CATSKILL — State Sen. Michelle Hinchey, D-41, held a town hall meeting this month at Subversive Malting & Brewing in Catskill.
Hinchey has represented the district since 2021 and will be up for re-election in November. In the state Legislature, she chairs the Agriculture Committee and sits on six additional committees.
She provided an overview of the bills and issues that have been raised in the Legislature. Among the top issues in 2024 has been providing free meals to all students in public schools, Hinchey said.
“Having local food and making sure that people have access to local food is really important to me,” Hinchey said. “We did a huge push in our schools to get universal breakfast and lunch to all of our students.”
During the COVID pandemic, the federal government launched a program that provided meals to all students, but when the program expired, it was not renewed. Hinchey said she worked with a colleague in the Assembly to push for the state to fund those meals.
“Eighty percent of students in New York state are now covered and 95% of students in Greene County are covered for free breakfast and lunch,” Hinchey said, adding that she is working to close the gap to feed the county’s remaining 5% of students.
She has also worked on a farm-to-school program that would rectify a complicated reimbursement structure and paperwork requirements that currently discourage participation in the program and only reimburses schools for lunches, Hinchey said.
“To me, that’s a travesty because we want to make sure that our kids have healthy, locally sourced food,” the state senator said. “We also want to make sure to set up the market for local farmers to actually be able to sell their food locally and to help them stay in business.”
Lawmakers are currently looking to pass legislation this year that would reimburse schools for farm-to-school breakfasts and lunches, and would pay farmers a “fair rate” for the foods they provide to schools.
Universal pre-kindergarten is another school-related initiative that Hinchey has worked on, she said, which created hundreds of pre-K seats in the county this year.
“Here in Greene County alone, we created over 500 new universal pre-K slots because we know that universal pre-K is not just early childhood education, it’s also childcare for parents,” she said. “It’s so important, so we are continuing to build on that.”
Affordable housing is another issue that is being examined at the state level.
“Housing is a really big topic — it’s been a topic for years, but unfortunately, it hasn’t been able to bubble up to the top, especially in communities like ours, the way we need it to.”
There is a housing crisis in the region, Hinchey said, but many lawmakers from across the state think only of urban areas when it comes to housing troubles – but rural communities also face those troubles.
“We, too, are facing a severe housing crisis. We have not built houses since the 1960s and ‘70s, and we have not been able to keep pace with the cost of living,” Hinchey said.
The proliferation of short-term rentals, such as Airbnbs, has had a negative impact on the region.
“It’s pulling housing stock off the market,” Hinchey said. “Typically, it’s pulling starter homes — the ones that are more affordable for first-time home buyers or local families — off the market and turned into vacation rentals.”
To address the issue, Hinchey said the state Legislature created the first statewide registry of short-term rentals that will allow them to be taxed — which is not currently happening.
“Short-term rentals are a billion-dollar industry and we are leaving hundreds of millions of dollars on the table by not collecting sales tax from these businesses,” she said.
Hinchey hopes that legislation will be adopted by the end of this year.