Paul Szmal: And we are joined by State Senator Rachel May. Good morning. How are you?
Guest: Good morning. I'm great. I'm here in Albany for the last week of session.
Paul Szmal: Yeah, and I was talking to Assemblyman Mangtalo about this yesterday. He said there would be somewhere in the neighborhood of about 600 pieces of legislation that may roll through here during the course of the week.
Guest: Well, I hope that's true in the Assembly. It's certainly, we're on track for that in the Senate, but it takes a lot longer in the Assembly for them to pass bills. So I hope he's right about that.
Paul Szmal: Is there anything in this final week of legislative session that you're looking to accomplish?
Guest: Yeah, some things that we've talked about before, but this is, you know, crunch time. So surveillance pricing is that bill to make sure that companies aren't mining your personal data and setting prices just to, you know, maximize their profit off of you. That's one that it's taken a lot. We've had a lot of negotiation with different parties that are concerned and about, you know, different aspects of the bill. I've learned a lot about how discounts get calculated and all kinds of things as part of this, but I'm hoping we're going to pass that bill this week. Go ahead. Go ahead. No, go ahead. The Read Act that we've talked about before, that's coming up on the floor today.
Paul Szmal: Oh, wonderful, wonderful. We finally have a state budget. There was some legislative pieces that you were pushing to have included in that budget. Were those successful?
Guest: Yes, to some extent. It's certainly the one about reforming our State Environmental Quality Review Act that ended up being pretty close to the bill that I had introduced a couple of years ago. So I was pleased with that because what the governor put in was very far away and we managed to negotiate closer to what I wanted, which was, for example, she had wanted kind of a one-size-fits-all for all of upstate New York, and my bill had, you know, treated small communities differently from large communities and that kind of thing. And the final bill does that, but what it does is allows housing projects and some other kinds of projects to go through the initial environmental review, but not get to the point where people can file lawsuits about them if there are no big red flags environmentally. And that's going to speed up construction and help us get a lot more housing upstate, I think. So that's a win for us.
Paul Szmal: Do you think there may be a trend going into the next legislative session of more bills being structured on a regionalized basis similar to what we're talking about here?
Guest: You know, that happens a lot because New York City has its own government that passes a lot of things and sometimes we will say, well, that's a good idea, let's try that upstate. So we do have frequently bills that are, you know, every place outside of New York City. But yes, I think so. I think people are starting to realize that the needs are different or particularly when it comes to housing and transportation, the situations are very different upstate from downstate.
Paul Szmal: I know one of the things that everybody's still talking about, especially people in western New York, with the announcement that NYSEG and some of the other power companies are getting one to two percent increases on power and somewhere in the neighborhood of six to seven in some cases on natural gas. Is there anything legislatively that may happen here in the final week of the session that the Senate or state government could do to try to cap some of these increases?
Guest: So the rate process is out of our hands, but we did a lot in the budget about utility reform to make sure that the rate payer, the rate process is much more transparent and that the utilities are held to standards about, you know, they have to justify increases much more robustly than they have in the past. They can't just increase in order to increase their profits or raise salaries for their CEOs or that kind of thing. But I think in the longer term, what we need is to figure out how to make the grid a lot more efficient. And we actually passed one of my bills yesterday that does that. It was about what we call advanced transmission technologies. We know that our grid is inadequate. We're going to have to build a lot more grid capacity, and that's very expensive. And that's one of the big things that's driving utility costs up. But in the meantime, there are ways to just use software and targeted hardware that can actually allow us to take the grid where we have now and use it a lot more efficiently. So this would be a much cheaper way to get the greater capacity that we need. So I'm trying to find ways that we can save money for utility customers by making the whole system more efficient.
Paul Szmal: You know, we have tech at many angles. Sorry.
Guest: No, you're fine. You're fine.
Paul Szmal: We're talking with State Senator Rachel May here on FLX Morning. Stuff like improving the efficiency of the grid, that kind of falls under the umbrella of infrastructure. Any movement on any infrastructure bills here in the final week?
Guest: For utilities, well, we're certainly focused on green energy, which is the cheapest way to expand our energy capacity upstate if we can get more solar, wind, that kind of thing. And so we have passed some bills about reducing the cost of people putting solar on their roofs. A lot of people want to get solar on their houses or carports or balconies, that kind of thing. And elsewhere in the world, it's much easier to do that. And so we are trying to make sure that people can participate in the energy revolution that's happening and not be so tied to these soaring prices of gas around the world that we're seeing. So at that level, yes, I think we're working on that kind of infrastructure.
Paul Szmal: I know a week or so back, you had your annual New York State of Cider event in Albany. Tell us about that.
Guest: Oh, yeah. So I represent 1911 and a number of other cideries, and New York State has the best apples in the world. But for a long time, we had laws that made it very hard for our cider producers to compete with cider producers in other states. And I worked incredibly hard for years to change that. And a couple of years ago, we did. And so every year when we were trying to pass that bill, we started having a cider tasting event in Albany to raise awareness and help people understand why this was important. And now that that bill passed, we have a kind of celebratory event every year, and everyone loves it. Our, you know, New York State cider is great, and there's hundreds of producers of cider, and they're all different. And it's wonderful to get a chance to taste them and meet the people doing that work.
Paul Szmal: I also want to make mention of your induction of Sergeant Jezebel McIntosh into the New York State Senate Veterans Hall of Fame.
Guest: We have a beautiful event every year to recognize veterans from each of the Senate districts. And I was very happy. Sometimes our veterans don't get to make a trip to Albany for that event, but Jezebel came. She's an amazing person who enlisted in the military in her 30s, and served very honorably, and then came out and really brought the ethic of public service to her life after the military. And she does an immense amount of work in serving her local community. But what was especially beautiful was she has kind of adopted an older veteran who's in early stages of dementia, and is caring for him in her home. And she brought him with her, so he was able to experience the veterans event too, which was really beautiful. So, yeah, that was a lovely event.
Paul Szmal: And much like Senator Mangelo said yesterday, when we were having a conversation, just because the legislative session is going to wrap up, most likely here at the end of the week, that doesn't mean that your work as a state senator stops.
Guest: Oh, no. I mean, I've been in Albany a lot. Because the budget went late, we were here in Albany way more than we usually are in the spring. So there are hundreds and hundreds of people who want to meet with me, take me on tours of their businesses, or their not-for-profits, or that kind of thing. And we've had to push all of that off into the summer and fall. So I will definitely be back in the district and on the ground. And I always look forward to that. It's wonderful to see all the richness of activity in my district.
Paul Szmal: As always, Senator Mang, we appreciate having you on board. Thank you so much.
Guest: Thank you, Paul. This was lovely.
