Tag: spreckman

It’s not the snow-the ground is moving under your feet

Do You Feel the Ground Moving?
That’s the safety net being ripped out from under your feet
right here in Westchester County.

The Bad News
County Government at its Worst

Westchester’s present County Executive, Rob Astorino, and his gang of nine are playing fast and loose with the county budget, borrowing money to pay for tax certiorari – a practice that led in part to Nassau County’s huge financial difficulties – while simultaneously launching a full fledged attack on our county’s intricate support system that took decades to build. The results of Astorino’s callous actions are unimaginable, and they are happening right here to Westchester’s women and our families.

Astorino is a Tea Party extremist who is advancing an anti-woman, anti-family agenda similar to that voiced by GOP vice presidential candidate Paul Ryan and former Senator Rick Santorum. His focus is on gutting programs that serve working families, and borrowing money when he needs to, so that he can claim he isn’t raising taxes. Astorino has little regard for the working families of Westchester and the services we rely on. Further, as County Executive, he has a great deal of power to adversely impact women’s health care – and he’s determined to do just that. He has already vetoed a bill that would have allowed women the most basic of rights – safe access to reproductive health centers – while cutting funding for childcare, food pantries, afterschool programs, health centers, and much more. Please keep in mind that Astorino is making these cuts that have a horrific impact on living, breathing children while, at the same time, is adamant in his opposition to safe access to reproductive health centers and to abortion even in cases of rape, incest or to save the life of the woman.

To compound things, if that’s possible, at a time when we know that the mentally ill need treatment and care, not guns, Astorino and his seven minions closed all of Westchester’s mental health centers, without even implementing a transition plan for the clients.

The Good News
2013 is Election Year for all elected offices in Westchester County Government.

 

Three candidates for County Executive and one for the Board of Legislators have already stepped up to the plate to take on Astorino and his anti-choice right-wing legislators who are out of step with Westchester’s women and families.

The three candidates – Noam Bramson, Ken Jenkins, and Bill Ryan – are vying for the opportunity to defeat Rob Astorino and, once again, make Westchester a county were women are treated as equals and all people – regardless of economic circumstance – have the opportunity to succeed. (See below for information on Bramson, Jenkins, and Ryan.)

The candidate for the Board of Legislators, and truly a friend to Choice Matters, is Rachelle “Rocky” Richard, a real fighter that everyone would want in their corner.

Rocky is telling traitor Bernice Spreckman it’s time to pack her bags and go home. Spreckman used Choice to get elected, seeking and getting our endorsement for more than a dozen years; but then, the first time we needed her support, Spreckman voted against women of all ages – she voted against safe access to reproductive health centers for the women of Westchester simply because Astorino told her to. For political expediency, she turned her back on all of us who voted for her, slamming the clinic door in our faces.

In sharp contrast to Spreckman, Rocky is an accomplished professional in government, community and public affairs with more than 25 years of experience. Rocky has successfully organized and managed community engagement as well as grassroots advocacy throughout Westchester. For the past seven years Rocky has served as the Chief of Staff to the Yonkers City Council President.

For those of us who truly care about Choice, Rocky is what we want every candidate to be – proud to stand up for comprehensive reproductive rights.

Meet the Good Guys
Noam Bramson, Ken Jenkins, and Bill Ryan
Three candidates with distinctly different backgrounds

Noam Bramson has served as the Mayor of New Rochelle since January 2006 and was reelected most recently in 2011 with a record-breaking 79% of the vote. Prior to becoming Mayor, Noam served for ten years on the New Rochelle City Council. Since 1992, Noam has worked as an aid to Congresswoman Nita Lowey on both government and political challenges. Noam describes the election as a contest of fundamental values, and on his literature he prominently displays, he stand[s] confidently for a woman’s right to choose, marriage equality, inclusion, and Westchester’s mainstream values.

Ken Jenkins is Chairman of the County Board of Legislators. He won his 16th District legislative seat for a second full term on November 4, 2009. Vowing to restore funding to county programs he called vital and to find creative solutions to the problems the county must face, Ken has pointed out that property taxes and fees for county services have gone up, while our quality of life has gone down, making the point that, Our county government is not doing more with less; it is doing less with less and shifting the burden to you in other ways.

Bill Ryan has served as the County Board Legislator from the 5th District for 15 years, including six as Chairman of the Board. Prior to he County Board, Bill served in the New York State Assembly (91st A.D.). In July, Bill was appointed to the Board of Directors of the National Association of Counties, and continues to serve on NACo’s Large Urban County Caucus where he is one of 35 officials representing over 140 million people in America’s 100 largest counties, on matters before the federal government. Bill is running for County Executive because Westchester has always been a great place to live, [and] for the past three years, the flawed plans, policies and decisions of the county executive have put that greatness in jeopardy. Bill has always been a vocal supporter of comprehensive reproductive rights, declaring he believes a woman’s right to choose is absolute and should not be subject to legislation.

National News

North Dakota Personhood Measure Passes State Senate
Catholic Hospital Takes Surprise Stance in Lawsuit

Westchester County Board Passes Paul Ryan’s Budget

Westchester County Board Passes Paul Ryan’s Budget
–Line items may be different but the effect is the same—

Protect the top 2% while trampling on the middle class and working poor, with a bull’s eye being placed squarely on the foreheads of working women.

One week ago, anti-choice County Executive Astorino with the support of nine minions passed a 2013 County budget.

This budget illustrates yet again the true meaning of the right-to-life agenda: care about the fetus when it’s in the womb, and the minute it’s born, it’s on its own. The cuts to Westchester’s public health care and childcare systems are of historic proportion, targeting the most vulnerable and least able to fight back among us.

Four of Choice Matters’ previously endorsed legislators voted with Astorino in support of his anti-woman anti-family budget. By supporting this horrific budget, these four legislators – Virginia Perez (17 CLD), Mike Kaplowitz (4 CLD), Jim Maisano (11 CLD), and Bernice Spreckman (14 CLD) – have publically declared their support for the County Executive’s priorities and his War on Women and our Families.

This is not hyperbole. Their votes to pass the budget rather than to fight for their constituents will have devastating affects on working women and their families.

– Astorino’s Priorities, and those of his minions who voted in support of the budget –

►Astorino clearly thinks protecting your friends and fans’ employment is more important than the good of the County.
Astorino has preserved 56 patronage jobs, at a cost of $5.4 million dollars to tax payers; and he is holding 44 positions vacant should he wish to fill them within the coming year,

while at the same time:
â–ºHe has cut 100 important jobs that serve the residents of Westchester.
Over half of these jobs are in social services, such as social workers and eligibility examiners who help those applying for assistance. The result is that the time between applying, receiving approval, and then actually getting the services, such as food stamps, aid to dependent children, public assistance, etc., will grow exponentially. And, as we all know after the past 5 years, the number of people needing help just simply to feed their families has grown at an unimaginable rate.

The other half of the jobs cut include probation personnel, paralegals, and over 80% of the engineering and architectural staff who are essential to overseeing infrastructure improvements—that means bridges, roadways, waterways, parks, anything and everything.

►Astorino, with the support of Perez, Kaplowitz, Maisano and Speckman, cut $3 million dollars in County funding to three neighborhood health centers. Let’s remember who uses the health centers. It is not Astorino and his cronies. It is the ever-growing number of working poor who cannot, just because funding is cut, go somewhere else. Many women rely on these clinics for contraceptives, pap smears, and cancer screenings, among other things. Their children go for check-ups, immunizations, and so much more.

This cut to neighborhood health centers is clearly a politically motivated action by a man who has done nothing to prepare the County for the implementation of the Affordable Care Act which starts to take effect here in Westchester in 2013.

Astorino’s attack on our health care is driven by ideology. Astorino opposes abortion even in cases of rape, incest or to save a woman’s life, and vetoed a law which would have provided women the most basic of rights – safe access to reproductive health facilities.

He opposes the Affordable Care Act and is against recognizing contraceptives as part of preventative care.

By supporting this Paul Ryan-like budget, Virginia Perez and Mike Kaplowitz, as well as Jim Maisano and Bernice Spreckman, have aligned themselves with Astorino’s ideological war on women and our families.

â–ºAstorino, with their support, cut funding for childcare programs that would have enabled women to work. The budget raised the family share for subsidized childcare to unaffordable levels.

The Astorino budget caps the number of Westchester kids ever to be allowed to be served by the Title XX program at a level reached last spring. Title XX is program that helps people earning less than the poverty level to have access to childcare funding. (As I said, Astorino is anti-abortion and anti-child, especially if they are the children of the working poor!)

This nightmarish budget also cut all funding to a program that has provided technical assistance to childcare providers and visits to legally exempt providers so there would be some reliable quality of services. Basically, this program has made facilities safer, and because of this administration, it can’t anymore!

â–ºAstorino, with the support of Perez, Kaplowitz, Maisano and Spreckman, cut all the funding to the Food Patch ($72,000) and to the Food Pantry ($72,000).

Women now won’t be able to work because of having no childcare; we won’t be able to access health care in real time; and we won’t be able to feed our families with the help from the pantries which we will now need more than ever because we can’t work without childcare.

This is the ideological agenda that Virginia Perez, Mike Kaplowitz, Jim Maisano and Bernice Spreckman support.

It is time to hold our legislators accountable. All of the County legislators and the County Executive are up for election in 2013. Let’s remind Perez, Kaplowitz, Maisano, and Spreckman that we do not vote for traitors!

Clinic Access Bill Passes, But For How Long?

The Good News:
The Clinic Access Bill Passed

The Bad News:
Two Legislators Betrayed Us!

Let me start by saying thank you to those who came out. Because you were there, you gave force and conviction to our words.
The great news is that we won. The vote by our legislators on the Reproductive Health Care Access Bill, which came one week after the Public Hearing, was 10-7 our way.

Ten legislators voted to pass our bill which guarantees safe access for women to enter and exit reproductive health clinics while protecting First Amendment Rights to free speech.  This was a great victory. It has taken us more than 14 years to get this far.

Unfortunately, the bad news is that  our success will be short lived because the County Executive who is an anti-choice extremist will veto this bill.

-And because last November two pro-choice elected officials were replaced by anti-choice right-to-life zealots, we lost two important override votes.

-And, most importantly, because we have two turncoats in our midst, we will not be able to override the anti-woman County Executive’s veto.

Most disturbing to me in this is that these two turncoat opportunists –Jim Maisano and Bernice Spreckman — who would have given us our super-majority override against the County Executive’s veto, voted against protecting the women of Westchester.

Instead, turncoats Maisano and Spreckman decided to launch their own personal war on women in order to further their own political and personal agendas.

Maisano stated to pro-choice advocates that he had to choose between the women of Westchester and the Conservative Party endorsement.

Maisano chose the Conservative Party.

(Conservative Party Chairman Fox, who also works for County Excutive Rob Astorino on tax payer dollars, sat right in front of Maisano to cement the deal.)

To Maisano, the Conservative party is more important than the health care of, according to the census, 51.6% of Westchester’s population.

More precisely, Maisano does not care about the health care of young women and those who cannot afford a private doctor.

Maisano only cares about his own political career, and has concocted a list of fabricated arguments to explain why he did not vote for the bill. All of his arguments have been refuted by great legal minds who do not have a political agenda.

Bernice Spreckman’s reason for betraying the trust of Westchester’s women is different.
Spreckman’s son apparently now works for County Excutive Rob Astorino. This is Spreckman’s own form of job security. She knows that Astorino is an anti-choice extremist, so she decided to look out for her son and turn her back on the women of Westchester.
Some think that it is wrong that I tell you that – somehow family facts are to be kept private. I do not agree. When the facts affect an elected official’s abiltiy to make sound decisions that impact the of 51.6% of the population then I believe the public deserves to know.

Fact: Jim Maisano and Bernice Spreckman sought our endorsement for more than a dozen years, and received it.

Fact: They used our endorsement to get elected.

Fact: After all those endorsements, this was the first time that we sought their vote and their voice – as their two votes are critical.

Fact: NOW when their vote counts, they voted NO!

Fact: For political expediency, they  turned their backs on all of us who voted for them, slamming the clinic door in our faces.

At this juncture we must tell Jim Maisano and Bernice Spreckman we will not tolerate their empty words and empty promises.

Our endorsement and our votes do matter and we will not be used again.

It’s Now or Never for Westchester’s Women!

We Need You to Speak Out for Women’s Safety and Privacy!

The Clinic Access Bill is scheduled for a Public Hearing at 7 p.m., Monday, April 30, 2012
Westchester County Office Building
148 Martine Ave, 8th floor
White Plains, NY
Put This on Your Calendar & Show Up, Please!

They Need to Hear from YOU!

The Following Legislators will not promise to support it!!
(Either they voted against furthering the bill to bring it to the floor or failed to vote for it at.)

Call ALL of Them!

Demand that They Stand Up for Women!

We deserve safe access to reproductive health centers!

David Gelfarb            995-2834                                                                                 gelfarb@westchesterlegislators.com

Jim Maisano              995-2826    maisano@westchesterlegislators.com                                                                                                                                                                      Bernice Spreckman  995-2815    spreckman@westchesterlegislators.com                                                                                                                                                                       Sheila Marcotte         995-2817   marcotte@westchesterlegislators.com                                                                                                                                                                           John Testa                 995-2828   testa@westchesterlegislators.com                                                                                                                                                                              Gordon Burrows      995-2830                                                                                                                                                                                       burrows@westchesterlegislators.com

Michael Smith            995-2847                                                                                                                                                                                              smith@westchesterlegislators.com

They need to hear from you.  Last December no one turned out except for a room full of anti-choice extremists, and the bill was never brought up for a vote. We fought hard to bring it back. Now you need to fight.
___________________________________________________________________

More than a decade ago, Senator Andrea Stewart Counsins and Assemblyman Tom Abinanti, then County Legislators, fought to ensure that women had safe access to women’s reproductive health centers. Unfortunately, they were not successful.  It has taken us more ten years to get to this point. We had a shot at it again last December and came up short. Now, after months of discussion, review, and dissection, the Clinic Access Bill—that would ensure women safe access to reproductive health centers—was voted out of Committee and sent to the Westchester County Board of Legislators for a vote.

This bill protects First Amendment Rights and takes a big step toward protecting Westchester’s women.

Come out and show your support for this bill tonight!

We must excerise our right to speak up and be heard.
Please come and speak out.

For the record: 1. The Bill was carefully reviewed to make sure that it was 100% in compliance with First Amendment rights – for all parties involved; and, 2. There is no other law–not state or federal–that presently protects Westchester’s women’s safety as they enter and exit reproductive health centers.

Tell Them: We Elected Them to Protect Women!