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Laws over lunch

Sen. Young discusses issues with Rotary

OBSERVER Photo by Damian Sebouhian State Senator Cathy Young with club members, holds the Rotary Club banner.

Senator Cathy Young served as the guest speaker at Thursday’s Fredonia-Dunkirk Rotary luncheon, updating club members on her latest legislative work, as well as highlighting aspects of the New York state budget.

Young announced that three bills she had been working on have recently passed the Senate and are currently going through the Assembly for review. One bill, called “Mitchell’s Law,” would raise the penalty for inflicting injury to police animals, while two other bills seek to remove all X-Lite guardrails from New York state roadways.

Young recounted the story of Officer Mitchell, a six-year-old German Shepherd from the Jamestown Police Department K-9 Unit, who was severely injured last November during a six-hour standoff with suspected murderer Keith Robbins.

“(The police) sent in their police dog Mitchell and the dog went in and was working to apprehend the suspect,” Young said. “The suspect took a knife, plunged it into the dog’s throat, went through his throat up to the dog’s mouth. Luckily, they were able to save the dog’s life.”

Young said last December, “the Jamestown chief of police (Harry Snellings) came to my office and said that we need to increase the penalties for injuring a police animal who is on duty. That includes horses and dogs. Right now, it’s about the same penalty as if you stole a pack of gum from a convenient store.”

OBSERVER Photo by Damian Sebouhian Senator Cathy Young addresses members of Fredonia-Dunkirk Rotary at the Beaver Club in Fredonia.

According to current New York penal law, anyone found guilty of intentionally injuring a police animal “in the performance of his duties” is subject to a class A misdemeanor, punishable by less than a year in prison.

If passed, Mitchell’s Law would elevate such an offense to felony status, a penalty that eight other states including New Jersey, Ohio and California currently have on their books.

Young next recounted the story of Hannah Eimers of Tennessee and her deadly encounter with an X-Lite guardrail. The story grabbed national attention last year through the efforts of Hannah’s father Steven after the family was billed nearly $3,000 for damage to the guardrail that killed his daughter.

Steven Eimers, a former resident of Fredonia, “did all this research,” Young said. “He found that these X-Lites had been involved in horrific accidents all across the country. Canada is looking at this now. Tennessee is removing all of them from their roadways. There are four or five states that are removing them.”

One of the bills, Young said, seeks to remove the X-Lites that currently occupy 45 different highway locations across New York state, and the other bill seeks to implement “a study to see how many X-Lites are on local roads. I believe if they’re this dangerous, we need to get them off.”

BUDGET

HIGHLIGHTS

“Clean water is at the top of the list,” Young said in addressing some of the priorities of the New York state budget. “It’s especially important for the Senate to make sure we have money available for infrastructure. I can walk down State Street in Albany, and see a display about how the first settlers came to Albany in 1604. Our infrastructure is very old. We know that in Western New York. The cost of replacing water and sewer systems is astronomical. Often times, that burden is passed along to the taxpayers.”

As a result of this identified need, Young said, “we were able to pass a $2.5 billion fund for infrastructure, clean water, and sewer systems to help the local governments, but also to help the local people and make sure we have safe drinking water.”

The second priority for the Senate, according to Young, was “reducing the cost of doing business in New York. We need to make it more affordable to live and work and employ people here. We need to increase our competitive ability to attract jobs. We’ve had a lot of successes. We pushed to reform workers’ compensation. (Workers’ compensation) really drives up the cost of doing business, not only for private business and small business manufacturers, but also for nonprofits, hospitals and so on. We were able to reform that and it will go a long way to making us more competitive.”

Young highlighted the imminent Athenex project in Dunkirk as an example of job creation for Chautauqua County.

“We were able to pass $200 million in the state budget for the Athenex project,” Young said. “I believe they should be breaking ground sometime in the very near future. That will be great news. We’re talking about 450 high-paying jobs right at the facility, and 450 (ancillary) jobs right in the community. That’s 900 new job opportunities.”

Young said that one of her primary concerns involves keeping young people in the state.

“Our largest export in New York state, especially upstate, is our young people,” said the senator. “Often times, young people feel they don’t have a future. They can’t have a career here. We’ve been working to change that around and having those kinds of good-paying jobs (provided by companies like Athenex) … for our families who are already here, but also to attract young people (from out of state), really is so incredibly crucial.”

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