A chat with the Senator

The Ink sits down with Mike Martucci

By Osei Helper and Olivia Williams | Manor Ink

Livingston Manor, NY – On Wednesday, July 7, New York State Senator Mike Martucci, who represents the 42nd NYS Senate District, which includes Sullivan County, came to our hamlet to answer questions that the public may have for him. The senator is in his first term, having defeated incumbent Democrat Jan Metzger last November in a close and hotly contested race. We were able to sit down with Sen. Martucci in the Town of Rockland Town Hall to get a few of our own questions answered. Here’s what he told us.

Sen. Martucci, what exactly does a state senator do?

Basically a state senator is a member of the upper house in the state legislature, and we don’t work with the President of the United States, we work with the governor. So just like a US senator would work with the executive of the country, who’s the president, we work with the executive of the state, who’s the governor. There’s two parts to the job, if you can imagine it. There’s what we do in Albany, which is the state capitol, and then there’s what we do here in the district at home. At the capitol, we do legislation, working to collaboratively write and pass laws that affect many different parts of our life, whether it’s education, health care, local government, local services, all sorts of things legislatively.

The other big job that we do in Albany is the state budget, which is our biggest responsibility each year. It’s about a $200 billion spending plan that we negotiate together, along with the governor, obviously. Home in the district here, a lot of it is what we call constituent services. That has to do with helping people get connected with services they need. People call us for all sorts of things. It could be things like problems with unemployment benefits or problems with finding housing or health care. People can be having issues locally, perhaps with local governments. So a lot of what we’re doing here at home is helping people deal with what we call local or district-based issues.

What are your current priorities in Sullivan County?

The first is certainly broadband. The state really has not made, from my perspective, significant advancements in expanding broadband, and I think that what you’ve seen this year with the coronavirus has only magnified the importance of that. I think we look forward to next year getting kids back in school. But at the drop of the hat we can be back doing all this from home again. So I think it’s clear that we need to make some significant advancements. There are a couple of things that I’m working on.

One of them has to do with repealing a tax that currently exists on state right-of-ways. Simply put, if a broadband company wants to run broadband to an unserved location and there’s a state highway in the way, there are currently right-of-way taxes that apply so these companies have to pay fees. Obviously, that’s a pretty large cost that eventually gets pushed on to ratepayers, or in some cases just prevents companies from providing this service altogether.

Another reason that companies don’t provide service in some rural areas is if there are only four houses on a two-mile long road, it might cost the company millions of dollars to run infrastructure to them, and they only get four ratepayers out of the deal.

So one of the things that we have to focus on is incentivizing companies to go into these rural areas. That’s one measure that I’ve been working on.

The second is in cooperation with the county. There’s a plan to look into wireless Internet service. Congressman Antonio Delgado’s federal funds make up the great majority of the funding source, but the state assembly is also focused on that project, because I think the solution really comes in a couple of different buckets. There’s no one answer to filling the Internet connectivity gaps that exist. Lastly, we passed at long last a broadband mapping bill. Currently, the government, to determine who has broadband and who doesn’t, uses what’s called “census blocks,” which are groups of homes where people live.

For an example, say we all live in the same census block. If I have Internet service because I live right next to a state road, but others don’t because they’re down a back street, what the data unfortunately shows is that all of us have service, which isn’t true. So what this mapping bill will do is show us, right down to the street and individual home, who really has Internet service and who doesn’t.

The other thing I want to be laser focused on is building our trail system in Sullivan. I think tourism is the future of this county in so many ways. When you look at the history of Sullivan, the last time it was really booming was in tourism. Agriculture will be a component, but it clearly will not be the county’s economic driver, so we have to focus on tourism. We have an outstanding trail system that we can expand, if we have the resources to do it.

What’s it like to be a Republican in a Democrat controlled senate and government?

Here’s what I would tell you. It’s all about working together. There is a collegiality and professionalism that exists in the state legislature that I sincerely appreciate. I sit around a table with Democrats who agree with me on certain issues and not others, but we’re able, as a legislature, to engage in meaningful debate. Being in the minority, what that generally means is I don’t get everything I want. But what we can always do is make sure that our voices are heard on key issues.

I can think of several examples this year where there were issues that were being debated and, while I didn’t support the whole issue, I was able to come to the table with an amendment or modification that was considered and included. In a legislature, from a governing standpoint, I can’t do anything without 31 other people agreeing with me. If I just say I want to do my own thing, I will get nothing done. So what’s important is that you have the ability to build consensus, you have the ability to work across the aisle, even with members of your own party, and you have the ability to compromise.

What are some of Sullivan County’s biggest needs?

Certainly, the other county issue I look at is skilled workforce development. We see that a lot of young people leave this county, go to school and then don’t return. I look at that and say what are some things we could do to attract people back here. Young people that leave high school and go right into work – we all know they can’t afford to live anywhere but in their parents house. That’s really not a good option, but the income opportunities are very limited. So one of the things that I think would help the county would be to look into what I call skilled workforce development.

A lot of times what I’m talking about are union jobs, becoming union carpenters and electricians, leaving high school and going into a trade program where you can become a radiology technician and get a job at the local hospital, or other trades like that. Opportunities like that really don’t exist here; you have to drive quite a long distance. So I think that there are clear opportunities, whether it’s working with the community college or other organizations here so that a young person can leave high school, maybe go to a trade school for 18 months or two years, and be able to earn a wage that allows them to buy a home in this county and stay in this county.

What’s the biggest concern you hear from voters?

As you know, we live very close to Pennsylvania, New Jersey and some other states. In a place like Pennsylvania, they do property taxes a whole lot differently than we do here in New York. We hear from a lot from seniors who say, “I’m leaving here because it’s too expensive to live here.” So the property tax conversation is a concern that is always coming up, in terms of cost of living. The other thing I hear about is the virus.

Since I’ve been in office, our entire focus – and will be moving forward – is not only managing the pandemic, which started before I came into office in January of last year. We have been focused on bringing in as many vaccines as we could, establishing vaccine clinics and helping people get signed up for that process, which was rocky at first but really leveled out in a pretty good way. Today our focus remains on educating folks, helping people get vaccines who haven’t gotten them yet, though those numbers continue to fall. Also helping our businesses reopen, and helping our schools safely reopen.

What can you tell us about the controversy surrounding your school bus company?

In the campaign, my opponent (Sen. Jan Metzger) and the political people who run campaigns, do a tremendous amount of research on you as a candidate, and will actively work to create doubt in the minds of voters. So one of those things was through a public process of looking at accidents that my bus company had. My company is rated by several government entities. One of them is the state’s Department of Transportation. They regulate school bus safety, and for all ten years that I owned the company, we had the highest school bus safety ratings. I was also the president of the New York School Bus Contractors Association for two years, and during my time, unfortunately, accidents do happen. I mean, we operate hundreds and hundreds of buses and travel millions of miles a year.

So, what had happened in the campaign was my opponent seized on to one particular accident, and really made it the focal point of the campaign. (Editor: A bus driver was under the influence and ran into a motorcyclist with a child in the bus.) I think the voters were more focused on other issues that really mattered to them. But that was obviously a very unfortunate accident. It’s ironic in that things like that sort of put me in this seat.

I had become the president of the School Bus Contractors Association shortly after that accident, and I advocated in Albany to pass a set of laws, specifically one having to do with the drug testing of school bus drivers. Prior to 2016 or 2017, there was no state law that required drivers be drug tested, only a federal law.

So, long story short, one of the huge efforts that I undertook after that accident was to change the law to require that all school bus drivers, regardless of the weight of their vehicle, be drug tested and that’s now in state statute. That, by the way, was my foray into government, so that was sort of where I first interacted with the state government.