Story Time with Senator Cathy Young

By Mattie Zarpentine

This afternoon, I attended “Story time” with Cathy Young at Springwater Rod and Gun Club. Perhaps if she had provided us with milk and cookies the fairytales would have been more palatable. I wasn’t surprised at all with what I heard. But, I am even more irritated.

(Obviously this is not verbatim, but a summary.)
Her first statement was that she has “a perfect 2nd amendment voting record.” She th…en spent a lot of time talking about how senate dynamics have changed since 2008. She said that there are 3 million more democrats in NY than republicans. She talked about how the senate is in “hand to hand combat” with Mayor DiBlasio, downstate and the Working Families Party because the radicals in NYC want the Dream Act, illegals to have the vote and to be able to hold office.

Her explanations for supporting downstate republicans… (yeah, you’ve heard it before…)
(Paraphrasing:) She had to stop the Dem’s from throwing Skelos out because the senate needed stability until the end of session. She supported Flanagan for his conservative record, not including the SAFE Act. He had an A rating prior to that. He was the deciding vote against other SAFE Act legislation. The republicans had to maintain their majority in the senate. That is what protected us from the 25 bills in “SAFE Act 2”. Everyone received a thick “SAFE Act 2” doom packet in an effort to prove her point and talked about procedural votes that hit the legislature floor this year.

Still insisting that there was no funding of the SAFE Act in the latest budget!

She is very proud of getting the 5 point SAFE Act repeal package passed in the Senate.
When I later asked her why the Senate did not heed the calls from constituents demanding that the senate sponsor and pass the senate version of the Lopez bill, she said that when rent control expired for 10 days and the sky didn’t fall, that they lost the leverage of attaching rent control to repeal. When pushed as to why not try, she reminded me of a kindergardener pouting…Why didn’t the assembly bring our 5 point bill to the floor?(again, paraphrasing)

The grand finale…the climax to the story….THE MOU! Seriously, she thinks this is the best thing since sliced bread…that we really got something here. You should be thrilled!
Yes, I raised my hand. Me: The MOU is useless, it is unconstitutional, it was not agreed upon by the assembly…it is not worth the paper it is written on. She had stated a couple of times, “because the governor had signed it.” Me: Um, no he didn’t…his ‘Director of State Operations’ did. Young: It means the same thing. It happens all the time, but it means the same as the governor signing it.

She continued to explain how I was wrong, to which I countered, ”Well, Paloma A. Capanna, Attorney & Policy Analyst, SCOPE’s top gun attorney put out a statement yesterday explaining the MOU.” I then produced the document and read a section that explains why the MOU has no legal basis. This made Ms. Young visibly irritated. Her response, “I disagree with her.”

Her bottom line comment: “We did our part in the Senate.”