SARANAC LAKE – With less than a month to go before the Nov. 8 election, the two candidates seeking to represent the North Country’s Assembly District 115, Republican Kevin Mulverhill and Democrat Billy Jones, stopped by the Enterprise office over the past week to share their thoughts on myriad issues that affect North Country voters.

Mulverhill is a Malone resident, the Franklin County sheriff and a retired state trooper. Jones is a Chateaugay resident, the chairman of the Franklin County Board of Legislators and a former mayor of Chateaugay. The Assembly seat will be vacated by Republican Janet Duprey at the end of the year. Duprey has endorsed Mulverhill for next month’s election.

In the coming days, the Enterprise will publish each candidate’s take on the issues, and below is the first installment:

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Ethics

Jones said he supports that if an elected official breaks the law, he or she should lose their pension as part of the state’s retirement system. As for other state employees, Jones does not support a loss of retirement benefits.

“If you get caught with your hand in the cookie jar, if trying to further yourself financially through just dirty deals – the only way I can describe it – certainly I would believe in that,” Jones said.

Jones vowed that he would not take outside income while serving in the Assembly and said he’d fight for legislation that strictly prohibits or bans outside income for legislators.

Jones said he is in favor of limiting where campaign funding in large dollar amounts comes from.

“More transparency, and obviously with our democracy, we are going to spend $1 billion in this presidential election,” he said. “Our democracy shouldn’t be for sale, especially to millionaires and billionaires.”

When asked about term limits, Jones said he believes voters decide.

Mulverhill said he is “first and foremost” in favor of term limits. He said lifetime politicians are something “I don’t think our forefathers ever intended (to have).”

Mulverhill said he is in favor of a cap of 12 years for members of the state Assembly and Senate.

He said he doesn’t think members of the state Assembly or Senate should have outside employment. He also reiterated his pledge to donate any raises he receives as a member of the state Assembly to charity, if he is elected.

Mulverhill also said that if a member of the state government breaks the law, he or she should lose their pension as part of the state’s retirement system.

“The penalties have to be severe,” he said.

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Heroin and opioid epidemic

Jones called the heroin and opioid epidemic an “imperfect storm” of over-prescription and the supply of cheap heroin coming into the area.

He stressed the importance of letting medical professionals rather than large insurance companies dictate treatment plans for those suffering with addiction.

He said drug education should be focused on how different drugs affect the body, with a focus on heroin and opioids.

“Early childhood education is key and I think we have kind of gotten away from that. We had certain programs in schools that seemed to be effective,” he said.

Jones emphasized that the choice of youth to use drugs “all comes back to behavioral issues,” and he said efforts to help young people with proper coping skills at an early age would help with the epidemic.

“This practice of going in for a toothache and getting 30 to 90 pills, that practice of doing that is just not a healthy approach,” he said. “It has to be a multi-pronged approach. Acute care facilities certainly help, but we have to follow up (with patients). Beyond that, we have to make sure individuals transition into society, get jobs, go back to school and have longer term care.”

Mulverhill called the heroin and opioid epidemic “a monster,” and said he would use a “TREE” approach Treatment, Recovery, Education and Enforcement – to combat it in North Country communities.

Mulverhill said more treatment beds are needed in the area. He also was critical of insurance companies “fail first” approach to helping patients, where addicts are denied more intensive inpatient treatment until they’ve proven outpatient visits aren’t sufficient enough.

He said education needs to be more focused on how the drugs affect and change the body and brain. Getting an addict’s support system to understand that failure sometimes is a part of the recovery process is crucial as well, he said.

Mulverhill said he believes education on the epidemic in schools should start as early as the third grade.

He said law enforcement will “not arrest their way out of” the epidemic.

Mulverhill said strict sentencing should be reserved for dealers who are distributors of large amounts of heroin and opioids to the area. He said deciding on the severity of sentencing of addicts is tricky because the supply chain of heroin and opioids is not as structured as other drugs, such as cocaine.

Mulverhill added that he would be in favor of new laws focused on intent to distribute and a “Dealer to Death” bill, where if a major dealer sold heroin or an opioid to someone that ended up dying of an overdose, the dealer should face the same penalties that go with killing someone.

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Common Core

Jones said he believes the “high stakes” focus of Common Core state testing standards needs to be removed.

“There is no room for creativity in a classroom anymore,” he said, “no room for the teachers to actually teach and I think we should give more local control to these school districts. One size doesn’t fit all.”

Jones said the implementation of Common Core was “horrible.” Jones feels changing to Common Core standards in the middle of students’ educational career was not the proper way to bring on the program. He pointed to how other states implemented new standards when children initially entered school.

Jones was also critical of how Common Core doesn’t allow for students to learn from incorrect answers.

“It is ridiculous that they will be graded on these tests and that they can’t find out what answers were wrong,” he said. “How do we ever improve ourselves if we don’t know what’s wrong with ourselves or wrong with our students? That needs to be fixed because that’s just ridiculous.”

Mulverhill said he would like to do away with Common Core and start over.

“I don’t think the local teachers and the local parents and local administrations have had enough input in Common Core,” he said.

He added that Common Core testing should never include special needs students, which he said occurred with students of his wife Shelley, who is a special education teacher.

“It’s not fair to the teachers, I can tell you that on a personal level,” he said.

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Upcoming Debates

There are three more scheduled events where the two candidates will appear together, starting with an open forum today at Brushton-Moira High School at 1 p.m. where students will ask the candidates questions and there is the League of Women Voters Forum on Oct. 20 at SUNY-Plattsburgh’s Hawkins Hall at 6:30 p.m.