BY: Keith S. Shikowitz, Investigative Reporter
Four years ago, now Congressman Mike Lawler flipped the 97th Assembly District to Republican control. Two years ago, Lawler made a successful run for Congress and John McGowan was able to run for and maintain Republican control of the seat. Now he seeks to be reelected.
McGowan Has an extensive resume’ in the legal field lifelong Rockland County Resident who grew up in Pearl River and still lives there with his wife Christine and they are expecting their first child in January. “As you said, I’m the current assembly member representing the 97th Assembly District.
He got into, into politics because he felt that he loves the place he lives. “I want to see it do well, continue to do well. I’m worried about the future of our state and where we’re headed and I thought I had something to offer. I thought would bring a practical common sense approach to governing into politics. I feel that I’ve done so. Certainly at the state level where we need a lot of common sense and you know, someone who’s willing to, roll up their sleeves, do the work that’s necessary.
The economy is one of many issues that are affecting New York State residents, as well as immigration, no bail laws and school funding. What plans do you have to help with the economy for the average New York citizen?
“So the economic issues in our state, I think permeate to virtually every other area of, you know, policy and governance. I hear a lot about housing, right, as one example that we need more housing and the state has tried to force that issue and I agree we do need more housing.
According to McGowan, we spend a, a record number in our budget every year and it keeps going up. “It’s a record, it’s a record budget. Since I’ve been in, I think the budget went from initially. It was, it was two, I should have checked these numbers, $234 or $236 billion this past year. And it was like $229 there amount somewhere in there.”
Continuing he added, “Well, now we’re going up by billions of dollars a year. And for what, where, where have we gone? What has the state been able to offer its residents to say, well, it costs this much? You know, you’re going to have to pay this much more in taxes because we’re increasing the budget. But you’re getting this as a result. Eventually, I don’t see the value being provided, you know, we continue to tax people. So to me from an economic standpoint, and I’m not an economist again, I’m just trying to look at it from a common sense perspective.”
“But if we can reduce the spending at the state level, we can then, you know, alleviate some of the tax burden, which will then free up additional resources for individuals. And hopefully as a result, something like housing, you know, housing, then the costs right start to come down when you reduce the tax liability, right, the need for more and more taxes. But it seems like the old toothpaste out of the tube, you know, toothpaste out of the tube thing trying to get it back in is very hard or if not impossible. But that’s we have to cut spending, we just, we have to do it. We cannot continue to have a record budget. But one example with that, with this year’s budget was the 4.2 or $4.3 billion allocated to New York City for the migrant crisis when we discussed that. And I said, tell me about these four points whatever billion dollars to New York City the year before it was 1 billion.
So now that quadrupled to this year, why explain that to me.”
In an effort to get answers to the reason for this massive expenditure of taxpayer dollars McGowan asked ‘Is it per person a certain amount of money allocated per person?’ The answer he go was that the bottom line, the answer was, it’s, it’s generally for shelter costs.
“But it was not allocated based upon the number of people coming in or what their monetary needs are. It just felt like a number picked out of the hat. She could not provide any rubric, any metric, any and then certainly no forecasting.”
His next question was ‘How much is it going to cost next year if we spend, is it 4 billion now done or is it going to be, there’s a price tag next year, there’s going to be a price tag next year and for the foreseeable future without when we can’t get answers, when state elected officials like myself as an assembly member, I can’t get an answer from my colleague who’s the chairman of the Ways and Means can’t provide me an answer as to where that money why that number isn’t in play. That’s a problem. If we fix that, and address that and scrutinize the budget, I think that frees up money then for the rest of the state and the residents.