Johnson and Martins Debate Over Consolidation

Seventh state senatorial district candidates Mineola Mayor Jack Martins, R,I,C, - Mineola, and incumbent state Sen. Craig Johnson, D- Port Washington, squared off Monday afternoon in a News 12 debate in Woodbury moderated by Doug Geed.

Patch will be bringing you coverage of the debate over the course of five days, focusing on a different debate topic each day.

Though he admitted his belief that New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo would be the next governor, Johnson said he was against Cuomo's consolidation bill.  "I felt it was going to take away the ability for Jack Martins to operate his village as village mayor," he said. "It was allowing outsiders to come in and try and takeover government."

Johnson added that the Cuomo bill doesn't address schools, the largest portion of homeowners' taxes, which he says is in need of the property tax cap. "That we need to do to make sure we can hold the line on taxes here in New York state."

Martins said that "a more efficient government is that government which is closest to the people," revisiting the previous issue of the MTA as a case of "consolidation gone wrong." While the MTA was originally touted as able to achieve economies and efficiencies of scale, "just the exact opposite has happened."

The Mineola Mayor pointed to the Great Neck park district, saying it provided a resource "that should not be questioned nor should that be consolidated because the residents are not only happy with it, they're enthusiastically happy with it." As for a tax cap, Martins thought it was a "wonderful" first step, but not a "silver bullet." He proposes coupling it with a "spending cap" because "you can't have a tax cap and have people pushing off expenses into the future. If you don't have a spending cap, they'll just borrow, they'll use their credit card and they'll just kick that debt down the road to our children."

The seventh state senatorial district of New York includes Mineola, Port Washington, Great Neck, Roslyn, Westbury and Hicksville.