During the week of June 14-18th, the New York State Legislature overwhelmingly passed the Empire State Future Coalition's top priority legislation -- the Public Infrastructure Priority Act (A8011B/S5560B). This groundbreaking bill instructs State Agencies, Authorities and Public Corporations to align their spending on infrastructure with stated smart growth criteria. These agencies must form advisory committees that include environmental and community stakeholders to advice them in regard to smart growth compliance. The agencies are further instructed to issue written Smart Growth Impact Statements in regard to their project choices and that includes issuing written justifications for projects deemed vital that do not meet smart growth criteria.
The bi-partisan bill passed the New York State Assembly 138-2 and the New York State Senate 56-2. It was sponsored by Sam Hoyt of Buffalo in the Assembly and by Westchester's Suzi Oppenheimer, Brooklyn's Velmanette Montgomery and Long Island's Carl Marcellino in the Senate.
Empire State Future views the bill's passage as a giant step toward New York's sustainable economic revitalization. New York may soon be a Smart Growth State! The bill now goes to the Governor who is expected to sign.
The following are excerpts of the letter sent to Governor Paterson from Empire State Future Executive Director Peter Fleischer on June 24th:
"Last November, at the Vision Long Island Smart Growth Summit, you eloquently asserted that 'smart growth is the pressing progress of the future rather than the comfort of the present.' You also noted that 'not making smart growth choices' may explain why 49 states have declining revenues. I was impressed by the importance you attributed to smart growth, and by the overall force of your convictions regarding smart growth, land use, development and fiscal rectitude.
The Public Infrastructure Policy Act addresses this cluster of issues in a fundamental way. You have, or will soon have on your desk, a bill that propels New York toward a sustainable smart growth future through the prioritization of public infrastructure spending. Signing this bill will help to realize the vision you so articulately expressed in Long Island. Your signing this far-reaching bill will commence a process whereby:
We get the best possible bang for the buck from our limited infrastructure money. State expenditures for infrastructure projects will increasingly become investments toward an economically and environmentally sustainable future - whether on main streets, town centers, rural or urban areas.
We stop using public funds to add infrastructure in green fields, which destroys habitat and threatens species and water supplies when we cannot afford to maintain the essential water, sewer, road, rail and bridge infrastructure we already have.
We focus on fix-it-first infrastructure so that our agricultural economy, our subways and our wastewater treatment plants protect our environment and keep us healthy and prosperous.
Our communities do not condemn us to use our cars for everything we do - spewing green house gases, and burning up oil that we produce at risk, or import from those who too often are not our friends.
Our communities become more equitable and environmentally just.
The needs of all users of our public spaces -- parents with strollers, the disabled, bicyclists, and the elderly -- are met in road and street design.
The communities we strengthen and build here in New York will better meet the housing and service needs of our state's seniors and the large cohort that, like it or not, will soon be seniors.
State public health concerns in regard to diabetes, obesity and heart disease and the public costs of these ills, can be met by designing and building communities where walking and riding bicycles is safe and practical.
For the many profound and important reasons listed above, we, the members of the Empire State Future and its partner organizations urge you to sign this course-changing bill.
