Last week’s special session of the State Senate had some benefit – they passed the Green Homes/Green Jobs-New York Act that will make 1 million homes and businesses in New York more energy efficient over the next five years, and by doing so provide thousands of sorely needed jobs in our communities.
Citizen Action applauds our affiliate Metro Justice, our statewide coalition partners at Working Families Party and many labor, environmental, business and citizens groups that advocated strongly over the past few months to make this legislation pass. The Governor is expected to sign the legislation into law.
That’s the good news. Democracy did suffer a defeat last week, however, at the hands of the Republican minority when they blocked key ethics reform legislation from passing – legislation that included simple steps toward meaningful campaign finance reform, like more disclosure about campaign contributions. Republicans blocking reform is no surprise, but reminds us all why it is so important we continue a multi year strategy to create a State Senate where all members support not just ethics reform, but even more importantly, Clean Elections legislation.
Below is our Memo of Support that we distributed to Senate offices yesterday regarding all of the bills that were supposed to come to a vote.