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Governor’s rep touts budget proposal to Franklin Co. leaders

MALONE — New York State Director of the Office of Victims Services Elizabeth Cronin and her team typically work with people who are victims of domestic violence, involved in mass shootings or other traumatic events. But on Monday, Cronin was at the Franklin County Courthouse to brief local leaders about Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo’s executive budget for the 2020-21 fiscal year, with emphasis on the benefits the financial plan contains for the North Country.

Cuomo has historically sent members of his administration to communities throughout the state to highlight aspects of his spending proposals for the coming year. In 2017, Col. Eric Hesse, the director of the New York State Division of Veterans’ Affairs, brought the governor’s message to Malone.

Cronin highlighted two proposals in the governor’s $178 billion that will have specific impacts on North Country residents — expanded tax breaks for families with children under age 5 and increased housing assistance for veterans and low-income state residents.

“The governor is proposing that rental assistance be provided for almost 300 units of low-income housing in the North Country,” Cronin told her audience of mostly county and local government officials.

Cuomo’s budget proposal would allocate $128 million for the Homeless Housing Assistance Program statewide, and an additional $5 million to fund housing projects for homeless veterans.

For the kids

The spending plan also includes $2.9 billion for families with children under five years old, including $157 million to expand the Empire State Child Tax Credit. Under current state law, the credit for low-and moderate-income families only applies to children 4-16 years old. The budget proposal would expand the tax credit to families with children from birth to 3 years old making under $50,000 providing an average of a $400 benefit per family to nearly 400,000 working class families with children under 4. Approximately 172,500 families with children over the age of 3 will get an additional benefit and 225,500 families with children 3 and under will receive this benefit for the first time, Cuomo said in his January 20 speech in which he unveiled his spending plan for the coming fiscal year.

“So this 2.9 billion will support families and children under 5 and this includes over 8,000 North Country families,” Cronin said. “Children under 4 will be provided a tax credit of $400 per family.”

“That is significant for people,” she added.

The added spending is proposed even as the state faces a $6.1 billion budget deficit.

Cronin also talked about other issues of concern to North Country residents, although without detailing the local impact.

Climate issues

The proposed budget contains “$33 billion over a five year period to address climate issues,” she said. “Tt is doing things like looking at renewable energy sources, how can we use different energy sources like wind farms,” she said.

Now is the time address the problem, she said.

“One of the most important things is habitat restoration, as we are seeing more and more historic floods all the time,” Cronin said. “A lot of it is because we have taken away the wetland areas. Where the wetlands used to absorb all of the water, they are not there anymore because we have built housing or whatever else,” said Cronin.

The budget also includes a crackdown on drugs such as fentanyl and getting rid of illegal guns, she said.

“What the governor wants to do is make sure that we do not have homemade or untraceable guns getting into the hands of people who under the law are not allowed to have them,” said Cronin.

Cuomo also wants to ban favored e-cigarettes.

One area of local interest she did not touch on was the governor’s announced plans to close additional state prisons. Last year, Cuomo proposed closing a total of three prisons and ended up shuttering two. He has not said how many prisons he would like to close this year, and local officials fear he may end up targeting at least one of the three facilities in the town of Malone.

Cronin, herself is a former lawyer, touched on one of the most contentious issues currently facing the state — one that was included in Cuomo’s 2019-20 budget.

The conversation over bail reform is not over, she said. Before coming to work for state government, Cronin said, she saw on a daily basis how the existing bail laws were not working.

Unfair

“People sat in jail because of $100 bail and a rich person could get out with a million dollar bail, with a much more serious crime. It was very unfair,” said Cronin.

She says the whole point of bail is only to have people come back to court, and while she would not say what if any changes would be coming, she did note that “the conversation is ongoing.”

April 1 is the first day of the new state fiscal year, when the new budget is supposed to go into effect. But it still must be approved by the state Legislature, which has historically made changes to the governor’s plans.

In addition to the governor’s budget, Cronin also she would to come back to Malone to have a meeting with members of the Franklin County Legislature, Sheriff Kevin Mulverhill and other local leaders about getting more programs started for crime victims in the area.

“We have not gotten applications for programs up here and we want to know why,” Cronin said. “We know you have crime up here and you have victims who need services, so we want to know how can we collaborate with you.

“I have been to other counties up here where transportation is a huge issue,” she said. “People can not access services and they do not have a way to get there,” she said.

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