4 THE QUEENS COURIER • DECEMBER 12, 2019 FOR BREAKING NEWS VISIT WWW.QNS.COM
Queens senator hosts town hall in East Elmhurst
BY MAX PARROTT
mparrott@schnepsmedia.com
@QNS
State Senator Jessica Ramos covered a
lot of ground at her end of the year town
hall on Dec. 5 in East Elmhurst, ranging
from micro to macro. In moments, she
went from protecting a bike lane on 34th
Avenue to overhauling the state’s health
care system.
Ramos, a freshman senator representing
Jackson Heights, East Elmhurst,
Corona and parts of Astoria, has proven
herself to be a leader in the bold new
progressive faction that swayed the agenda
of the last legislative session and passed
groundbreaking reforms on housing and
climate change.
She expects more of that in the next session.
But the town hall did not just give
her a platform to present her new legislative
ideas; it also forced her to address
constituents who do not see eye-to-eye
with her politics. In response, she showed
herself to be open to listening but unapologetic
for her views.
“Queens is the future,” she said. “I really
feel that we have that responsibility to pass
laws that help each other.”
Aft er highlighting some of her sponsored
legislation that was passed over
the past year, like the Climate, the
Green Light bill and the farm workers’
act, she went on to lay out her priorities
for the upcoming session, which
begins Jan. 8.
Congress on its way to approving paid
parental leave for federal workers
BY ROBERT POZARYCKI
rpozarycki@qns.com
@robbpoz
More than 48,000 federal employees
in New York City may soon be eligible
for up to 12 weeks paid parental leave
through an agreement being hammered
out in Congress, Senator Chuck Schumer
announced Sunday.
New York’s senior senator and Senate
minority leader said that Congressional
leaders are close to a fi nal deal on the
National Defense Authorization Act,
which would include paid parental leave
provisions.
Currently, federal civilian workers can
only receive three months (12 weeks) of
unpaid leave, and Schumer noted that
extended lack of income puts many families
in serious fi nancial trouble.
Th e agreement would allow any federal
employee up to 12 weeks of paid time off
to care for a newborn or adopted child.
Schumer said this would bring “the federal
government’s parental leave laws
into 21st century, and on-par” with most
industrialized nations across the globe.
“It’s high time that we caught up. And
as the nation’s largest employer, the federal
government off ering 12 weeks to its millions
of employees across our nation and
here in New York, is a step in the right
direction,” Schumer said in a Dec. 8 statement.
“From one end of the state to the
other, no matter if you are a TSA or customs
agent at JFK Airport, working on Fort
Drum Army Base, or at Buff alo VA Medical
Center, you deserve time to take care of and
support your new loved one and family,
without worrying how it might impact your
ability to put food on the table.”
Th e senator’s offi ce said the paid parental
leave benefi t would aff ect approximately
114,386 federal employees in New
York State, including the 48,193 of them
who reside in New York City.
Schumer said he made securing paid
parental leave his “very to priority, and
fought with everything I had to secure it.”
Even so, he added, he’ll continue to seek
the same paid parental leave benefi t for
all workers in the U.S.
Her goals revolved around four pillars:
healthcare, the census, economic inequality
and MTA oversight.
She began by outlining the fi ght for
healthcare for all. Ramos is a co-prime
sponsor of the New York Health Act,
which proposes to installing the state government
as the sole payer for health care
in New York, which would make it the
fi rst state to establish a single-payer system.
“We want to be that model state; we
don’t California to steal all the shine,” said
Ramos.
A version of the bill has been fl oating
around since the 2015-16 session,
but its prospect vastly improved once the
Democrats seized control of the upper
chamber in 2018. Th at being said, Ramos
related issues around working with
unions. As a labor-minded the challenge
is to fi gure out how to administer care in
the way that they are accustomed to under
the Taft -Hartley Act.
Ramos said the goal is to avoid ending
up with a public option. Later in the town
hall, when a constituent raised questions
about how the state could aff ord such a
plan, she countered by saying they were
working on new sources of revenue as
part of the plan.
“Th e biggest problem that we have in
New York is that we don’t tax the rich,”
Ramos said.
She also presented what he deemed her
childcare for all bill, which would establish
a system of state-subsidized childcare
for infants and toddlers under 3. It proposed
to with a three-tier payroll tax, or a
percentage of percentage of the sum that
businesses pay their employees. Ramos
said that the next three months are critical
to to get it through before the fi nalization
of the budget in April.
Th e big announcement for the night,
though, involved the $3.5 million State
and Municipal Facilities (SAM) Program
funding that the district will receive. Of
that funding, $1 million will go to creating
a clinic in East Elmhurst with doctors
to make up for the fact that the district
does not contain a hospital. Th e closest
one, Elmhurst Hospital is just outside
the district limits.
A moment of tension popped up around
the bail reform legislation that is set to go
into eff ect on Jan. 1. A constituent, who
said she believed that it was generally necessary,
raised concerns about the specific
sub-sections of violent felonies that the
law would apply to.
Ramos prefaced that she was not going
to expound the history of bail reform,
which she believed to have racist roots,
before fi rmly responding that she would
not work toward a repeal of the law.
“Bail has always been a way to keep
poor people who are accused of crimes in
jail,” she said.
Overall, the constituents who came to
push back were in the minority. As Ramos
fi elded the question, she was met with
applause from those gathered.
Later on, a member of Vocal-NY, a
group that advocates for low-income New
Yorkers, praised her for the “courage to
commit to a consistent way of seeing
things.”
File photo
Senator Charles Schumer
Max Parrott/QNS
State Senator Jessica Ramos
/WWW.QNS.COM
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