ORANGE COUNTY, N.Y.—State Sen. James Skoufis spoke about what his office has done for the people he represents during a town hall spree called “Skoufis on Your Street.”
Skoufis gave four town halls between July 28 and July 31, in the town of Cornwall, city of Middletown, city of Port Jervis, and town of Chester. He has held a town hall every year of his 13 years in government except one year during the COVID-19 pandemic. Skoufis represents all of Orange County except Newburgh and Montgomery.
In the first six months of this year, Skoufis’s office has sponsored or cosponsored 91 bills, the most of any of the 63 state senators.
Speaking at the town hall in Middletown on July 29, Skoufis said: “A lot of these bills are, they’re not flashy, they’re not headline grabbing. ... They’re meaningful for a lot of New Yorkers and in many cases specifically a lot of Orange County residents.”
Skoufis is chairman of the Investigations Committee, and part of his job there is to address alcohol laws. He said his goal is to get rid of many of the older alcohol laws still in place in the state. He has passed three bills so far on the topic. One Prohibition-era law prevents alcohol distribution licenses from being granted to businesses within 500 feet of a church. Skoufis’s bill revising the law passed both houses this year, and the governor is expected to sign it.
Other bills that were passed with his support include the Medical Aid in Dying Act, pertaining to assisted suicide. He added more safety measures to the bill before it passed. He also introduced a bill that would make conversations with peer counselors privileged. The bill aims to help emergency workers such as firefighters and EMS operators feel more comfortable talking to their peer counselors, as those conversations would be legally private. Both of these bills are expected to be signed into law by Gov. Kathy Hochul.
Skoufis contributed to the fight against a 3-million-square-foot Amazon warehouse that was proposed in the town of Wawayanda and a 2-million-square-foot warehouse in Cornwall. He said he’s opposed to more warehouses in the area. He said the warehouses are ugly, they have big environmental footprints, and there is no one in Orange County who wants to work a warehouse job that doesn’t already have one.
As chairman of the Investigations Committee, he helped look into the CPV Valley Energy Center, a natural gas-burning power plant opened in Wawayanda in 2018. The plant was at the center of a 2018 scandal when it was revealed that Joseph Percoco, an aide to then-Gov. Andrew Cuomo, had gotten his wife a no-show job at the plant.
The plant also has been operating without a Clean Air Act Title V permit, but might receive one soon. Skoufis said he has advised the Department of Design and Construction commissioner to deny the air quality permit, which would cause the plant to shut down.
Skoufis ended his talk in Middletown by saying: “I find it to be a privilege to represent this community. I love being able to be in a position to help our neighbors and improve the places that we call home. And I think I have the best team in all the New York state government. We take this job very, very, very seriously.”
