Politics

Remington Arms announced last week that it will open a large manufacturing plant in Alabama. While I don’t begrudge another state from securing these high-paying manufacturing jobs, I do begrudge our own leaders for forcing the “SAFE Act” upon its people and hindering economic development right here in New York. Its passage has undoubtedly affected Remington Arms, located in Illion, NY, for more than a century, from expanding in its home state.

The Board of Regents’ decision last week to delay full implementation of the graduation requirements was welcome news but still doesn’t go far enough. Few take issue with the idea that we should raise learning standards in our schools and the idea of the Common Core is to do just that. The problem in New York and elsewhere has been with the implementation of this curriculum.

The Governor’s 2014-15 proposed budget contains, among other things, details relating to his funding and programmatic requests in regards to environmental conservation.As with much of his proposed budget, there are some good ideas and some not so great ideas in regards to environmental conservation.

As I stated last week, this state budget was a status quo budget that does not change the state aid distribution formula which puts lower-wealth school districts at a disadvantage. The Governor proposes to spend $21.9 billion in total state school aid out of the $137.2 billion total budget.