To read more about Al Stirpe’s opponent, Tim Kelly, click here. To read more of Central Current’s 2024 election coverage, learn how to register to vote and more, click here.Al Stirpe, the Democrat incumbent in New York state’s 127th Assembly district, is running to serve his ninth term in the New York State Legislature. Stirpe was first elected to the Assembly’s 121st district in 2006 and served as a member of the assembly until he lost in a 2010 re-election bid. Stirpe ran in 2012 for the Assembly’s 127th District, winning the seat. He has served as the district’s representative since 2013. He serves on the following committees in the Assembly:Agriculture  Alcohol and Drug Abuse Higher Education Economic Development Job Creation Commerce and Industry  Small BusinessStirpe is facing Tim Kelly, who is running on the Republican party line.  Early voting begins Oct. 26, which is also the deadline for voters to register to vote. Election Day is Nov. 5. Editor’s note: This interview has been edited for length and clarity. What’s one thing you plan to do if elected to help bring Micron to fruition?I think that the most important thing for Micron is infrastructure. We need to build a second pipeline from Lake Ontario to Central New York that will provide the amount of water they need and the water that the rest of the communities need, because we’re expecting quite a bit of growth in the southern Oswego, northern Onondaga, western Madison and eastern Cayuga counties. Water is going to be a big issue, as well as wastewater, because there’s going to be an onsite wastewater facility that cleans the water to a certain extent, and then it’s going to go to the county WEP [Department of Water Environment Protection] and be further cleaned and then back into the water source. That’s probably the biggest thing that we need. And we know that the second water pipeline is going to cost around $540 million which, there’s going to be a combination of Micron themselves, Onondaga County and New York State, they’ll have to pitch in to pay that bill. What’s one thing you plan to do to make Micron a boon for everyone?The most important thing is going to be transportation, and that’s really in the form of public transit. So, if we’re going to allow people from the Near West Side and the South Side to participate in the jobs that are going to be available, we need a way to get them from those locations out to the facility, and that’s going to be through Centro. Micron is working directly with Centro to schedule direct runs from those areas out to the facility. And it’s much like what they did for Amazon out at Liverpool. It’s going to be the same thing. They’re going to be bus runs for each shift that happens out of Micron. Another way we can do it — and we’ve done it with some other programs — is working with credit unions, in particular, offering low-interest car loans, so that after working for several months, those individuals can buy their own cars and have their own transportation and not necessarily be dependent on public transit for whatever reason. Maybe their shifts get extended or something else happens, but those are a couple of ways that I think we can work to make sure that everybody gets to participate.Should Micron be unionized?Well, that always depends on the workers themselves and how they feel they’re being treated by management. I don’t know. I don’t have any particular feeling one way or another as to whether they should be unionized, but I certainly — if the workers decide they want that — I’m more than willing to support that effort.Since the law was changed in 2019, Raise the Age has become a lightning rod topic. Do you think it should change? What should change about it?I don’t think Raise the Age itself was bad. I think the way it’s being administered is probably not helping. The fact that if someone commits a crime is released and then commits a crime again. There are many things that judges — (district attorneys) and judges — can do to keep those individuals in a facility until they get them straightened out. You don’t have to just keep releasing them time after time after time. I think the law is pretty clear about that. There are eight or nine different methods you can use. Parole and you could put ankle bracelets. You can remand them, prison or in a facility, if they continue to do things like that. So there are things that can be done, as far as changes to the law itself. I don’t know if it has to be more clear how you administer it. It seemed we tried to require judges to go to training on bail reform and Raise the Age. They opposed that in the follow up legislation. We did try to make some changes, and maybe that’s something we can do. I don’t know. Do you think New York State has enough tools to boost affordable housing? How would you add to those tools?Affordable housing is going to be one of those other things that will be a challenge to make Micron as successful as it can be. We took a first step in the last budget. If 25% of the housing and development is rated affordable, you get a (payment in lieu of taxes) that lasts 25 years. If you have 100% affordable housing in a project, the PILOT is indefinite. There’s some pretty big incentives. I mean, the hardest thing right now as far as housing and getting enough housing units built — and there was a problem before Micron, it’s not just about Micron — is the interest rates right now. It’s hard to pencil out a successful development with interest rates where they are, and the actions we took around PILOTs and stuff will help cut the cost down to make it easier for those things to pencil out. I think there might be some tax credits to try to supplement and bring down the cost of interest rates. But we need developers to get out there and start building. Then we find out what things are working and not working, the more responses we can have to obstacles to building. Do you support the right to counsel in housing court?Yes. It’s a really difficult situation that’s been happening over the years as more and more housing is being bought up by out-of-town and out-of-state and out-of-country LLCs who don’t maintain their properties and decide to jack up the rents extremely high. There should be a right to counsel so that you can fight against some of these actions that are taking place that have no consideration for the people who are living in those units. I don’t know why people would be against the right to counsel. Anybody who might be thrown into that situation would definitely want to be going to court with counsel and not just on their own.Do you support the Equal Rights Amendment? Do you support codifying abortion rights?Yes, we’ve done as much as we can do as a Legislature up to this point to ensure that everyone has the right to do what they want to do with their own body, etc. Now, in order to make sure that that doesn’t change based on administrations or the legislature or anything, we have to codify it in the (New York State Constitution). And I support that, and not just because of abortion, but because of some of the other potential loopholes around things like LGBTQ, taking actions against them, and things like that. So, I think it’s not changing the law at all, and it’s one thing that I think the opposition has been extremely dishonest about, but I think it’s just making sure that the law as it stands now is able to be carried through, no matter what attempts there are to get around it.What would you do to fight energy rate hikes affecting working families?I think that we would continue with a lot of the tax credits and rebates that we’ve put in place to allow people to set up alternative energy. I just put solar on my roof this year. It’s sized to provide 98.4% of the electricity that I use. So obviously that’s one way to do it. I think subsidies — the Heat Energy Assistance Program Act, I mean — I think we can potentially increase the eligibility, raise the income level amount that we provide in order to help struggling families take care of that. But the real key is going to be using less energy, and the way you do that is taking advantage of all of these programs that (the New York State Energy Research and Development Authority) and a lot of the utilities provide to improve the housing envelopes, so that the doors, windows, insulation, things like that, are tightened up so that they just use less energy. You know a lot of the housing stock where economically disadvantaged people live, it’s like the wind is blowing right through everything, and they use an inordinate amount of power in order to keep themselves warm or cool. So I think that’s above everything else. That is the number one thing we can do, helping all sorts of people from economically disadvantaged up into the middle class, to prevent wasting energy. And from then you can go to doing other things, like the transition to electricity, providing induction stoves and heat pumps and everything else. For the first time ever in the last few years, heat pumps and geothermal have edged out regular gas and other fossil fuel heating systems in New York State. So it’s obvious that people are starting to understand how much they can save by doing this transition. And for people who say it doesn’t work in our climate, the largest installation of heat pumps in the United States is in Alaska. So that is a false story that keeps being spread by the fossil fuel industry. The technology we have today works in all climates, and it works well.How will you make sure that taking construction on the I-81 viaduct doesn’t worsen health outcomes for residents that live near it? Well, the way it is being constructed now, there’s not as many traffic lights, there’s roundabouts. In the situations where it would cause a problem is when you have lots of cars at a stoplight idling waiting for the light to change. That’s when concentrations of (carbon dioxide) happen. And also by just taking the bridge away, that’s helping because it used to collect under the bridges. Although so many lights are right at the bridges, and you know dozens or hundreds of cars are sitting there idling, that I believe, is going to help. Keeping traffic flowing and not just idling is going to have a big impact. The fact that bridges and cars are not going to be 50 feet away from the (Syracuse Housing Authority units) is going to be a huge improvement. And the way the city is planning the reconstruction of that area in both housing and services that are going to be provided down there in 15th Ward, is going to make the air quality and everything else, the quality of life, a lot better.The post 2024 Election Q&A: Democrat Al Stirpe is running to serve his 9th term in the NYS Assembly appeared first on Central Current.