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LIPP315B_2026-03-15-12-21-12

Welcome back to Power in Politics. Republican state lawmakers are pushing legislation. That they say would lower costs for first-time home buyers and others. State Senator Patricia Canzanieri Fitzpatrick of Malvern says the plan is designed to create a pathway for people who can't afford to stay here. We've talked about this issue. This would include now a first-time homebuyer property tax credit, 3 year freeze potentially on property taxes, also other measures aimed at lowering construction costs. The Republican minority is also pushing to repeal the state's all-electric requirement for new buildings. An all-electric home is going to cost about $200,000 to $30,000 more than a traditional gas heated home, and that's something that we're trying to make sure that, uh, as I said, we do it with a common sense approach. We all want to protect our environment. We all want to make sure that we are friendly to the environment, but we need to do it in a way that's not pricing us out of the market. Senate Republicans also sent a letter to the administrator for Medicare and Medicaid Services requesting he join them in discussing concerns of fraud, waste, and abuse in the state's Medicaid program. They say the program has grown to an unsustainable $124 billion and taxpayers deserve answers about how that money is being spent. Republicans say the system needs stronger oversight and accountability. And joining us right now is Republican state senator Patricia Cantoneri Fitzpatrick. Good to see you. Thanks for being here. Thank you. Always happy to be here, Rich. So we've been talking about affordability. Um, we, we did the taxing Long Island. A piece a few weeks ago we wanted to have you in here to talk more about this. Um, this is a challenge for everyone. We're talking off camera, gas prices going up, all the different concerns. Is there any movement on this legislation package that your side has put forward in Albany? So the one House budget for the Senate just came out and unfortunately we're not seeing any rollback to the CLCPA goals that are mandating electric buses for school districts that are mandating that we eliminate gas by a certain date and we keep saying that we want to have a cleaner energy. We're all about making sure we're sustainable, but we need to do it responsibly without additional costs. We're just not seeing those movements, uh, from my colleagues across the aisle. Is your side considering speaking directly to the governor about it? The governor's had some concerns here about affordability on this front as well, so she has expressed some concerns. What I, the, the process now will be the governor, the 3 men in a room, theory, the governor, the Senate majority leader, which happens to be a woman, Andrea Stewart Cousins, as well as Carl Hastie from the Assembly, the 3 of them need to get together and if they are pushing back on the. Governor to say that we don't want to change these climate goals. Nothing's going to change. The three of them need to agree, and so far I'm not seeing any change on the position of my Senate colleagues. All right, so lay it out for the folks at home. The Republican plan to make Long Island more affordable. So we need to make sure that we do it in a sustainable way. We have an all of the above approach for energy. We're not, we don't think we should eliminate natural gas. We don't think we should eliminate any options nuclear, hydro, you know, green hydrogen. Let's look at all of the options to make sure that we make Long Island affordable, building affordable, but do it in a way that we are not bankrupt. our residents and forcing them to leave, we need to reinforce our grid. That has not been done, even if we wanted to go all electric. Our grid cannot support the energy demands that would be put on our grid, and then we're going to be without any energy at all if we follow the goals that have been set out by our governor. What about home prices? We had a story this week in Suffolk County of a house so small it doesn't even have one bedroom. The listing price $329,000. You saw. That I did. I mean that is really telling about the situation on Long Island right now, especially for first time home buyers trying to find a house. Yes, and we have proposed, as, as you heard in the first clip, that we have proposed certain things to help our first time home buyers and make sure that we bring the housing costs down. What's driving this is our economy and the spending that we're doing at the state level forces our local governments and our school districts to raise their taxes. That makes Long Island unaffordable in a lot of ways. Um, we have to keep our spending under control and that's something that my colleagues don't understand. If we could spend our way to affordability, we'd be the most affordable state in the union, but we're not. We have, uh, some, some points that we've discussed as the senators on the Republican side about trying to make sure that we make things more affordable and energy is driving that tremendously. Democrats say we've got to build more. I mean, we have a housing crunch. We have to build more. That would help lower the prices. What about that? We know a lot of the local towns, local villages have been concerned about potentially losing control to the state if more building is authorized at the state level. So certainly in my hometown of Malvern, it's a quaint community that has a local board. Let local boards, zoning boards, village boards dictate what. Goes into their communities and we are building. I know Limerick is building. I know Malvern is building. We are doing what we can to provide more housing, but the problem is if you have the state telling you what to do, you will destroy the character and the nature of the communities that have created Long Island. That's where we wanna be. That's why we wanna be here because New, uh, Long Island is quaint and it has communities that are beautiful and we need to make sure. Or that we do it in a responsible way with local control. Should the state offer more incentives? Is there some way to kind of break some of this gridlock? I think that there should be incentives to builders, but we need to bring down the cost of building. And until we do that, even if you build, the rent is going to be $3500 to $4000 a month for a one bedroom apartment. People can't afford it if the cost to build is so high. The landlord has a right to cover his costs. And if the. Rents are too high for people to afford. We're never going to be able to keep people here on Long Island. We're talking about home prices, rent prices. That's a whole another topic we could spend a whole lot of time on. But Senator, thank you for the time here. We do appreciate it. Of course, thank you. And still to come on Power and Politics, a push to try and improve the quality of living on Long Island. The advocates that headed to Albany to discuss different ways to address the affordability crisis here at home, many of them met with this senator. We'll be right back.

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LIPP315C_2026-03-15-12-21-38

Welcome back. You've seen the gas prices recently. We all have. They've gone up because of the war in Iran. Some economic experts say it will actually have a ripple effect on our entire economy. The price of regular gas up around 50 cents a gallon from last week. Trager Home Service. Say the price of home heating oil on Long Island is also soaring, with costs up to 60% more than they were last month. A Hofstra economics professor says the destruction of gas pipelines will cause our natural gas and electric bills to rise. Higher electricity prices because a lot of our electricity right here on Long Island is made with natural gas. We're told the conflict will also affect US imports of fertilizer, which will impact food prices. Experts say industries that rely on gas and oil may end up passing those increased costs to you, the consumer. Meanwhile, there's a new renewed push in our state capital to improve the quality of living on Long Island. Advocates from the Long Island Lobby Coalition, they hopped on a bus and headed up to Albany with 40 requests to help our communities. It's the coalition's 18th trip to Albany to push for change here on the. Island this year's focus again was affordability. Some past successes from that coalition's lobbying group include an 8 cents sales tax to fund sewer infrastructure in Suffolk County. We're told this year's requests come from the Vision Long Island Smart Growth Summit that was held in December. Tourism is booming on Long Island. That's the good news. Discover Long Island says it's already an $8 billion industry and even brought in 80,000 jobs here last summer. The group recently held an event to talk about what it can do to keep bringing people from around the world to the island. The group's COO Sharon Wyman says a big part of it is promoting our parks in downtowns and believes this is just the beginning. This year we saw about a 4% increase in tourism spending on Long Island and we are seeing that number track, uh, ticking up and we are excited to do what we do here and I think it's going to be a great season and a great year. That's good news. Wyman says the US Open in Southampton this summer will be another huge boost for the tourism industry. After 15 years with the Long Island Association, the president and CEO announced he is stepping down. Matthew Cohen says he's decided to finish his term, which is ending in June, and will explore new opportunities. He's served as the president and CEO since May of 2021. The LIA's VP. For government affairs and communications, Stacy Sykes will serve as acting president and CEO while they search for a replacement. Certainly wishing Matt all the best. That's all the time we have this week. We'll see you again right here next week for another edition of News Twelve's Power and Politics. I'm Rich Barrabe. Thanks for watching.

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East Hampton Village Mayor Jerry Larsen, incumbent Town Supervisor Kathee Burke‑Gonzalez and state Sen. Patricia Canzoneri‑Fitzpatrick join the show this week.

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