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Brian Lehrer: Brian Lehrer on WNYC and we have a situation this morning that they're still putting the final touches on the New York State budget for the new fiscal year that began last Thursday, April 1st, taxes on the wealthy, rent relief for the financially stressed, COVID relief for New Yorkers excluded from the federal bill, sports betting plus the Manhattan casino, all reportedly still being negotiated. Then there are all the accumulating Cuomo scandals and how they play into the negotiations on all these things that affect every New Yorker.

We have a very special guest from the New York state legislature. It's the Assembly Majority Leader, Crystal Peoples-Stokes from Buffalo. She's also much in the news right now because she campaigned for years to get marijuana legalized in New York State as a social justice issue and, of course, that effort finally succeeded last week. Majority Leader Peoples-Stokes, thanks for making the time today in the midst of all this. Welcome back to WNYC.

Crystal Peoples-Stokes: Thank you so much for having me. It's my pleasure.

Brian: Let me start here and for people who don't know you in our downstate audience. You've been in the assembly since 2003. When did you first start pushing the idea of recreational marijuana legalization, which used to be a marginal idea?

Leader Peoples-Stokes: Eight years ago. Eight years ago, we started working on that as an issue mostly from the perspective that there are just way too many people from my community and communities across New York with folks who have been incarcerated for generations. It's not just the mother and the father that's been incarcerated. It's the children as well because if all those research tells you that when parents are incarcerated, it has an impact on children. We find ourselves in this position where we got the cycle going where people who end up going back to jail recidivating because they can't do anything else. They've got a felony on the record for a low level of marijuana. They can't go to school. The communities they live in are in disorder. It's just a total hot mess. By the way, it's continuously costing government more money to deal with as opposed to fixing any problems.

At some point, you got to just say, "Stop it. Stop locking people for low levels of marijuana. Stop allowing this product to be something that's illegal when most people in the state of New York use it." There's no way it's a multiple billion-dollar industry underground if it's only used by Black and brown people, but we're the only ones that have been locked up for it.

At some point, you got to say, "Stop, and let's back up here. Let's take another route." That's what we did. We offered the opportunity to legalize it. People said, "Well, why would you want to legalize a drug?" First of all, it should have never been illegal. Secondly, that doesn't mean that people should smoke it just because it's legal. That just means people won't get incarcerated for it. It was a long time coming. It was worth every minute, and I'm hopeful that the people who realize that their records are now expunged or who would desire to have them further destroyed, go and get that and realize that they have a second chance at being a productive citizen in this community without being constantly harassed for a record they should have never had.

Brian: Yes, and obviously being involved in this issue for so long. You tell that story really well, and I think it's instructive for a lot of my downstate listeners who don't think very much about Buffalo except maybe when the Bills are playing with Jets, but the old marijuana laws were affecting communities in your city. Similarly, it sounds like to the way they were affecting communities in my city. We know that the New York City story included stop and frisk and they would ask people to empty their pockets and then they would empty their pockets, and there would be a little weed in there and that they'd get busted. We know these were overwhelmingly Black and brown kids. Even right now--

Leader Peoples-Stokes: They have a felony.

Brian: Even without Bloomberg stop and frisk, this was going on in Buffalo.

Leader Peoples-Stokes: It's going on in Utica. It's going on in Rochester. It's going on in Syracuse. It's going on in Yonkers. There is not a community where people of color live that you can go into and be able to identify where the people are being incarcerated in mass numbers. They all look the same, basically. You will see blight, you will see infrastructure that's in disrepair. You will see people who walk around in some sense looking rather hopeless at times. You will see predatory-type businesses. It all looks the same. I don't care whether you're in the Bronx or Buffalo, and so the problem is the same. When you fix the problem for Bronx and Buffalo, you fixed it for Utica as well.

Brian: This is about social justice, as you know, not just in stopping the arrests, but also in who gets to run and own businesses in the new industry and about how the new tax revenue will be spent. From what I've read, earlier legal states, states that have gone before New York have not succeeded very much in getting Black and brown people into ownership, even though they might theoretically get advantages for the licenses on paper in the law because it still required capital investments, and mostly white people could afford them. Is that your understanding of the national record so far? Do you address that in the new New York State law?

Leader Peoples-Stokes: That is my understanding of the national record. The opportunity to garner additional revenue for whatever respective government was the first objective. As an afterthought, equity popped in. Well, it's a little hard to put equity and once you've already established all the rules, and so we constructed ours in a way that will require that there'd be a 50%, not a goal of reaching 50% equity business.

We also identified the place where the resources couldn't come from should there need to be technical support or loans or [unintelligible 00:06:07] or grants to help people get started with that. It's a multiple billion-dollar industry underground right now. There's some people who are underground with it and they should be given an opportunity to come above ground day one. If you have a felony conviction, as long as it's not a white-collar crime, you can probably still get access to a license if you choose to have one.

Brian: As long as it's not a white-collar crime. If you've been arrested for assault, you could get into the business, but not for insider trading?

Leader Peoples-Stokes: Not assault, not assault, but not for insider trading, not for stealing from your employer or stealing from the church or taking from the bingo game. You can't be convicted of that, but if you have a conviction for low levels of marijuana, it will not prohibit you from getting access to a license.

Brian: Got you. Listeners, your questions.

Leader Peoples-Stokes: The licenses are divided so that you don't have to capitalize multiple licenses at one time. You can get a license for delivery. You can get a license for nursery, you can get a license for onsite consumption, so the licenses are spread out that provide an opportunity for people to have access to.

Brian: With special low-interest loans or grants or anything like that?

Leader Peoples-Stokes: That is included as well. That is a potential. The registered organizations that actually right now operate in our state to deliver the medical marijuana programs, they're going to have access to getting dispensaries, but they're going to have to pay a license fee to get that. That license fee that they pay to get those adult-use dispensaries will be used to finance the equity initiatives.

Brian: Listeners, your questions, welcome here for New York State Assembly majority leader, Crystal Peoples-Stokes, on the marijuana legalization law that's now in effect in New York State, especially the social justice aspects. 646-435-7280 or you can call about details of the emerging New York State budget now five days late. We'll get into some of these details in just a second here or other things relevant to her as New York State Assembly Majority Leader. 646-435-7280. 646-435-72 80.

Majority leader, let me go down some of these points that I have at least the news reports as sticking points for last-minute negotiations on the budget and get your opinions about them and your takes on where they're at. First of all, raising taxes on the wealthiest New Yorkers. What can you tell us?

Leader Peoples-Stokes: I can tell you that there are some proposed taxes for the wealthiest New Yorkers. Most New Yorkers and most Americans quite frankly, saw what happened during COVID. The wealthiest Americans gained a ton more resources and the people who have the least lost a lot. In order to try to support people during this pandemic that we're still in the middle of, you have to have revenue from somewhere and so that's where we're getting it from.

Brian: There are many versions of tax hikes on the wealthy. Can you give us any details of which one or which one seemed to be making it to the finish line?

Leader Peoples-Stokes: I'm not able to tell you that kind of specificity, sir. Only because I'm not the person that's going to negotiate our budget over the media.

Brian: All right. Our previous guest, maybe you heard him, Democratic Congressman Tom Suozzi from Queens in Long Island was talking about federal tax rates. He's concerned with the SALT tax and all that stuff about the wealthiest New Yorkers fleeing the state and taking their tax money elsewhere if they consider tax rates here too high. Those with the most opportunity to leave that will. I know the governor is concerned about that too, are you not?

Leader Peoples-Stokes: Well, it's not that I'm not concerned about it but I know that the reason why the wealthiest New Yorkers are here is because New York provides them the opportunity to gather that wealth, one. Two, by the way, it's a federal decision to eliminate the SALT tax and since you were talking to the congressman, I hope he's been working on putting that back in place because not only impacts wealthy New Yorkers, it impacts New Yorkers like myself and like my mother and my family and, by the way, your family too. It makes more sense to have taxes impact people who have the more of ability to pay than it does for those who do not. I, again, think the idea of taxing the wealthiest people is a fair way to go.

Brian: Let me go to another budget item. COVID relief for New Yorkers excluded from the federal COVID relief bill, undocumented New Yorkers, and others. I'm sure you know there's a hunger strike even going on in support of those folks. What can you tell us about the negotiations or what you support for them?

Leader Peoples-Stokes: Well, I can tell you that for the previous four years, the population was demonized from our former president every day. I can also tell you to previous four years that the vast majority of those folks had ITIN numbers, were working, were paying taxes, and quite honestly allowing New York's economy to flourish in the way that it has. For them to be demonized to the extent that they should just starve to death because they're not able to get stimulus or unemployment or anything like that, that's not who we are as New Yorkers. That's not who we are. Well, we're basically an immigrant state. Most of the people who live in New York State came from somewhere else. Yes, they are owed something and we are trying to make sure that we deliver that.

Brian: New York State Assembly majority leader, Crystal Peoples-Stokes. Stay with us. Be patient for about 60 seconds while we take a short break. We'll continue to go down some of the biggest, at least previously, before this morning, unresolved issues in the New York State budget. Rent relief for the financially stressed during the pandemic that affects so many of my listeners. Is sports betting coming to New York? Is a Manhattan casino coming to New York under this law and we'll take some phone calls for you as we continue. Brian Lehrer on WNYC.

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Brian Lehrer on WNYC with New York State Assembly majority leader Crystal Peoples-Stokes. Let's take a phone call from Nick in Astoria, Queens. Nick, you're on WNYC. Hi there.

Nick: Hi, good morning and good morning, majority leader. Thanks for being here.

Leader Peoples-Stokes: Good morning.

Nick: I'm a small business owner. Good morning. I'm a small business owner. Specifically, I own a yoga studio. We were closed for an entire year. We just recently opened it under limited capacity. I am drowning in debt right now. I paid commercial rent because I didn't want to lose my studio. I paid it for a full year. I also kept my employees on payroll the entire year. I took out many loans to make that happen.

I'm really curious to know what the small business relief looks like in the state budget and specifically, I'm curious, is this relief going to come in the form of low-interest long-term loans or is it going to come as grants? I really hope it's grants. Also, I'm curious to know how those amounts might be calculated. Are they going to calculate it based on our payroll? Is it going to be calculated based on our 2019 revenue? Any details you have because I'm very nervous about the future of my business and I hope things will look stable based on what the budget shows.

Brian: Nick, thank you so much.

Leader Peoples-Stokes: Well, can I tell you-- I'm sorry. I didn't catch your name but here's what I can say to you. Don't be nervous. Help is on the way. Under the leadership of Al Stirpe, who happens to be the chair of the Small Business Committee, the resources that are available to small businesses are extraordinary numbers that we've never seen before. Now, again, as I told Brian, I'm not the person who will share negotiations about our budget process over the media because we haven't passed it yet but I do know because I've been in conversations, I've heard every single solitary one of my members particularly those from the New York City area press harder and harder and harder for small businesses like yours. Because of that, the speaker has heard it and I promise you, you will be pleased with the results.

Brian: All right. A nice tease there for whenever this budget gets concluded. Maybe it's just hours away, maybe a few days away.

Leader Peoples-Stokes: We're hopeful. The sooner we get it done, the more we can start talking about the details.

Brian: Yes. Do you think it'll be today?

Leader Peoples-Stokes: That is my prayer, sir.

Brian: Seth in Westchester, you're on WNYC with assembly majority leader, Crystal Peoples-Stokes. Hi, Seth.

Seth: Hi. Thank you for taking my call. I appreciate your work. I totally wholeheartedly believe in de-criminalization of marijuana because it disproportionately targets-- Sorry, I was just jogging. Disproportionately targets people of color and I think it's an arm of institutional racism. However, as a parent and as a motorist, I'm also concerned about impairments, how it's measured, do breathalyzers work, how that will be handled.

Brian: By the way, I have to say-- Assembly majority leader, one of the great joys and weirdnesses of doing a radio show is that it's not like a theatre where people come and sit down and they watch the show from beginning to end. People might be doing anything. They might be in their cars, they might be in their bathrooms, and here is Seth. Seth, I love the idea of you may be jogging around the Croton Reservoir through the Aqueduct in Irvington or wherever you might be and listening to the show on your headphones and it's stopping to talk on the air. Anyway, there's a New York image for you, but majority leader, go ahead.

Leader Peoples-Stokes: Well, I really want to appreciate Seth's comment because as a grandmother of a young 20 year older, nothing is more important to me than making sure that when he's driving because he has a license, that he's safe on the road. I get that but I need Seth to understand that marijuana is a multiple billion-dollar industry right now as we speak in the state of New York. How are we dealing with impairment issues now? I would submit to you that the fact that we're not. The same law that allows the officer to see a person doing something that looks like driving erratically, stop them, determine that they're impaired by something even if they don't know what it is, and arrest them, is still in place. That is still in place.

Secondly, here is what we've done. In this legislation, is we've committed resources from the revenue to do a standalone study to do what no other state has done and that has determined how much THC in a person's system determines impairment? We already know it can be there for 30 days. We know for a fact that that doesn't mean that you're impaired for 30 days. We're committed to doing a standalone study to make that decision. You might remember, maybe not you Seth, but some listeners might remember when alcohol was made legal. There was no breathalyser. It took a couple of years to get to that point.

We don't think it should take that long. We're New Yorkers. Our science is better, our innovation is better. We can do the research here. We can figure out what does impairment look like from THC by studying it and we're going to do that.

Brian: Majority leader, what can you tell us about rent relief in the new bill? As you know, it affects so many listeners who are renters and also those who are landlords.

Leader Peoples-Stokes: Well, I'm from a perspective where it impacts as important to landlords as it is tenants because I live in an area where there are a lot of people who live in double houses. They are the landlord and they still had to pay their mortgage when people couldn't pay rent. Yes, in this budget, there was hope for both that landlord and tenants.

Brian: We will see. Since I know you've made it clear, you're not going to negotiate details in the media, we will see what kind of rent relief comes in the new budget, which could be approved as early as today. Tobia in East Setauket on Long Island, you're on WNYC with the-- You're about as far as you can get from each other and still both be in New York State at least in terms of where you live. From East Setauket, Long Island to the majority leader from Buffalo. Hi, Tobia.

Tobia: Hi, how is everything?

Leader Peoples-Stokes: Hi, Tobia.

Brian: Go ahead. What would you like to ask?

Tobia: Thank you so much. First thing, I wanted to thank the majority leader for his work. I really, really appreciate it as a person, a minority from Long Island whom [unintelligible 00:20:08] DWI over a small piece of marijuana in this car and losing five years [unintelligible 00:20:18] economic output and also paying over $50,000 in fines over just a little thing. I really, really want to thank you for doing this and it's going to be very beneficial to a lot of young minority youth that have been so unfairly targeted by this.

I could not have thanked you enough but I wanted to go back to the point of-- In Long Island, it's a very conservative place and a lot of people liked it because of its conservativeness. Even as a minority immigrant, I love it because of its conservativeness but the issue is I paid the price over this, heavy price over something that was where it's probably not even a couple of dollars. I'm already seeing a lot of politicians come out and they're saying that they want to ban the sale of it from the communities. To me, that raises-

Leader Peoples-Stokes: They do have that option, Tobia. They do have that option. Local governments have that option, not counties, but local governments have the option of saying, "We're not going to have dispensaries in our community," but that doesn't mean that you as a citizen are not still able to have three ounces. Now, where you get three ounces from?

That's another story. That should not be from the street because that's going to be illegal, but there'll be other places in the state that will sell it right now because New York is not a legal state that allows it. A lot of New Yorkers who live in and around Albany spend their life in Massachusetts, at the Massachusetts dispensary, picking up their products and bringing them back. You shouldn't do that over state lines either because of federal laws, but your local towns have the ability to say no. That still does not prohibit you, sir, from having access. The ability to utilize this law in a way you would like to.

Brian: Tobia, you're worried about gangs, right?

Tobia: I am very much worried about because I watched border shows all the time on TV. Number one drug actually is not even a drug from which they [unintelligible 00:22:48], but number one substance that is being illegally transferred from Mexican border to US border is marijuana. It's heavily documented. It's not disputable at all.

Those substances could end up in our communities filling that void instead of we as citizens, and a lot of us spend a lot of money on quality marijuana and we can afford to. We have disposable income to do that. Why should I want to send my money across the border and, let's say, El Chapo's gang and fuel that drug war, instead I could just have a local person, anybody.

Brian: I'm going to leave it here for time, Tobia, but I just see [crosstalk]. I guess, he doesn't like the fact that the local governments can opt out for dispensaries.

Leader Peoples-Stokes: They can't opt out of the fact that the product is legal in the state of New York, but they can opt out of an opportunity to have an open facility in their communities.

Brian: Let me ask you about-

Leader Peoples-Stokes: And at minimum, at least it's not the county level, it's the local government level.

Brian: Let me ask you about one detail and Tobia thanks a lot for your call. Please do call us again. That I haven't seen reported one way or another. I know that in some earlier legal states, even though it's legal to own marijuana, smoke marijuana if you're applying for a job, an employer can require a drug test and if you test positive for THC, even if as you say that consumption might've been 30 days ago, you test positive for THC in a legal state, an employer in some of those states can deny you the job. That's different than being high on the job where, of course, anybody can and should be fired for being impaired on the job if depending on the circumstances, but just the test for employment. Is that still legal in New York State?

Leader Peoples-Stokes: Well, it really is not because it's like saying, you can't have a martini the day before you come to work. Marijuana has the same legal place as alcohol now, but it doesn't require an employer who has any connection to the federal government, any existing rules as it relates to the federal government from still applying federal government rules. This is where responsible adult users. If you have that kind of job or you want that kind of job, then you have to be responsible and not use.

Brian: That's for federal contractors. Other private businesses cannot test you that way. Is that what you're saying?

Leader Peoples-Stokes: I'm saying that they probably could and they shouldn't, and if it's challenged in court, it would be like, "You're questioning me because I smoked a marijuana or I had an edibles three weeks ago. I can't have a job here. That's a violation of my right."

Brian: All right. To be determined in court, it sounds like.

Leader Peoples-Stokes: To be determined in court.

Brian: This is WNYC FM HD and AM New York, WNJT-FM 88.1 Trenton, WNJP 88.5 Sussex, WNJY 89.3 Netcong, and WNJO 90.3 Toms River, we are in New York and New Jersey Public Radio. Just a few minutes left with the New York State assembly majority leader, Crystal Peoples-Stokes. Briefly, majority leader, are you worried-- Well, Politico New York reports today that the governor's scandals have weakened his hands in negotiations over details of the cannabis law and the emerging budget, allowing more progressive provisions to pass. Do you see the politics of this moment that way?

Leader Peoples-Stokes: Not actually. I think that at least not for the cannabis piece now, maybe some people can suggest that around the budget issues, but from my perspective, a lot more than the governor scandals impressed upon him and other people in this state about the value of trying to eliminate a racist system that was impacting only Black and brown people and I think one of them is clearly the George Floyd murder in broad daylight by a public servant.

Secondly, is the mammoth impact that COVID-19 had on the lives of Black and brown people and it showed glaringly all the disparities that are delivered in a race-based manner in the state of New York. I think this was an eye-opener for a lot of people, including the governor and I think that's why we had such really good negotiations on the cannabis piece.

Now, on his other scandals, it's all going to play itself out and quite honestly, he's still governor while they're going on. He's still doing what governors should be doing while they're going on. At the end of the day, a decision is going to be made by either Attorney General's office investigation or the judiciary committee through my colleague, Chuck Levine's committee is going to make a decision about whether or not some of these things are political, whether or not they're factually legal and whether or not they're morally wrong and whatever they come up with, he's going to have to live with. In the meantime, there are multiple thousands of people in the state of New York who need us to keep working and that's what we're doing.

Brian: The governor has been going from Black neighborhood to Black neighborhood in the state trying to make a show of his support. I'm curious if you feel, even though you think that we should wait for the results of the investigations that he's trying to use Black New Yorkers as political props sort of, or is this just part of a consistent allyship that you believe Cuomo usually shows?

Leader Peoples-Stokes: No, I don't personally feel used. As a matter of fact, the people that I represent were really totally grateful when the vaccine clinics kept popping up in a 14215, 14211 zip code areas because people wanted access to those vaccines and they wanted it without going outside of their communities and so if someone else can view that as me being used to get those services to my people, let them make the call how they feel it is. I make the call like, "I need this for my folks." He's bringing it and we're grateful.

On the other hand, if you put the Black people's experience just with allegations being made at people and juxtapose that to a white person's experience with allegations being imposed on them, you get a whole different result. Black people do think differently about these things, but it's not because we'd like a person or dislike a person, it's because we understand how it feels, what it means when you get accused of something and it never gets proven, but it impacts terribly on your life.

Most of us being spiritually Christians, you understand is that you don't treat people the way they treat you. You treat them the way you would want to be treated and we have always wanted to be treated with under equal justice, always and we still do. We will like for that for everybody else as well.

Brian: Representing Buffalo 14215, and really all of us who live in New York as the state assembly majority leader, Crystal Peoples-Stokes, thank you so much for coming on with us. Great conversation. I really appreciate it.

Leader Peoples-Stokes: You're so welcome, sir. Thank you so much for your invitation. You stay safe.

 

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