NYSAC Bill S 5512 Passes in NY Senate

кухненски масиDear NYSAC Supporters,

Congratulations to everyone for their hard work. NYSAC Bill S 5512 Passes in NY Senate!

After three years of work we won one. Kudos to Senator Oppenheimer, Senator Nozzolio, David Carroll and all of you who have worked, called, written and contributed these last few yers.

We still need your help as we are stuck in the Assembly.

One of our callers recently posted this message: “I just got off the phone with Assembly Member Glick’s office and the woman answering the phone said: “I have been told to tell you that Assembly Member Glick is closing down the committee for this year. There will be NO movement on this bill.”

This seems to be the case and so I believe that we should stop spending time on phone calls to the Assembly and to Glick’s office today.

I will be sending out several updates concerning short and long term strategy, political contributions, more letter writing and our plans for the next legislative session over the next few weeks. However, I want to make a few brief points.

1. The Assembly Higher Education Committee can reconvene at any time based on the discretion of its Chair. Over the next few weeks we will be making substantial efforts to communicate with Assembly Member Glick at the district level to see what can be done if not for this session, then for 2011. Our ASNY leadership will be focussing on this issue in July.

2. It is very unlikely that the budget problem is going to be solved this week in Albany. That means that there will be more meetings of the Assembly this year and that means that there is still some home for this bill. The hope is small, but it is there.

3. NYSAC will be providing specific suggestions about political giving prior to the coming election and working hard to build our war chest for 2011. We are very close to legislative success, but we need resources to support our process and our legislative sponsors. Please think about contributing the cost of a few patient visits to NYSAC and members of the Senate who supported our work, Suzi Oppenheimer in particular. We need to be sure that Grace Meng is aware of how much we appreciate her efforts. Finally, NYSAC is only the representative of this initiative. We have relied on so much support and effort from ASNY and ATCMS. If you aren’t already a member of ASNY or ATCMS please join.

This is a hard process, done by volunteers against big odds, but every session, every year we get further along. Keep up the good work.