Press Release: WFP's Legislative Priorities: Fair Share Plus Four

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: June 19, 2006

WFP Reiterates Legislative Priorities

Fair Share for Health Care Plus Four

ALBANY -- The Working Families Party today reiterated its end-of-session legislative priories in an open memo to state legislators reproduced below.

An Open Memo to State Legislators:

With five days left in the legislative session, we would like to remind you of the five most important priorities for working families among proposals under active consideration by the State Assembly and Senate:

• Fair Share for Health Care (S.7090/A.10583): No employee of a multi-billion dollar company like Wal-Mart should be forced to go without medical care.
• The Right for Home Day Care Workers to Organize (A.10060/S.6758 – Veto Override). Follow the example of Illinois, California and other states, and recognize that home healthcare and childcare workers paid for public funds are public employees, and should be treated as such under law.
• Healthy New York Amendments (A.11099/S.7796). Amending Healthy New York would increase employer-based health insurance coverage for low-wage workers by reforming the existing Healthy New York program.
• IDA Reform (S.7391/A.10787). New York's corporate subsidies are wasteful, poorly targeted, encourage competition between localities, lack a track record of creating jobs, and do not impose any meaningful standards on businesses that receive them. Industrial Development Authorities are one of New York’s main economic-development tools, but there is no evidence that they actually create jobs. State law should be reformed so that the public can gauge the effectiveness of subsidies, and to impose stricter standards on subsidy recipients.
• Telecommunications Regulation (S.5910/A.8979; S.6864/A.9808). The legislature should ensure universal access and strengthen consumer protections for local telephone service.
  

Thank you for your consideration of these bills, each of which is important to the working families of New York state.

Bob Master, Bertha Lewis and Sam Williams
State Co-Chairs, The Working Families Party

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