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PLATTSBURGH — Safety, education and health care.
"Those are the core missions we should be focusing on not cutting," Sen. Betty Little (R-Queensbury) told union activists Saturday morning during the annual Northeast Central Labor Council Legislative Breakfast.
Those areas are what she, along with Assemblywomen Janet Duprey (R-Peru) and Teresa Sayward (R-Willsboro), says must be reserved, not diminished, especially during tough economic times.
As the April 1 state budget deadline looms, Duprey said she doesn't "know how we get there from where we are now" but hopes lawmakers will push through and meet the deadline.
Though she expressed sympathy for some program cuts, she said difficult choices have to be made.
"We're doing the best we can but it's a tough, tough year."
Sawyard agreed, saying, "We do have tough choices but we have been spending more and more and it has to stop."
The legislators, along with Congressman Bill Owens (D-Plattsburgh), had gathered to address the concerns of union representatives from across the tri-county area, where prison closures and health care seemed to be on the minds of many.
Little said the latest round of proposed prison closures — affecting Lyon Mountain Correctional Facility and Moriah Shock Incarceration — is another effort "to pull the rug out from under the North Country economy.
"It's totally unreasonable, uncalled for and we need to fight it."
She said many prisons were built specifically in northern New York because of the lower property costs, eager work force and willing host communities, and that they have since become an essential part of the local economy already plagued by a number of corporate and government closures.
"And these facilities in the Adirondack are difficult to find a re-use for," she said.
She suggests reducing the number of department-owned housing and cutting more of the administrative level.
Because, she said, "You need the people who are in the field."
Owens addressed the current health-care situation, saying though he has concerns with areas of the Senate bill, which he says can be reconciled, he supports the measure.
"I'm more afraid of what will happen if we do nothing," he said as he delved into what he believes is an overwhelming amount of misinformation circling about the current legislation.
"We need to really think about this and how it affects the economy."
Fielding question's about the Postal Service's proposal to eliminate Saturday deliveries, Owens says he does not expect it will happen.
Simply put, he said, "I believe the constituents will require it."
E-mail Andrea VanValkenburg at: avanvalkenburg@pressrepublican.com
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