“I find it very distressing that they would connect these two issues,” said Assemblywoman Jo Anne Simon, whose Democratic majority in the lower chamber released its own one-house budget that included authorization for design-build without any conditions. “I don’t think the recent events inspire confidence in that approach — this is a very troubling proposal.”
Jo Anne Simon
They’re pulling out the big guns for this infrastructure fix. Some state pols want to fast track work on the deteriorating Brooklyn–Queens Expressway — but only if the city puts armed cops in every school. Republicans in the state Senate proposed a fiscal plan on March 14 — following Gov. Cuomo’s two budget drafts issued in January and February — that allows the city to use the streamlined design-build process in its job to rebuild a 1.5-mile stretch of the three-tiered expressway between Atlantic Avenue and Sands Street, but inextricably ties the authorization to a provision that would require firearm-carrying officers in public learning houses across the five boroughs. But after kids across Kings County walked out of classrooms that same day as part of a nationwide call to reform gun laws following last month’s devastating shooting that claimed 17 lives at a Florida high school, linking the unrelated law to the road’s repair is a slap in the face to students and teachers who don’t want more weapons in safe spaces, a Brooklyn Heights pol said. -The Brooklyn Paper