra in reserves, to make sure that we could fulfill all our obligations.

So what does it mean to deal with that?

I mean, does it mean to spend more?

Does it mean to to stop spending elsewhere and move money?

If you don't have enough resources, you you they're going to have to move money or you're going to have to cut services or you gonna have to raise revenue.

And I can't imagine the governor's going to want to make that decision all on her own, especially when she's going to have a credible challenge in next year's gubernatorial election.

Which of those three ideas is best for you?

That the legislature has a is a co-equal branch of government has a say in that I know, but like, do you want to raise revenue or do you want to cut services?

I'd have to I'd have to see what the proposal is.

Okay.

But but the status quo is not going to work.

I mean, we shouldn't tell people we're going to do one, two, three and then fail to do one, 2 or 3.

If we told people we've gone around, we've sent out press releases saying we did all these things then to not fulfill our obligation, our promise.

You're saying there's an obligation?

There's I think there's an obligation.

Okay.

I gotta move fast out here.

Early intervention is something that, as we've talked about in this program, is something that is personal to you.

And it's also very important to you.

And it's also something that seems to be bipartisan.

And yet, once again, nothing happens.

Diddly squat.

Diddly squat, diddly squat.

We did I think last year we did a study bill to look at figuring out what the true needs are.

Certainly it's going to be different based on where you are.

Certainly the workforce is different depending on where you are.

I think, you know, living here in Monroe County, having advocates like the Children's Agenda Roster, Hearing and Speech Center who are tremendous advocates to tremendous work, especially you.

After hearing a speech, they I think we have a greater understanding about what the need is here than maybe some other parts of the state.

Do.

But I think my hope is that study comes back sooner rather than later.

We actually know the true impact.

So we can go into next year, figure out what we actually need to do to solve the problem.

I did get a little frustrated at the health budget hearing, when I were supposed to be asking a question to Bridget Hurley, and I really just ranted for three minutes and didn't ask a question.

But the failure to solve the systemic failures of early intervention in New York state is probably the single most frustrating thing.

I've encountered in my five years in state elected office.

Isn't there bipartisan agreement?

Yeah.

On this issue?

Yeah.

And yet nothing happens.

No.

Who do you blame?

Everyone.

It's the governor's office, OMB, everyone.

I blame everyone, but I think this is where it's all difficult.

Is that the people who this is helping, they both literally and figuratively, don't have a voice.

We're their voice.

But it's not.

It's there's always something bigger or sexier or more crisis of the hour that kind of jumps ahead of them.

Which is frustrating because going back to the thing we talked about, you know, spending things cost money.

It's it's cheaper to spend money today than it is to spend it tomorrow.

And when you can spend money on early intervention, you're saving money down the line.

I had a conversation with about your speech about they don't have Medicaid.

They don't get reimbursed for providing, hearing aids for the Medicaid population.

So if they have to provide a hearing aid for somebody, there's no way to pay for it.

That's if that's not a failure, I don't know what is.

Let's talking six months, 12 months and see if anything changes.

My I might have less.

I might have higher peaks and a bigger bald spot in my head by then.

But.

And I apologize, Mr. Summer member, we're down to the last minute.

But but take this last minute and tell listeners what can be done about the cost of medicine.

I mean, I think this is one of those things where it's always you talk about the cost of health care.

Cost of medicine is you have a tremendous amount of competing interests.

You have the health plans, you have the hospitals, you have the doctors, you have the pharmaceutical industry, and you have the patients.

And so you're looking at, you know, five different pressure points.

And and nobody really wants to give up the high ground on it.

And so if we're really going to talk about the cost of medicine, everybody has to come down and sit at the table along with government and say, okay, how do we make this work?

Because the system we have, it's not sustainable.

You look at, you know, you look at the beds at our local hospitals.

They're overburdened.

They're they're overrun.

They look like mash units.

You go through there.

That's not acceptable.

You don't have places to safe discharge people.

We have to do something.

And I think that's where everybody has to kind of say, listen, we all have to give a little to ensure that everybody has access to health care.

And I think that is the the small the democratic way to do it is that that's all sit down together, not play favorites based on X, Y or Z.

Can something happen this year?

Oh no, probably not.

Next year hope would be next year.

But maybe that's part of a medicaid conversations.

One.

I want to thank Assembly member Josh Jensen, who was always generous with his time for this program, talking about the state budget, what's in it, what's not the priorities he would like to see?

It's part of our series of conversations with New York State lawmakers.

Always good to see you.

Thank you for making time.

My pleasure anytime.

And from all of us at connections.

Thank you for watching.

Thanks for listening.

Thanks for being with us.

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