Politics

Public financing of political campaigns is on the Governor’s agenda this year. Cuomo said in his State of the State address in January, the state should mimic what New York City has done and publicly fund campaigns. In this column, I want to outline for you why I believe publicly financing campaigns is a bad idea

On Feb. 28 there was a gun rally in Albany. There was an estimated 10,000  people who attended from across the state.The rally represented not only those advocating for Second Amendment rights but those fighting for democracy.

The Governor has set forth his Economic Development plan in his proposed 2013 budget. While there are some ideas that I can support, overall our state would benefit from policies that are fair to all businesses.

The Affordable Care Act or Obamacare is on its way to becoming policy. On June 28, 2012 the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that “individual mandate was a valid exercise of Congress’ ability to levy taxes.”

There are two initiatives I want to highlight this week.  Both would reform the public assistance benefits system and reinstate integrity for everyone’s sake.

The 2009 budget contained a new tax for utilities. This, in turn, was unfortunately passed down to ratepayers. The “Temporary State Energy Utility Service Conservation Assessment” or 18-A was scheduled to sunset in March 2014.

The Governor proposed his executive budget on Jan. 22. Overall, it was a status quo budget that did not contain a lot of surprises. I was pleased to see more state aid provided to schools.

While the average age at onset is 60, people have been diagnosed as young as 18. There is no objective test, or biomarker, for Parkinson’s Disease, so the rate of misdiagnosis can be relatively high.

The Governor gave his annual State of the State address on Jan. 9 in Albany. This speech outlined the executive’s agenda. While there were many things I was glad to hear the Governor mention, the majority of our efforts should focus on creating jobs rather than gun control and campaign finance.