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Editor, The North Country Gazette:
At a recent "Questions-and-Answers" forum in my Assembly District, located in Westchester County on the banks of the Long Island Sound, 20+ miles from Midtown Manhattan, I was asked by a neighbor what I thought the most critical issue was facing New York State. The questioner, and the other attendees were shocked to hear me provide an answer that wasn't about the dreadfully high property taxes suburbanites pay, nor the concerns over the clean up of the Long Island Sound, nor the condition of our Metro-North commuter rail. The number one critical state issue for this downstate Assemblyman is: the problems of the Upstate economy.
Downstaters are not all of one stripe. We are a combination of city-dwellers and suburbanites; New York City residents who live in their own neighborhoods in their own boroughs, and see plenty of differences between each other, and those of us in suburbia who differentiate Long Island from the Hudson Valley (and within my district, from town to town). But we all agree on one thing: we don't really know what's going on north and west of us.
To some, "Upstate" means Poughkeepsie or Newburgh (in the Hudson Valley). Travelling to the area north of Albany may merely mean a pleasant vacation in Saratoga or on Lake George; travelling west of Binghamton, exposure to New York State may be due to a child enrolled as a student in one of New York's great universities, from Cornell to UB.
But we don't experience the problems of the Upstate economy; we don't live it everyday. And that doesn't mean we don't care.
Leaders can show how important it is to everyone to have a fully vibrant statewide economy.
Upstate's woes do directly affect downstaters. As a state, we are losing political clout in Washington, D.C. with every census that passes. We may not lose a Congressional seat in Westchester, owing to our regional growth, but the net stagnation in statewide population means less Congress members from New York and less votes for President in the Electoral College. Translated: less ability to bring New York's needs before a supportive Federal audience. That hurts all New Yorkers.
And there are financial impacts as well: there is the need for statewide resources to assist Upstate urban and rural schools, to compensate for the shrinking property tax base that occurs when businesses leave the state. We have every reason downstate to support strategies to bolster upstate jobs and businesses.
We are in this together. If my end of the state seems less sensitive than we should be, then let us start anew by dropping the stereotypes and resentments that insult each other but do not advance our joined interests.
We are in this together. Period.
Assemblyman George Latimer
D-Westchester, 91st A.D.
© 2005 North
Country Gazette
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