By:Scott Brinton
McDonough, a former president of the Merrick Chamber of Commerce and a local businessman, said he is fighting hard to bring about change in the way Albany conducts business. "Reform is a big priority," he said. He supports the state Legislature's proposed Constitutional amendment to move the state budget filing date from April 1 to May 1. Doing so would give legislators a better idea of what the state's tax revenues would be for the coming year before they finalizing a budget, since the income tax filing date is April 15.
The Legislature OK'd the amendment this year, but it must pass a second time next year. The assemblyman said he believed it would go through. If the Legislature OKs the proposed amendment, it would then move to a statewide public referendum next November.
McDonough would like to take reform further. He said that many legislators propose hundreds of bills that they never expect to pass, but which speak to local interests that their constituents want addressed. The trouble is, the plethora of bills lead to a logjam of inconsequential legislation, McDonough said. He would like the number of bills that legislators can propose reduced to 20 to 30 a year.
McDonough would also like to see unfunded mandates done away with. As an example, he mentioned the portable defibrillators that state law now requires school districts to have on hand. The law requiring them is good, he said, but added that the state should have paid for them, at least in part.
Despite recent reports that the state Legislature is among the worst-run in the country, the assemblyman said, "Albany is not dysfunctional. You've got some of the rules that need to be changed." And, he noted, "I'm not part of the problem. I'm part of the solution."
McDonough, who sits on the Assembly Republican Sexual Assault and Violence Task Force, is also pushing for civil confinement of offenders. If passed, the measure would allow the state to keep potentially violent sexual predators locked up in psychiatric facilities past the end of their prison terms. There they would receive further psychiatric treatment and evaluation until they were deemed safe to re-enter society. The measure has passed the Senate, but not the Assembly. Critics say it would unfairly punish convicts who have served their sentences and paid their debts to society.
Finally, McDonough said that, in partnership with state Sen. Charles Fuschillo Jr., a Republican of Merrick, he has been able to bring home tens of thousands of dollars in special grants for schools and fire departments.
Breakstone, an attorney who is president of the Bellmore Elementary Board of Education, believes he would make a more effective legislator because he would sit with the Assembly's Democratic majority, enabling him to propose, and potentially pass, more legislation. Of McDonough, he said, "There is very little he can do right because he's in the minority. He's got five bills on which he's been the primary sponsor in three years."
Breakstone believes the state Legislature is indeed dysfunctional, and he railed against Albany in an interview with the Herald. Like McDonough, he believes that too many untenable bills get proposed. And he said that the state's chronically late budget is indefensible. He noted that school districts have a hard time creating their budgets each year because the state can't file its spending plan on time. School districts don't know how much they'll get in state aid when they write their budgets, so they're never sure how correct their spending plans are until well after residents have voted on them. He proposed two-year state education budgets, which would enable school districts to craft better spending plans, since they would know well in advance how much state aid they would receive.
Breakstone would like to see driver's education given back to school districts, which often outsource the program to local driving schools. He believes teenagers would take driver's ed. more seriously if it were taught by school-district teachers. The course, he said, "has sort of gone by the wayside, the way shop has." Breakstone said that the lack of attention given to driver's ed. may be a factor in a spate of recent accidents involving local teenagers.
He would also like to see the bays of the South Shore better protected. He said that a comprehensive management plan and a stewardship organization that crosses all jurisdictions are needed to preserve the bays.
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