When I am in Albany, I Will Prioritize...

I. FAMILY COURT REFORM

Family Court should deliver timely decisions, enforce its own orders, and protect the rights of parents and children through due process. Too often, cases drag on for years while parent-child relationships deteriorate, families experience unnecessary trauma, and financial and emotional costs continue to mount.

In the State Senate, I will:

Raise evidentiary standards for temporary orders of protection and require prompt hearings so allegations can be reviewed without unnecessary delay.
Enforce custody and parenting time orders with meaningful consequences for repeated violations.
Establish firm case timelines and vacate actions that remain stagnant due to repeated adjournments, failure to prosecute, or manipulation of the court process designed to delay resolution, increase penalties, or prolong family separation.
Increase oversight and accountability for court-appointed attorneys, evaluators, therapists, and other Family Court professionals.
Reform child support enforcement policies to prevent their use as coercive tactics and ensure support calculations are based on actual financial circumstances, including net income and reasonable cost-of-living expenses for all parties.

Family Court Reform

II. SHELTER ACCESIBILITY

The shelter placement system should prioritize child and neighborhood safety while protecting the dignity of residents honestly working to rebuild their lives. Instead, the framework operates without transparency or geographic limits, routinely placing individuals with violent histories near schools and daycares without community notice, while widespread identity fraud and zero baseline verification enable bad actors to exploit facilities intended as temporary safety nets.

In the State Senate, I will:

Establish strict geographic restrictions and mandatory buffer zones to completely ban the placement of violent offenders and registered sex offenders in facilities adjacent to schools, daycares, and playgrounds.
Mandate a proactive, early-stage community notification infrastructure that requires the state to inform residents before any new shelter is proposed near residential homes.
Require government-issued identification or verified legal documentation for shelter enrollment to eliminate identity fraud and systemic exploitation.
Provide assistance programs within shelters to help eligible, law-abiding individuals obtain valid state IDs, allowing them to legally secure permanent housing and employment.
Reestablish dedicated state psychiatric institutions for the severely mentally ill who pose a clear, ongoing danger to themselves or society, moving them out of community shelters and into secure clinical care.

III. BAIL REFORM

The 2019 bail reforms addressed a real injustice by ensuring low-income individuals do not sit in jail for minor charges simply because they cannot afford bail. However, by nearly eliminating judicial discretion, the legislature went too far, leaving judges unable to consider public safety or protect communities from repeat violent offenders. We must restore common sense to the courtroom by allowing judges to assess localized threats while preserving protections for non-violent, low-income defendants.

In the State Senate, I will:

Restore judicial discretion to consider public-safety risks when setting bail for repeat violent offenders.
Preserve all existing protections that prevent the detention of low-income defendants charged with non-violent offenses.
Require risk assessment tools that are transparent, auditable, and bias-tested before they can be used in bail decisions.
Close the loophole that permits individuals with multiple violent arrests to cycle through the system without meaningful judicial review.

IV. ZERO TOLERANCE FOR HATE CRIMES

Religiously motivated violence and bias-related crimes have reached historic highs across New York, targeting Jewish, Muslim, Sikh, and other communities. While the state possesses a powerful tool in Article 485 to increase penalties for these offenses, prosecutors face high evidentiary hurdles, causing clear bias attacks to go unenhanced. An attack on a house of worship or an individual based on identity is an attack on our collective safety and demands a full, uncompromised legal response.

In the State Senate, I will:

Push for full and consistent prosecution under Article 485 in all cases with clear bias motivation.
Work to clarify evidence requirements so that proof of bias or motive in trials is easier to establish.
Require law enforcement to report on hate crime data at the precinct level to improve openness and accountability.
Establish a dedicated hate crimes unit in the Manhattan and outer borough DAs' offices with specialized prosecutors.

V. TAX RELIEF AMONG GENERATIONS

New York’s tax policy should foster economic growth and allow working families, young professionals, and seniors to affordably build and keep their lives here. Instead, Albany inflicts crushing tax burdens at every stage of life, driving ambitious young workers to low-tax states, straining single parents, and forcing lifelong seniors into out-of-state retirement.

In the State Senate, I will:

Introduce an income tax exemption for young adults under 25 who are working to help build an early financial footing here rather than leaving.
Expand childcare cost deductions for single parents and working parents to reflect the actual cost of care in New York City.
Broaden the existing retirement income exemption to $50,000 to allow more seniors to remain in New York on fixed incomes.
Index exemption thresholds to inflation, so relief does not erode over time.

VI. HOUSING: USE WHAT WE HAVE

Over 57,000 vacant residential units across New York City sit empty because broken state laws prevent them from exiting rent stabilization, leaving landlords unable to fund heavy capital repairs. Compounding this crisis is New York's outdated property tax structure, which places a discriminatory tax burden on multifamily buildings compared to single-family luxury homes. While Albany claims programs like 485-a solve this, they have completely failed downstate, serving as an upstate loophole that wastes municipal funds without building a single affordable unit in New York City.

In the State Senate, I will:

Overhaul the discriminatory property tax levy assessment system as my primary legislative priority to eliminate the disproportionate tax burdens placed on multifamily rental buildings.
Enact a comprehensive structural replacement of the housing development framework that ties exemptions directly to long-term, verifiable affordability metrics explicitly tailored for New York City developers.
Remove long-term vacant units from rent stabilization constraints if they require extensive capital rehabilitation to meet legal human-occupancy standards.
Provide targeted property tax credits to building owners who completely fund and execute essential structural, safety, and infrastructure repairs on vacant apartments.
Return rehabilitated vacant units directly to market-rate status to immediately unlock dormant housing stock and lower broader citywide rental pressures.

VII. FIX THE CONGESTION TAX

New York's congestion toll system should target true peak gridlock without penalizing working commuters or turning local neighborhoods into revenue traps. Too often, the current framework operates as a regressive daylight cash grab that enforces peak rates from 5:00 AM to 9:00 PM, well outside standard rush hours, while forcing local Manhattan residents into a flawed tax credit system that bills them upfront just for driving to their own homes.

In the State Senate, I will:

Restrict congestion toll enforcement hours strictly from 7:00 AM to 7:00 PM for all vehicles to align with true rush-hour traffic and protect early-morning and late-shift workers.
Establish a total, automatic exemption from the toll structure for all Manhattan residents living within or directly adjacent to the congestion zone.
Abolish the ineffective resident tax credit system to ensure neighborhood families are never billed or forced to navigate complex state paperwork just to drive home.
Amend the tolling mechanism to apply pricing exclusively to corporate commercial vehicles and heavy delivery trucks operating below 60th Street.
Exempt outer-borough passenger commuters who can document a complete lack of viable mass-transit alternatives for their daily workplace travel.

VIII. ENERGY INDEPENDENCE

New York’s energy policy should secure reliable, zero-emission baseload power and lower costs by maximizing our domestic energy production. Too often, political mandates like the forced closing of Indian Point and the fracking ban spike electric bills, compromise the grid, and force a dangerous reliance on expensive out-of-state energy imports. The State Senate’s recent $200 million infrastructure allocation for solar energy is an inefficient waste of taxpayer money that deepens the dependency on imported natural gas rather than investing in nuclear energy—the zero-emission global gold standard.

In the State Senate, I will:

Push to reopen Indian Point and explore immediate pathways to restoring or replacing its lost power capacity.
Invest heavily in nuclear infrastructure to establish a reliable, zero-emission baseload grid modeled after the world's leading nations
Lift the state ban on fracking to access our own natural gas reserves and lower energy costs for working families.
Oppose inefficient infrastructure spending bills that waste taxpayer funds and worsen our reliance on out-of-state energy imports.
Require an honest accounting of grid reliability and emissions in any new energy legislation.