Category: Town of Stony Point

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 97^th 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.

BY: Keith S. Shikowitz, Investigative Reporter

He also said that he introduced legislation along with Ken Zebrowski in the Assembly that was going to give them some relief and allow the state to renegotiate that so that we were not putting businesses on the hook due to the fact that inflation has occurred, and things have gone up and unfortunately after we passed that through the legislature, the Senate and the Assembly, and the governor vetoed that.

Our governmental system is based on two things, a separation of powers amongst the branches and a checks and balances that ensures that no one branch becomes more powerful than the others. Melnick pointed this out.

“That’s just one example. You can do a lot in the legislature, but it’s important to make sure that the governor comes on board. We had a governor when I started who found his way out of power because he couldn’t stop groping women and all those other things that he shouldn’t have been doing. We had a new governor who came in and certainly she didn’t have any of those proclivities, but honestly, she had a big learning curve, and I wasn’t happy that she vetoed some of the bills we had passed.”

A major problem in the state is that the governor and other politicians on that side of the aisle, have made

New York a sanctuary state and a lot of illegal immigrants have come into the state, and they are giving money to these illegals. New York City is giving them debit cards and stuff. In the state they are wanting to do things with the same kind of stuff. How do you feel about that because it affects everything. I mean, it’s our tax dollars going to people who come into this country illegally breaking our laws and then they’re getting free stuff and American citizens can’t get stuff that we pay taxes for.

So, we clearly have a broken immigration system. There’s no question, everybody that looks at this and I’ve been watching Congress and hoping that they can get their act together to fix it because what we have now is millions of people that are crossing the border, turning themselves into border patrol officers claiming asylum.

They may be qualified. They may not be qualified. Nobody will know for years because the amount of judges that are out there to actually look at those asylum cases and see, are you actually a valid person to get asylum?

Because you’re fearing you, you’re going to be killed if you go back to your country or do you just want to live here? And if you just want to live here, that’s not what the law says. If you really were fleeing religious persecution or political persecution or anything like that, you can claim the asylum, but Congress has not done what they need to do.

They’re deadlocked now. I’ve watched there’s been negotiations in the Senate and the House and so what we’re left as New York State is we’re holding the bag. So, New York City, you mentioned they have what’s called this right to shelter law, which was put in place years ago for just folks that are homeless. That says that basically, if you’re homeless, the city has to provide you shelter. Nobody thought when they put that in there are going to be hundreds of thousands of people coming over all of a sudden to need that. And so we are being left to pick up the pieces from what you asked me, Washington has done nothing to address this crisis for years.

It goes after Biden under Trump under Bush, Obama, you name it. It’s not a recent crisis. It’s just seeming to get worse and worse as we go along.

If you look at the numbers under the Trump administration, there was very little illegal crossing. Compare that to the numbers under Biden and there is a stark difference and increase in those numbers.

You got 20,000 troops in Mexico, there was even stay in Mexico, and they were building the wall, people were coming in but they were being vetted and they were being…

Melnick responded, “So there was, I think it’s the case that there were actually quite a lot. There were not during COVID because for many reasons, everything shut down and we were able to use aspects of the law during COVID to keep it even more shut down. The problem now is that these are not mostly people that are coming here that are sneaking in and evading detection, they’re crossing the border and, in some cases, turning themselves in directly to a border patrol agent. They want to get found and they want to get found because they know that the current American law says that if you cross the border and you say I’m claiming asylum, you can.”

BY: Keith S. Shikowitz, Investigative Reporter

Let’s look at the No Bail laws now, which is creating a lot of the lack of safety in New York State, not just in your district. There’s been band aids put on it and this is what other outlets and people in the media said, that they put band aids on the No Bail Law was as a way to make it look like they were reforming it and you know, trying to make it better for the people. Have you seen any, I mean, you’ve seen the band aids seen the band aids.

Weber stated, “The band aids have had zero effect. I know that because I’ve spoken to judges, prosecutors and police officers recently and they tell me the same thing that they’ve seen no change in terms of the effectiveness of these cosmetic changes and they still remain concerned that what’s on the books right now is not serving the residents. Well, what we need to do is go back to the drawing board, get rid of bail reform, the cashless bail and then deal with other changes, minor changes that may be need, may that may be needed you know, I think this, this really push for cashless bail obviously transpired a number of years ago, right, when there was someone who was arrested, I think for a low level crime, marijuana possession or something that was put into Rikers Island and didn’t have money to get out of jail and they were talking about the inequities of that. I think everyone’s sensitive to the special case. I don’t recall the entire thing, but I know that that was the inequity that de, that led to, you know, the massive change in our laws.”

Infrastructure is a problem all around the country. Roads in disrepair. Bridges falling apart and into rivers as what happened in Pittsburgh.

Earlier you were talking about infrastructure and when you’re talking about the taxes what have you seen going back just even between here and Albany in the way of what needs to be fixed.

“We’ve seen a lot. You know what? The one thing that we did in the first few months that I took office was really trying to change the conversation in terms of doing repair work. What I mean by that is we put together a portal on our website so that our residents can report potholes whether on a state road, county road, village road. We don’t care, we want them to report it, and we will disseminate that to the and we have been to the various jurisdictions of the state. You know, we’ll send it to our DOT contact. If it’s county village or town, we’ve been sending to those local DPW jurisdictions to get those potholes fixed.”

We’ve, we’ve reported hundreds and hundreds of potholes because we wanted to change the conversation of, ‘That’s not my responsibility. We’re only responsible for the state.’ In the end, we’re responsible for our constituents. And why not help them navigate through a complicated system like government, you know, over the last couple of years since I’ve been there, we’ve increased money to CHIPS program and to municipalities to do infrastructure upgrades. So, we’ve, we’ve done a good job but it’s nowhere near where we need to be.”

What needs to be done to fix the situation.

That includes water systems and electrical systems. It’s got to be, you know, leading into the electrical. Obviously, we’ve seen this big push to go to electric, you know, these electric mandates, but, you know, when you talk to O and R and some of the utility companies, they’re nowhere near ready for what the state is trying to mandate immediately. That’s going to take you, that’s not even, that’s a separate conversation that’s going to take even more money, state money, probably federal money to make sure that whatever mandates are in place that it doesn’t have an impact on, you know, people turning on their lights without a brown out.

Sum up what your second term is going to be and then tell me why people, what, what’s your message to the reader to my readers that says, why they should vote for you over Melnick?

BY: Keith S. Shikowitz, Investigative Reporter

I’m with Tom Lapolla who is running for the 99th Assembly District, covering Stony Point and mostly Orange County.

Lapolla was born in the Bronx and is a retired New York City fireman having served 38 years achieving the rank of Battalion Chief who always paid attention to the political world but never considered running for office and has been a little more active in politics over the last two years. With his wife Mary he lived in Harriman, and then we got our second home in 1988 in the Village of Monroe, the town of Monroe and have been there for 36 years and raised their three children. He has three grandchildren and a fourth on the way.

He decided to run for office because he paid attention to local state and federal, not necessarily and probably more focused on the federal. “But following my earlier departure from the fire department, you know, I was, there was obviously there was a COVID vaccine mandate and I did not participate in it I chose to retire earlier than expected. I had that capability but there’s still cops finding teachers that still have yet to be returned to work because of that mandate.”

Part of my efforts took me up to Albany a lot more and not only paid attention to medical freedom issues but other issues that impacted parental rights, as well as everyday issues, crime, even the economy.

We have a lot of issues affecting New York State and the country, but we’ll focus on the economy, immigration, no bail laws and school funding. Let’s look at the economy. The economy’s been a wreck the past few years. High taxes, people living paycheck to paycheck credit card debt is over $1 trillion throughout the country. People’s cards are maxed. They are using them for basic necessities. What plans do you have to help with the economy and help the average New York citizen?

“I am not an economist. I do know high taxes and overregulation are not conducive to keeping people in this state. People are more apt to seek out low tax rate states and businesses as well. If we continue to overtax the citizens of the state and the businesses, we will see more businesses and citizens leaving as well, seeking out the states that have cheaper taxes and a better, and a lower cost of living.”

What do we need to do to help the infrastructure in this area, never mind just the whole state?

“Less regulation. I mean, we’re adopting this green climate plan which is going to force businesses to pay for things that they probably wouldn’t be paying in other states. I mean, the green climate plan that the state has, is not a conducive tip, good business practices. No one’s against taxing reasonable taxes, make it lower, lower taxes, less regulation. By regulation, I don’t mean common sense regulation, building code or regular. I’m talking bureaucratic regulation where bureaucrats are making decisions, not elected officials.”

But what, and what do you see certain roads that really need? I mean, I mean, roads and bridges and things like that.

“I don’t have a list of all the bridges. I did read an article not too long ago that many bridges are in dire need of repair. And, and you don’t have to be an expert in studying the road map of New York State. You just have to take a ride.” Lapolla commented.

Let’s talk about businesses, bringing them into New York. There’s over 7000 regulations on the books in New York governing businesses and the business can’t breathe with that much regulation. And that’s probably, that’s why a lot of businesses leaving New York causes too much regulation. How do you plan to help bring down the amount of regulations that we have?

Lapolla has experience in dealing with regulations because in his career, as a new member of the New York City Fire Department, he helped write building codes. He developed building codes which was done through the legislative process. It was done by a group of stakeholders where everyone had some vested interest in ensuring that the industry that he worked on that the regulations that came out of this product would be benefit all every stakeholder. Everyone reviewed. There was legal review and then there was legislative review and then there was public review and then eventually it was brought to the mayor for signature or not. And that building code will become law.

And I would suggest and I’m not an expert on it because I’m not that familiar with all of the 7000 regulations you just referred to. But if they, if they’ve been implemented by professional civil servant bureaucrats without any legislative oversight, then, then that’s the problem right there. They’re looking after their own jobs.

When Trump came into office, in 2017, for every regulation they put in, they got rid of two.

BY: Keith S. Shikowitz, Investigative Reporter

You were talking about how in certain regulatory meetings, they brought everybody to the table, all the stakeholders. Well, with the no bail laws, they didn’t do that. They brought only the defense attorneys and the Democrats to the table. That’s how we ended up with the over 400 crimes being taken off of the bail, the bail.

You know, to make it a chance bail policy, you know, no bail, which has led to a lot of problems in New York.

safety being one of them. What can we do with this?

“I am unequivocally, I would vote unequivocally for any bill that would repeal cashless bail anything that supports our law enforcement agencies and protects the civilians of New York State. Cashless bail policies are an abject failure. We have police officer Jonathan Diller in Queens March of this year, I believe in instead of playing catch with his son and going old with his bride who was given an inspector’s funeral because of those policies.”

These are dangerous to the civilians that these are, are good for the criminals and bad for us and, and you don’t. This, does not only impact the minority neighborhoods, this is impacting the entire state. I don’t care where you live and the nice areas or the poorer areas. This impacts everyone. We need to give the judges back the discretion to put people in jail and keep them in jail when necessary to take that discretion away from the judges has again an abject failure.

With the plethora of school shootings across the country, many districts in an effort to prevent this from happening in their schools, have put more school resource officers in the schools and are utilizing retired police and military officers in these positions. What do you feel about having like retired police officers in buildings armed?

Lapolla thinks that’s a good idea. “First of all, you have to train people trained individual. I know people are getting hired to do that. They’re trained, professionally trained, retired police officers, law enforcement agents in the schools we understand the world we live in right now, especially with what we just discussed prior to that. So we know the threats are real. They become very real. Having that, that level of protection. No, I’m not in favor of giving teachers guns. No, I don’t think that’s necessary for that. I mean, my daughter is a teacher but the idea of having my grandchildren protected well, in school, professional,, law enforcement agents retired or even training someone, I don’t care how they, they would structure. Does it have to be retired?”

“Anybody that would be professionally trained and obviously well vetted and, and go through who they, the background checks and all that. Teachers having guns is a totally different discussion, but the children deserve protection. As do the teachers and the staff.”

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What can you, what do you think you can do with your allies in the Assembly and Senate to help stem this tide of illegal immigration and migrant crime?

“A couple of things. First of all, it is a federal issue, the immigration crisis, the southern border, if you will, it’s, it’s opened, but we also have a northern border too in New York. So we have to focus on that too. I would encourage the governor, I made public comments about this as well to assist in closing that border as well.

We are a sanctuary state which we just acknowledge New York City is a sanctuary city. Cuomo introduced it a few years back. I think with, if I’m not mistaken, strictly with an executive order, it could be repealed by the legislative assembly and Senate, but the super majority refuses to do so. We had a law that was introduced this year by both chambers, but all the Republicans could do was to get a public statement.”

“In New York City, an illegal immigrant came into the city, came in here illegally committed a crime. He was arrested but because of cashless bail, he was going to be given a court date but since he’s an illegal immigrant, he’s not sticking around. He goes to Georgia, and he brutally murders young Laken Riley, a 22 year old nursing student.”

“Now they had a bill on the legislative docket already. They renamed it in honor of Laken’s Law. Now, a high ranking Democrat Assemblyman. His excuse for not supporting that is because he doesn’t want to stop the American dream from happening for these illegal immigrants. Now, my grandmother from Ireland, my grandfather from Italy, they had, they lived the American dream. My grandmother raised her Children. My grandfather went to Colombia [University]. That’s, that’s the American dream. These illegal immigrants, the murderer that took out Laken Riley, they came to pillage and plunder. They didn’t come for the American dream and we’re witnessing atrocious things in Aurora, Colorado that that’s yet to come here.” He stated.

What sets Tom Lapolla apart from Chris Eachus? Why should people vote for him over Eachus?