Johnson and Martins Square Off Over State Spending

Seventh state senatorial district candidates 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 next five days, focusing on a different debate topic each day.

First elected to Albany in 2007, Johnson touted standing up to special interests in his pursuit of a property tax cap, obtaining $700 billion in "Race to the Top" funding for New York and passing legislation having health insurance companies cover prenatal vitamins and autism. "Difficult but necessary decisions have had to be made," Johnson said in closing a $30 billion state budget deficit. "Much work remains to clean up Albany and get our economy moving and I plan to meet those challenges as well."

Serving as mayor of the village of Mineola for the past seven years, Martins believes that "Albany won't fix itself," saying that many of the problems had been made "recently," specifically "increasing spending by $14 billion in the middle of the worst economic downturn in 80 years and imposing 124 new taxes." Among the most egregious in Martins' view is the Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA) tax which "is killing jobs." Martins said his focus was on cutting spending and creating jobs.

New York state is facing a $30 billion deficit incurred over the past two years, $9 billion in fiscal 2010 alone. Johnson blamed the deficit on "failed policies" from past Legislatures "and weak leadership in our Executive branch." He said the budget deficit was closed without having to borrow, "which is very important" as next year New York faces a $7 billion deficit. Johnson's solution is to reduce the size of government by reducing the number of authorities, specifically mentioning consolidating the thruway and highway authorities into the Department of Transportation. "Millions upon millions upon millions of dollars are wasted on these authorities," he said.

Martins said the number one issue was jobs, "unfortunately our state has been woefully behind every other state in the country as far as job creation," blaming overregulation and a lack of incentives to small businesses. Martins also chided $52 billion a year spent on "entitlement programs," which "means you have fewer and fewer people paying for more and more expenses." His proposal is to take money from those programs and focus it on small businesses.

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