NY Assembly returning to Albany to deal with unfinished business including Seneca Nation gaming issue
The state Assembly will reconvene in Albany on Tuesday and Wednesday to finish up its business for the year after blowing an original June 8 deadline.
“It’s more of the things that are, I’d say, more of a time-sensitive nature,” Assembly Speaker Carl Heastie (D-Bronx) told News 10 ABC Albany about the legislative agenda this week.
The Bronx Democrat told the upstate TV station that “environment” and “health” issues might get addressed alongside “another look at criminal justice reforms” without elaborating.
“The other things will wait until January,” he added while referring to the beginning of the 2024 legislative session.
While the chamber is expected to only tackle low-profile issues affecting localities across the state, Heastie faces pressure to broaden the legislative agenda.
- Legislation that would give Gov. Kathy Hochul broad leeway to strike a deal with the upstate Seneca Nation on its expiring gaming compact.
- Legislation to provide subsidized health care to illegal immigrants after the feds signaled they would pick up the tab.
- Legislation to allow New York City to impose a 20 m.p.h. speed limit on some city streets.
- Legislation to require limited liability companies to disclose their true owners.
Heastie has already ruled out a floor vote for the bill affecting the Seneca following revelations about a secret deal to allow a casino to open in Rochester.
But Seneca Nation President Rickey Armstrong, Jr. is keeping up the fight after blaming the governor for keeping legislators in the dark despite the tribe demanding her administration refrain from divulging details from negotiations.
“The Seneca Nation once again implores the Assembly to do what is right — to ratify a hard-fought agreement that recognizes the right of the Seneca Nation to participate in gaming within its Aboriginal lands – lands seized from the Nation and lands that it was forced from by New York itself,” Armstrong, Jr. said in a statement.
Some moderate Democrats also appear queasy about expanding health care for illegal immigrants with Republicans already looking to leverage the issue in the 2024 election cycle.
Requiring limited liability companies to disclose their owners could backfire on politicians considering the amount of campaign funds they raise from them without the public knowing where exactly the money came from.
“Anonymous LLCs are a major corruption risk, and New Yorkers shouldn’t let the shell games continue,” Reinvent Albany, a good government group, said in a Friday statement.
A backlash to traffic safety initiatives – particularly in the outer boroughs – is also driving resistance against the proposed “Sammy’s Law” to allow for a 20 m.p.h. speed limit on some New York City streets despite claims by supporters that they have enough votes to get the bill approved by a majority of the 150-member chamber.
“My family had to mark yet another Father’s Day without Sammy,” Amy Cohen, whose 12-year-old Sammy Cohen Eckstein was killed in a 2013 traffic crash, told The Post on Monday.
“How many more families are going to have to suffer before the Assembly takes this preventable crisis seriously?”
A Heastie spokesman did not respond to a request for comment on Monday.
