Michael Mills speaks up for the people who make our region strong and will ensure our needs are visible and we have a seat at the table in Albany. Let’s rise together now for…
Jobs
Strengthen our workforce and give future generations a fair chance at building a future here. Provide onramps to meaningful work through education and opportunities in the skilled trades, light manufacturing, health and senior care, hospitality, and agriculture.
- Public investments should create local economic multipliers.
- Invest in manufacturing
- Small business - tax policy should encourage work and economic mobility
- Regional economic development - tap into the success from the new Micron Chip manufacturing and the "I-Corridor"
- Workforce development
- Apprenticeships
- Career-connected education
Affordability
Make New York affordable for people, families, and small businesses so everyone has the opportunity for a prosperous life. Raise the profile of our district and its needs to secure housing investment, affordable childcare, expanded healthcare, and business development.
- Make homeownership attainable
- -Increase the supply of attainable workforce housing and reduce housing costs by reducing barriers to building.
- -Rehabilitate vacant and underutilized properties.
- -Support first-time homebuyers
- -Reduce unnecessary barriers to housing development
- -Target property tax relief to middle-income homeowners and seniors
- Lower the cost of everyday life
- -Expand affordable childcare -Reduce healthcare costs and protect families from medical debt -Lower household energy bills through efficiency investments -Improve access to affordable transportation and broadband -Address unnecessary costs that burden working families
- Grow opportunity, not just income -Invest in workforce development and apprenticeships -Small businesses and family farms. -Strengthen regional economic development -Connect education and training directly to quality careers
- Practice institutional stewardship -Modernizing government -Eliminating unnecessary bureaucracy -Measuring outcomes -Spending public resources responsibly while maintaining essential public services
- Reduce structural costs -Public policy should reduce unnecessary costs rather than add to them.
Safety and Services
Preservation
Fund local infrastructure so people and communities have what they need, when they need it. Invest in emergency services, Medicaid, clean drinking water, effective waste management, and safe roads and bridges.
- Protect rural hospitals and emergency services from Trump's deep funding cuts.
- Secure funds for weatherization programs for low-income households, which will lower energy bills and decrease the strain on our energy infrastructure.
- Pass the Drinking Water Protection Act which strengthens protections for our drinking water supplies.
- Pass the Office of Prevention and Mitigation Act which, among other things, will create an office to study and coordinate responses to floods.
- Pass New York Health Act which would create a universal, single-payer health care system to guarantee comprehensive coverage for every New York resident and full-time worker.
- Prioritizing funding for critical resource development—from bridge repairs to water treatment modernization—ensuring the region’s beauty is matched by reliable, modern systems.
- -Help municipalities secure outside funding for infrastructure instead of relying on local property tax increases.
Fight the exploitation of the Finger Lakes as a waste dump, crypto mine, and energy source that powers the rest of the state (and Canada) but not our homes and communities. Protect our waterways and environment so our communities and economy remain clean, healthy, and strong.
- Modify the Climate Leadership and Community Protection Act (CLCPA). We must amend key deadlines and mandates to address affordability and economic growth.
- Pass the Harmful Algal Bloom Monitoring and Prevention Act to protect our lakes and watersheds.
- We must establish rules by which New York evaluates transformational infrastructure projects, like data centers. I am proposing a Community Stewardship Standard for Infrastructure based on four principles.
- 1. Community consent. The people who live with the consequences should have the deciding voice.
- 2. Developer responsibility. Facilities should run on 100 percent renewable energy paid for by the companies, in addition to the necessary grid improvements, environmental protections and infrastructure their projects require. Those costs should never be shifted onto taxpayers or ratepayers.
- 3. Public transparency. All decisions should be public before they're made.
- 4. Lasting public benefit. Economic development should leave communities stronger than it found them.
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