Executive Summary

This document was drafted to outline the policy issues that Dr. Anthony D. Andrews Jr. believes can help solve the great problems facing the State of New York and his community of Southeast Queens. Here we will find numerous policy reforms he hopes to champion in Albany to help address issues like housing, protecting our seniors, economic development, education, criminal justice & more.

1. Housing Justice

• Reform the NYS property tax system to more equitably reflect real market value and more equitably collect property tax revenue

• Redefine the Area Median Income that determines affordable housing income criteria

• Mandate banks attempt to arrange independent financial counseling before any foreclosure filing is processed

• Redirect homeless shelter funding to transitional housing vouchers

• Mandate banks enroll customers in free & independent financial literacy training prior to approval of their first mortgage, with an option to opt-out following an info session

• Allow developers access higher zoning limits if their properties will be sold as affordable cooperatives for increased home ownership

• Fully fund the New York City Housing Authority (NYCHA) to properly support the quality of life needs of its residents

• Expand supportive housing for homeless LGBTQ youths

2. Support our Seniors

• Remove zoning barriers to encourage the building of more senior housing

• Increase state investment into affordable senior housing programs

• Mandate the city conduct quarterly social services training for senior center staff

• Study the creation of a state benefit corporation to purchase prescriptions wholesale or conduct generic manufacturing

3. Economic Development

• Expand government financing for MWBEs to help them compete for multi-million dollar government contracts

• Streamline the payment of MWBE subcontracts to protect them from cash flow bankruptcy due to bureaucratic shortfalls

• Create “Tax-Free Tuesdays” by implementing a weekly sales tax holiday, every Tuesday, on services and products that are more likely to be paid for in-person to incentivize New Yorkers to spend locally. 

• Create sales tax exemption areas in struggling communities to foster economic development

• Increase seed capital and lending parameters for Bank Development Districts. Expand low-interest business financing, microloans and grants for local residents through NYS & NYC Banking Development Districts and private development

• Establish a nonprofit & small business incubator(s) to provide wrap-around services to start-up organizations. The facility will be in Downtown Jamaica formed in collaboration with a for-profit developer for financing, nonprofit legal counsel for mentorship, and York College for accreditation

• Establish a NYS Small Business Certification that qualifies for all contracts not satisfied by MWBEs to make sure big business does not dominate all government contracts. The program would automatically enroll state-certified MWBEs that grew beyond the income restrictions of the program

• Establish an independent small business regulatory commission to review New York State regulations on small businesses to eliminate redundancies in the law and laws that hurt responsible economic development

• Eliminate fees for starting a small business including eliminating all filing and registration fees

• The State should help recovering restaurants by splitting the cost of the salaries of unemployed restaurant workers with restaurant owners who commit to a certain level of employment, wages and hours while adhering to capacity limits and other health regulations

• Reform the economic development system to increase community benefit from billions of dollars in tax benefits issued to corporations

• Ensure New York State has a vibrant legalized marijuana industry that puts workers and racial equity first by holding the industry accountable for reinvesting in communities of color, and affords workers the option to unionize without obstruction

• Study the feasibility of reimagine and repurpose the currently closed New York City Housing Authority community rooms and recreation areas to create trades and technology schools for NYCHA residents in partnership with labor unions and the private sector

4. Youth & Education

• Expand vocational training and entrepreneurship in high schools through after school programming

• Expand beacon programs to provide after-school programming in every middle and high school in New York State

• Expand guidance services in all public schools and send social workers to check in on chronically absent students by conducting home visits and helping guidance counselors and social service providers identify people in need

• Reintroduce home economics to all high school students by 2030 to teach personal financing, civic literacy and other basic life skills

• Mandate all students left-back a grade receive free tutoring services

• Close the TAP Gap which leads to the underfunding of SUNY campuses across the state

5. Higher Education

• Make CUNY & SUNY 100% tuition-free

• Build an academic conference center at York College by increasing state funding for the expansion of the school to better service students in the area

• Expand support services for struggling students by establishing paid student mentors made up of upperclassmen on-campus. CUNY must also hire more mental health counselors and academic advisors for support services

• Increase the investment in the quality of a CUNY education by increasing the ratio of full-time faculty to students and increasing compensation for adjunct faculty to create safe and accessible environments for all students by making significant capital improvements

• Create a NYS Student Debt Refinance Fund for students and graduates to refinance their student loans at a lower rate. Participants commit to live and work in New York State for the life of the loan plus five years

• Expand CUNY Prep, a Bronx-based program that helps high school dropouts earn their high school equivalency diploma and enter college. This comprehensive college preparatory program provides flexibility and college readiness.

6. Criminal Justice/ Public Safety

• Expand funding for crisis management teams

• Expand funding for mental health first responders

• Establish a firm NYC residence requirement for all NYPD officers

• Finance “focus deterrence” – a two-part crime prevention/rehab strategy, the method calls for police to aggressively learn about and pursue the small number of criminals that commit the bulk of crimes through community policing closely partnered with social services

• Allow low-income individuals with unpaid fines or fees to volunteer to repay their debt through community service using a refundable minimum wage ($25 per hour)

• Reduce all local & state violations and other summons for people of lower income across the board, i.e. Food Stamp recipients

7. Transportation

• Replace Access-A-Ride with the new DFTA subsidized ride-sharing app and expand the senior-citizen operated call center to help direct services

• Mandate bus lane enforcement cameras and traffic signal prioritization on NYC buses by 2030

• Expand the Atlantic Ticket that connects Southeast Queens and Downtown Brooklyn to include Penn Station

• Require state agencies project capital maintenance for their agency over the next ten years annually to keep New Yorkers informed of the long term maintenance requirements of existing assets

8. Public Health

• Create a single-payer health insurance system for New York State

• Establish opt-out organ registry to increase the supply of organ donors

• Establish a CUNY General Practitioner scholarship program to help students to enter the medical field while addressing the General Practitioner shortfall coming in the near future

• Expand incentives to address the nursing shortage by creating tax breaks to retain registered nurses to combat the wave of retirement, and encourage continued recruitment of the next generation of nurses

• Create a preventative health taskforce that uses home visits to reduce the utilization of Medicaid by the chronically ill

• Reform the Indigent Care Pool (ICP) and Disproportionate Share Hospital (DSH) funding to more equitably distribute state funding to safety net hospitals across the state

• Form a unified statewide hospital network to address the lack of coordination between our health providers that coordinates care for indigent patients and shares data for more efficient use of the city’s collective healthcare resources in a crisis across both private and public hospitals.

9. Environmentalism

• Ban all single-use plastic in the State of New York by 2030

• Make the State of New York hit 70% renewable energy by 2030, 100% renewable by 2040

• Mandate statewide residential composting by 2027

• Reauthorize and expand the Restore Mother Nature Bond Program to support environmentally restorative projects that make New York more resilient to flooding, including buyout programs, setbacks, and green infrastructure

• Establish a $0.05 deposit on cigarette butts and increase the deposit on plastic bottles to $0.10

10. Worker’s Rights

• Establish a statewide construction worker injury and fatality database to track the high-risk employers in the industry

• Automatically enroll all workers employed with over 100 employees into an unmatched 401k investing 5% of their income in a state-managed IRA, similar to NYSaves (529 plans). Also exempt employer-sponsored participants.

• Automatically enroll all workers in employer-sponsored retirement programs with matching funds. This would increase the savings rate of all local workers by making the program opt-out.

• Cap employer vesting periods to one year for all employer-sponsored matching funds programs. This would allow workers more mobility to leave workplaces without hurting their retirement savings

• Digitize the process for applying for unemployment benefits and workers compensation, and provide funding to community based groups that help people navigate the process

• Reform the partial unemployment penalty to make New York State align with many other states and not reduce unemployment benefits because workers return to work for reduced hours

• Expand access to child care by increasing subsidies for working families to better afford services, and lift barriers to provide child care services to increase the supply and lower costs

11. Good Government Reform

• Make Election Day a New York State Holiday

• Establish a New York State 311 program to streamline government services

• Create an online tracking system for NYS residents to get updates on the stated ten year goals of all state agencies with mandatory quarterly updates

• Mandate that the Inspector Generals transparently track an agencies progress in undertaking reforms recommended after an IG probe

• Require all civic meetings be live stream online on public access television and online

• Establish income-qualified lower interest payment plans for fines issued by the state to ease the burden of regulations on low-income families and certified small businesses

• Established an eRegulations system, based on Connecticut’s system, is an efficiently designed end-to-end electronic workflow for drafting, reviewing, and publishing agency regulations and tracking regulation-making activity. The system has increased efficiency by successfully implementing standardized drafting and editing processes, automation of approval workflows, document management, publication, and archiving for end-to-end regulation management by augmenting existing state technology and requiring minimal additional staff.

• Establish the “NYS Research Institute” – a digital library for all studies conducted by or for state agencies as a single place to research for appropriate research material

• Establish a Voter Information Station that provides unmanned service for basic voter information, such Government 101 videos, and campaign videos

• Establish a nine-week contest for citizens to take full advantage of the open call to submit ideas ranging from businesses to policy changes and research proposals. Through a signature “venture governance” approach, based on the Fix California Challenge, ideas are reviewed, vetted, and eventually, four ideas are selected as challenge winners receiving funding, donations, or backing from outside investors.

• We must allow building inspections by drones to reduce expensive regulatory costs, strengthen enforcement, and reduce potential slowdowns for any building developer. These costs either stall growth or are eventually passed on to tenants. Drones can and should be used to cut costs by performing inspections much more efficiently and cheaply.

• Use city offices as anchor tenants in new outer-borough developments which will free up density for housing in high quality of life areas while stimulating growth in under-developed, underserved areas around outer-borough transit centers

• Expand voter access on college campus to eliminate barriers for the newest eligible voters

12. More

• Establish a bimonthly meeting of local clergy leaders to learn about a valued government resource and discuss the pressing topic of the day.

• Establish five organizing areas with the 32nd Assembly District for quarterly community meetings to bring information and resources to residents in areas without civic associations

• Expand camera enforcement to allow usage for illegal dumping, illegal truck traffic, and commercial overnight parking

• Strengthen community input in the placement of liquor stores in their community

• Establish community bulletin boards throughout the district in partnership with local churches, delis, barbershops and other businesses to share information about government programs and services