BY: Keith S. Shikowitz, Investigative Reporter
Factors that go into winning an election range from personality, good advertising of the candidate, knowledge of the issues which the constituents feel are important and which way the political winds are blowing at the time.
In 2020 the political winds favored Elijah Reichlin Melnick over Bill Weber. After the redistricting based on the 2020 census, in 2022 the winds shifted to give Bill Weber the victory. Now in 2024, Melnick is hoping the winds have shifted back in his direction.
The 97th Assembly District seat has been held by Assemblyman Ken Zebrowski for many years. He decided to vacate the seat and there were rumors that Melnick was going to run for that seat, rather than facing off against Weber again. There were people saying that he was thinking of doing this because he was afraid of running against Weber again.
He replied, “I’m not afraid to run against Bill Weber because we’ve run against each other two times and I won the first time. I announced the campaign for Senate last June and that’s what I have been doing ever since.”
Let’s look back at your Senate tenure for those first two years for a minute. You said you accomplished a lot for the people in the district. What was your major accomplishment? Then we’ll go to what you feel didn’t work.
Melnick said what he was most proud of was putting Rockland on the map when it comes to getting back the money that we deserve from Albany. “I voted for two budgets in a row that brought back millions of dollars more to our public schools. North Rockland all the way down to Piermont, Sparkill, South Orangetown and that’s not only money that helps with the kids. It not only helps with classrooms, it helps taxpayers because in that two year period, about $110,000,000 in state aid came into Rockland County for schools and that means that that’s $110,000,000 that is not having to come out of pockets of local property tax payers.”
“For me that’s what the state government should be about. We pay a lot in taxes. It’s a very expensive state and it’s a very expensive part of the state in the tri state area. Let’s let Albany help out with that and besides the money for schools, I’m proud of the work we did. I got about ten million dollars’ worth of grants and state budget aid to municipalities in the district for roads, infrastructure, for libraries, for fire departments, for ambulance corps, for police. For things like that.” He added.
He explained that it’s all our tax money that’s going up to Albany. A lot of times I feel people think that the money goes there, it stays there or it goes to NYC. It’s my job as someone who was born and raised in Rockland to make sure that that money comes back to Rockland as much as we possibly could.
In life and especially in politics, plans don’t always go as you want them to. There is a saying, ‘Man plans, God Laughs.” So, what plans did Melnick make in the Senate that did not go as he planned them to?
“I wouldn’t say that it bombed, but there was legislation that I did pass that the governor would sometimes veto. There were things that we really pushed for, just to give an example, this isn’t the biggest but to give a very specific example. I was chair of the committee on contracts and procurement, which means that that’s got the oversight for legislation that governs how NYS spends money, and we spend as a state billions of dollars on contracts to various entities all over the state. I heard from a lot of businesses that were in the construction industry who had taken out contracts all over the state to build roads, bridges, you name it, buildings for New York and then the pandemic hit and the cost of the materials to build those buildings and roads, whether it was asphalt or lumber or whatever else it might have been, went through the roof just like everything else. Their contract with the state didn’t have any wiggle room. These are business owners who took contracts out with New York State before the pandemic and then all of the sudden, inflation, materials price, everything’s going through the roof and they’re looking at it how are we going to deliver on time, this building, this infrastructure to New York State without putting our businesses in jeopardy.” Melnick stated.