Paul Szmal: It's 8.37 on FLX Morning on Finger Lakes News Radio. Happy to welcome in 120th Assemblyman Brian Mantello joining us and it's been a minute since you and I've had a chance to have a conversation. Good to speak to you again, Brian. How are you today?
Brian Manktelow: I'm doing well and good morning to you, Paul and the listeners. Thank you for having me on. I hope things are going well for you as we're already in the month of February, 2005.
Paul Szmal: Yeah, and that means that you've spent how much time now in Albany since the start of the term?
Brian Manktelow: Well, since the start of the term, we've been down here just about every week, but prior to that, we have been down here several times for legislative hearings. So we spend a fair amount of time here and we see that in the near future as well as we start dealing with the budget, the budget hearings and lots and lots of different pieces of legislation coming forward as well, Paul.
Paul Szmal: And that budget, I know, is always probably one of the more tenuous times in the legislative year.
Brian Manktelow: It really is. You know, the governor came out with her budget. Of course, we have the increase, but now we have to start formulating our one-house budgets. I know the Senate will do that and we as the Assembly will do the same. Once we get through the budget hearings here, they'll be going on for a few more weeks and learning and listening to them, to the department heads, the different individuals, the different commissioners and letting us know and allowing us to ask them questions as well.
Paul Szmal: And I know as part of the budgetary process, not only are you conferring with your co-workers and fellow Assembly members and so on and so forth in Albany, but you're also reaching out to members of the constituency back home here. And as a matter of fact, you've had meetings with some educators here of late regarding some of the budget process.
Brian Manktelow: Yeah, that's absolutely right, Paul. Last Friday, I had the chance to meet with Dr. Nye from Finger Lakes Community College, letting me know, helping me understand some of their priorities and some of their concerns, Paul. You know, one of the concerns that the doctor brought up, and it's a good concern and I really didn't think about it, but the governor had talked about free community college tuition from the ages of 25 to 55. And on the surface, that sounds really good and it's great to see adults going back to school or have the ability to do that. But one of the things that Dr. Nye brought up was, that's okay, we can do that. But there's no dollars coming to the schools to help with books, to help with supplies. How about the professors and the teachers that are going to help teach these classes? Where are they going to come from and how do we accomplish all that as well?
So one of my jobs here, Paul, will be, as we go through the budget process, to make sure we identify that and to make sure the governor's office, as well as our assembly budget, we take that into consideration as we move forward.
Paul Szmal: And budgeting is not as simple as it may be, maybe, if you're doing a month-to-month budget for a household, because you literally have hundreds of moving parts in a state budget.
Brian Manktelow: Yeah, hundreds, Paul, hundreds of moving parts, but probably the biggest moving part are the 150 assembly members, that we all have different ideas, different thoughts. We have two different conferences, the majority conference and the minority conference. I'm sure that we agree probably on 95% of the things within our conference, or even sometimes 100%. But then there's the moving parts of what's best for our district, and that's one of the things that I learned when I first came here seven years ago, Paul, was Albany is important, but the most important thing for us is our constituents back in our district, and doing what they want to see happen, not what Brian wants, or not necessarily what our conference wants.
Paul Szmal: We're talking with Assemblyman Brian Mangtelo here on FLX Morning. This is, how far along are we in the budget process here? This is basically the early steps of the process?
Brian Manktelow: Yes, last week here in Albany, we started the budget hearings. That was the first week. I believe we're going to have four to five weeks of hearings. And then once that's done, then we can start working together and talking about priorities of our one-house budgets.
Paul Szmal: Let's move on and talk about some good news that happened back home here in the district itself. There was a couple of business ribbon cuttings that you had the pleasure to attend of late.
Brian Manktelow: Yes. You know, one of the ribbon cuttings was in actually the village of Clyde, town of Galen. It was a new owner. They opened up a liquor store there, which seems so small to a lot of us and really not a big ribbon cutting, but it is because people want the ability to go there. But the bigger thing is, Paul, that some of the things that they're selling there are from our local breweries, our local wineries. So it's a trickle-down effect because they're there, hopefully a lot of the individuals that will go there to purchase stuff will buy some of our local stuff. So it helps across the board, whether it's Wayne County, Ontario County, Geneva, wherever. It's a trickle-down effect and it's good for business for that individual, but it's also good for the local businesses and farms and breweries and cideries and all that. So it's really a great thing.
Paul Szmal: We talk about shopping locally and keeping the money in the community. It really is important and it does serve a purpose.
Brian Manktelow: It does, Paul. And sometimes we just take things for granted or we don't even realize how we help a company. It was just really good to see. I was there on Friday for the SAWF opening and I saw a brewery cidery from Hilton, New York. So even from Hilton on the other side of Rochester, they're looking to sell their product there and I tried a couple of samples and it's very good. And it was good to see different people from across our region. And it's always good to see new businesses opening up in the area too.
Paul Szmal: Absolutely, because businesses, especially our local and small businesses, that's what makes us function here in upstate New York. We need our big businesses as well, but we need a whole team, a whole side of businesses and we have that opportunity.
And speaking of businesses, I know a lot of people may be a little bit scared or a little bit confused with a lot of the news that we're hearing about these import tariffs that are being put in on goods coming from Canada, Mexico, China. What's been the temperature on the assembly level? How much concern is there about potential short-term effects and what's the long game in this for people on a local level?
Brian Manktelow: Well, I think far from the short term, you know, as the president implements these tariffs, if he does, they go into effect tonight, I believe at midnight. We'll see how this all plays out. I believe that much like my farming career, my business career, when you make changes, it's tough at the beginning, like any new store opening, any new restaurant. But the long-term effects could be great for our country, great for us as residents. And hopefully we'll see some of those prices come down and be beneficial to us, not only as individuals, but as a country as well, Paul.
Paul Szmal: And what is the long game? Is the idea here to try to encourage domestic production and increase domestic production for these goods and services that we're importing?
Brian Manktelow: Yeah, absolutely. I think that here, especially in our region and especially in the United States, we have some of the best industries. We have some of the best people, some of the smartest people. We have a great workforce. Sometimes it's hard to get those people to work just because of the lack of people. But if we can bring our businesses back to the United States, keep them here in New York, that's a great thing because long-term stability for our country is what we really need to look at. And as a military guy, as a veteran, I never hope that we ever go to another world war. But if we do, we need to have the ability to produce our own stuff for our soldiers, for our men and women in service. And right now, I'm not sure we can do that.
Paul Szmal: That's an interesting point that you bring up and not something that I think everybody would think about as top of mind when it comes to dealing with tariffs and domestic production and things of that nature. It's very true that, yeah, you do need to have things available in-house if for some reason you can't get them out of house anymore.
Brian Manktelow: Yeah. And, you know, Paul, we can talk about food safety, and I'll give you a great example. We have Mott's Apples up here in Wayne County, okay, Mott's Applesauce, Mott's Apple Juice. Well, right now, they don't press apples for apple juice. They actually import probably a good portion of those juices, the concentrate. And who knows where that concentrate comes from? And because of the difference in price before these tariffs may take effect, you know, our producers here are struggling because we can get apple concentrate so much cheaper from another country. But we think about, you know, where did those apples come from? What's in those apples? What were they sprayed with? I'd much rather see us use our local products. We have a history. We know what chemicals were put on it. We know where they're coming from. It helps everybody involved. It helps a young family as far as food safety. It helps our producers. And it helps our industry grow here in New York.
Paul Szmal: And that, of course, ties into what we were talking about just a minute ago with the whole concept of shopping locally because if it's produced domestically and it's purchased domestically, then the money stays within the chain.
Brian Manktelow: Yeah, absolutely. And you and I both know if we have extra money in our pocket, we're probably going to save some. But at the same time, if we want to add on to our house, we want to buy a new car, we're going to spend that money and probably locally, whether it's Lowe's, a lumber company, a car dealership, whatever the product is, we're going to go out and spend that because we want to see ourselves grow as families.
Paul Szmal: And speaking of spending money locally, you were just meeting with, telling me before we came on the air this morning, you had a chance to check out the new substation that RG&E put in the area.
Brian Manktelow: Yeah, that was great to see. It was in the village of Sotus in Wayne County. And they did an upgrade there. It was a $23 million upgrade. And some of the stuff within the substation, it's all new, instead of having the wires going overhead, they put them underground, which is great when we have ice storms, we have different storms like that. But the bigger thing is having a supply of electricity for the residential users in this area in Wayne County, but also for the ability to add more voltage, having more voltage for new businesses, whether it's a cold storage for Apple producers, a CA room, a new business going in, or even a residential unit or a subdivision within the community. We need to have the ability to have that electric so we can build homes, so we don't have a housing shortage. And to see that upgrade, to see how well done it was, and the professional attitude and the forward thinking and spending that money to upgrade that was great to see.
Paul Szmal: And that's not, again, something that people would normally think about. You'd think, well, the electricity is always going to be there, but demand is always on the increase, and you have to be able to affect the supply to be able to answer that demand. And that was one of the reasons for the substation upgrade.
Brian Manktelow: Yeah, absolutely. And if you want to have a community that can grow, you need to have the ability to put the electric to where it needs to go. And that allows them to do that, upgrading the system, upgrading the lines, upgrading the three different areas where it was going. So it was good to see, good to have that meeting and get a full understanding of it.
Paul Szmal: So take me through what's going to happen over the next, say, two to four weeks for you as you continue to work on the budget. What are some of the other things that are going to be coming up that you're going to be working on?
Brian Manktelow: So Paul, probably one of the biggest things that we'll do is we'll have everybody coming in from our highway superintendents to our nurses, to our school teachers, to first responders, to businesses, to school for the deaf. They'll be coming in to give us their budget priorities, what they see that they need, and it's our job to take all of that in, come up with a game plan, and try to help get that into the budget.
Paul Szmal: Now, what is the actual hard deadline for the budget?
Brian Manktelow: Well, it's supposed to be done by April 1st, and I think we as a majority of legislators across the board would love to see it done by April 1st. And the people of the state deserve that. We work for all of our people that we represent. We are their employee, and there's no reason we cannot come up with a budget by April 1st.
Paul Szmal: Do you anticipate that you'll be able to get that done this year?
Brian Manktelow: I think I anticipate hoping that we can get it done this year. A lot of that will be controlled by the governor, of course, and as we get towards the last week or ten days, that's when a lot of the heavy budgeting goes through, the heavy positioning yourself where this is what we need, this is what they need. I do have hope. I think we can get it done. We've seen it done when I first got here, but we'll see how it all plays out.
Paul Szmal: All right. Well, I'm going to let you get back to the business at hand here, and thank you for spending some time with us this morning, Assemblyman. Much appreciated, as always.
Brian Manktelow: Well, thank you, Paul, for allowing me to be on this morning, and I love talking with you and your constituents, the people that you serve in your business. So, again, thank you for allowing me to be here and giving me some time as well.
Paul Szmal: All right. That is Assemblyman Brian Magdalow joining us here on FLX Morning. It is 8.51.
