Addabbo & Ulrich Stump At Civic Meet
The gloves came off between the two candidates for the 15th State Senate District seat during a candidates’ night forum hosted by the Glendale Property Owners Association (GPOA) last Thursday, Oct. 4, at St. Pancras Pfeifer Hall.
State Sen. Joseph Addabbo, the Democratic incumbent, and City Council Member Eric Ulrich, the Republican challenger, traded barbs as they made their case to voters on the road to the Nov. 6 general election.
Addabbo and Ulrich-both of whom reside in and have served the Ozone Park community for years- demonstrated their differences on issues such as approving the use of the controversial gas drilling method known as hydrofracking and played the blame game over the allocation of state funds to nonprofit groups.
Residents also heard from City Council Member Daniel Halloran, the Republican nominee for the new Sixth Congressional District seat. His Democratic opponent, Assemblywoman Grace Meng, was not in attendance.
Of the two state senate candidates, Ulrich was the first to take the microphone during the session. He told residents that he is running for the office for the same reasons he ran for the City Council seat he currently holds: “to fight for my communities and my neighborhood.” He stated that he supports cutting taxes, creating jobs and providing relief for small business owners.
“[These are] the hardest working people in our city who are finding it harder and harder to make ends meet because the city and state are picking their pockets and nickel-and-diming them at every turn,” Ulrich said.
Regarding the reported qualityof life problems faced by residents living near local freight rail lines, the legislator said that he would support measures to compel railroad operators and shippers to accommodate the community. He suggested that if Albany lawmakers floated a bill to bar freight rail operations within 50 feet of residences, railroad companies would quickly “get to the negotiating table” to prevent such a bill from passing but also agree to reform its operations.
“One of the things that I think government has at their disposal is the power of persuasion,” Ulrich said. “If the government really wants to do something, they can get it done.” He went on to note that the freight rail issues in Glendale and Middle Village “wouldn’t happen on the Upper East Side of Manhattan” or in the suburbs.
“Why should we stand for it in Glendale and Middle Village? It’s unacceptable and we’ve got to do something about it,” he added.
GPOA President Brian Dooley asked Ulrich if he supported permitting energy companies to use hydrofracking to drill for natural gas in areas of upstate New York. Hydrofracking, as previously reported, involves the high-pressure injection of a slurry of chemicals into the earth to break through a subterranean shale and reach a large plume of gas.
Ulrich stated that he would allow for the use of hydrofracking New York provided that it “can be done safely.” The method “has the potential to create thousands of good-paying jobs in New York, increasing the tax revenue and, quite frankly, getting us toward that goal of energy independence.”
“In an economy like this, we can’t say that we’re upset that we have 10 percent unemployment and we want to create jobs, but we don’t want to create those types of jobs here,” the Council member added. “I don’t see how we can, in this economy, flatly deny the opportunity to create jobs in this state. If you’re saying you’re for creating jobs, you should be consistent with it.”
Ulrich: Where is the money?
Ulrich then criticized Addabbo for being unable to provide discretionary funding member items for a number of local nonprofit groups over the last two years. He stated that the senator claimed the funding he requested for these groups had been “frozen” due to fiscal constraints in Albany.
The City Council member stated he investigated state records and found that many of the member item request had been vetoed by Gov. Andrew Cuomo earlier this year. However, Ulrich stated that the State Senate was able to release $24 million in discretionary funds, none of which went to organizations in Addabbo’s district.
“A lot of it went to Democrats, a lot of it went to Republicans. Some of it went to the Bronx, some of it went to Brooklyn,” Ulrich said. “Unfortunately, none of the groups that serve our district are among them.”
“I don’t know where the frozen money is,” he continued. “Is the frozen money in the money that the governor said he wouldn’t allow you to fund, or is it the money that doesn’t exist? Because there are still groups that are waiting for their fair share from Albany. … Right now, we haven’t got a dime, and that’s the truth.”
Addabbo: It’s bad government
Responding to Ulrich’s claims, Addabbo acknowledged that Cuomo vetoed his member item applications, as well as those made by other lawmakers, “for good reason.”
“Look at the papers. There is a graveyard full of elected officials who misused discretionary funding,” the senator said. “The truth is the few ruined it for the many who are trying to do the right thing.”
Addabbo stated that he is asking the governor to allow nonprofit groups to directly apply to state agencies for funding and keep legislators out of the discretionary funding process. He also noted that he is hopeful the state will release about $83 million in discretionary funding following the general election.
During his first 1 1/2 years in the State Senate, Addabbo noted, he worked to release funding that was previously allocated by his predecessor, Serphin Maltese.
The senator also charged that the State Senate Republicans have been playing favorites with their own allocation of funding. He stated that he voted against a bill releasing hundreds of millions of dollars in funding to schools solely located in State Senate Districts solely represented by Republicans; no funding was reportedly provided for schools in Democratic districts.
“When only schools of a certain district from a certain membership gets money, it’s not fair,” Addabbo added. He described the Senate Republicans’ actions as an example of “bad government.”
As for hydrofracking, Addabbo called it “the single most important environmental issue of our time in our state,” adding that the environmental risks of the gas drilling method-namely the spread of chemicals into water reservoirs through runoff-outweighs the method’s purported economic advantages.
“I love creating jobs and I love to think about an economic boost in those communities up in the north,” the senator said. “But I love clean drinking water. I love our businesses to have clean drinking water.” He went on to note that “once it’s contaminated, it does not go back.”
The senator also repeated remarks by state Environmental Conservation Commissioner Joseph Martens that the state does not have the manpower to adequately monitor the use of hydrofracking should it be permitted.
“Over seven bills regarding hydrofracking went nowhere because the Republican majority in the Senate doesn’t want to deal with that,” Addabbo added. He claimed that Senate Republicans, under Majority Leader Dean Skelos, transferred over 300 bills introduced by Democratic Senators to the Senate Rules Committee, which is led by Skelos, and left inactive.
“Our government works best in a bipartisan fashion. It’s not about the party; it’s about the people. When party politics comes before the people, our government is breaking down. It’s plagued Albany for years, for decades,” Addabbo added.
Regarding other matters in Albany, Addabbo said that it appeared “we might have turned the corner” financially as a state. He noted that following the passage of two on-time budgets and the closing of budget deficits, state lawmakers are now in the process of restoring budget cuts to groups as well as tax-saving programs such as the STAR property exemption.
The senator noted that he has worked with “everybody under the sun” on resolving freight rail traffic problems in the area, including various government agencies, homeowners and environmental advocates.
“It’s not my jurisdiction; it’s a federal issue. And that’s why most [state] laws” on railroads “are out of our jurisdiction,” Addabbo stated. “But that doesn’t stop us. We will do whatever we have to do to address this issue.”
One-sided Congress forum
With his main rival Meng not present, Council Member Halloran had the audience to himself as he made his case for election to the new Sixth Congressional District seat, an all-Queens district encompassing northern and central areas of the borough currently represented by Bob Turner and Gary Ackerman.
Noting his career in public services as a former prosecutor and businessman, the Bayside-based lawmaker charged that had the experience to represent the area’s ideals on Capitol Hill and bring back the proper amount of resources to constituents.
“I’m running because I’m a fifth generation New Yorker who’s about had it with sending a dollar to Washington and getting 70 cents back for New York City,” Halloran said, later noting that “We are the most taxed jurisdiction, with the exception of Nassau County, in the entire country.”
“Something’s not going right in Washington, and it’s not going right in City Hall or Albany as well,” he added.
Halloran stated that he would work to institute education reform that would allow for the development of new trade and vocational schools on a large scale to help generate new “mechanics and carpenters to start rebuilding this country.” He also called for flattening the tax code “a bit” to spur job creation in the district and across the United States.
Touching on comments made by Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney that 47 percent of the nation does not pay any income tax, Halloran charged that many of these individuals would be able to pay taxes if enough good-paying jobs were created for them.
“If we got them jobs, they’d be on the tax roll and they’d be contributing to society-and they would have more money in their pockets,” Halloran said. “Everybody wants to work, but they need to have a job. The government can’t keep creating jobs; the private sector needs to create jobs.”
Speaking about foreign policy, the candidate criticized President Obama for not drawing “a line in the sand” over the issue of Iran’s development of nuclear weapons. He stated that Israel is facing a situation closely resembling the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962, in which the U.S. discovered that the Soviet Union was in the process of installing short-range missiles with the capability of delivering nuclear warheads within the communist nation of Cuba, just 1,100 miles from Washington, D.C.
Noting that roughly the same distance separates the Iranian capital of Tehran from the Israeli city of Tel Aviv, Halloran stated that “I don’t want our troops on the ground, but I certainly don’t want Iran to have a nuclear bomb.” Though the Soviet Union proved to be “a rational actor” and removed the missiles from Cuba, the lawmaker remarked that the Iranian government wouldn’t back down as easily.
“They’ve called for the destruction of Israel. They’ll do it if they get the chance,” he added.
Asked by Dooley about what he would do to resolve noise and air pollution experienced by Glendale and Middle Village residents living near local freight lines, Halloran said that he would seek greater regulation of the railroad industry as well as infrastructure improvements to resolve the problems.
“We have not regulated the train industry the same way we have regulated” airlines and automobiles, he said. “If we’re going to have emissions standards for automobiles, we should have them for trains. And those trains would be quieter, cleaner and more efficient.”
Other news
Dooley, who also chairs Community Board 5’s Environmental Services Committee, informed residents that the panel will soon hold a meeting with representatives of the Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) to discuss recent flooding problems around Glendale and Middle Village. The session, once scheduled, will be open to the public, and the committee would work to get as many people affected by flooding as possible to attend.
The state Department of Environmental Conservation (DEC), meanwhile, has yet to make a ruling regarding the proposed declaration of the Ridgewood Reservoir as a wetland, according to Board 5 Chairperson Vincent Arcuri. He noted that part of a basin wall within the reservoir is considered to be a “dam,” and a water main still connected between the reservoir and the water system must be cut off before a wetland declaration can take effect.
Arcuri also noted that individuals from the city’s Economic Development Corporation met at the long-vacant former knitting mill at 78-16 Cooper Ave. which was rumored to be considered as a possible location for a homeless shelter. Community activists and elected officials hope that the location will instead attract the attention of businesses looking to set up shop in the neighborhood, he added.
Nick Comaianni, president of School District 24’s Community Education Council, announced that the advisory body will hold their next meeting on Tuesday night, Oct. 23, at P.S./I.S. 113, during which they will vote on a resolution to rename the school in honor of its late principal, Anthony Pranzo.
The next Glendale Property Owners Association meeting is scheduled to take place on Thursday night, Nov. 1, at 7:30 p.m. at St. Pancras Pfeifer Hall, located at Myrtle Avenue and 68th Street.
