Albany, NY – “As we embark on a new legislative session, the challenges – and opportunities – are clear. We must focus on making New York stronger and helping families get ahead by increasing opportunities and fairness. Last year, the Assembly Majority was able to accomplish much of our Families First agenda. Now, we must build on that success and deliver more for the people we represent. One way we can start is by robustly investing in education to give our children the very best opportunities to succeed, and by amending New York’s tax code to make it fairer for middle class families.

“High on the agenda is raising the minimum wage. In order for New York’s working class families to have any chance at growing and building a better life for themselves we must substantially raise the minimum wage. I will relentlessly advocate for a minimum wage increase until all New Yorkers are given a fair, modern wage.

“During this session I will also continue pursuing several of my own pieces of legislation including raising awareness on the dangers of sugar sweetened beverages, protecting our children and our schools from the risks posed by low vaccination rates, creating the statewide Office of the Utility Consumer Advocate, and many others.

“Given the events of the past year, ethics and campaign finance reform are more important than ever. We must seriously look at limiting the outside income of legislators. We must adopt campaign finance reform, including closing the LLC loophole. And we must increase the level of transparency regarding the way state funds are spent, including discretionary funds by both the executive and the legislature. I have been a long-time advocate of all of these policies and I look forward to continuing that advocacy this year.

“On our first day in session we have already adopted a significant measure giving legislators the ability to read bills electronically on tablets. This change will make government not only much more efficient, but much more environmentally friendly, eliminating the need for the enormous amounts of paper that are printed each legislative session, saving taxpayers millions of dollars in paper and printing costs.

“These are just some of my top priorities for the 2016 legislative session, and I will work tirelessly to ensure they are accomplished. Given our new leadership under Speaker Carl Heastie, I am confident this will be a productive year.”