Skoufis visited O’Neill High School on Tuesday
Senator James Skoufis makes it a point to visit area high schools to talk with students about the state government. He wants to teach them how the budgeting process works, about the different bodies of government within the state, and what he, as a state senator, does for them and their families.
At O’Neill High School on Tuesday morning, during one of those Skoufis visits, the teacher who hosted the visit, Jorma Tompuri, brought up several bills that the state legislature had recently passed, hoping to talk about the implications of those on the Hudson Valley.
While the students were interested and engaged in both what Skoufis had to say, and what their teacher wanted to talk about, their interest really perked up when the discussion turned to sports.
A student asked: “If the (Buffalo) Bills have the number one defense in the country, how did they lose this past weekend?”
Skoufis responded he was more of a baseball fan. Which turned the discussion to the Mets and the Yankees. With that, the senator was asked if he thought Yankee Aaron Judge would “break the home run record”. He said “no”.
Now, he qualified that answer by saying he meant the MLB overall record, currently held by Barry Bonds. He didn’t — as sometimes is wise by an elected official — give an opinion on whether Judge would break the Yankee’s record, held by Roger Maris.
Sports aside … after Skoufis explained what he does and what the state legislature does, the questions from the students were good. One asked about another politician — Republican Assemblyman Colin Schmitt — asking why he’s been “getting a lot of flack lately”. That led Skoufis to talk about the very competitive race that Schmitt is in for Congress, saying that elections for federal offices are very expensive, and noting that sometimes advertising for them turns negative.
He also said that Schmitt has also faced some “flack” because of his stance on abortion, noting that “the politics around abortion has changed a lot in the past several months” since the Supreme Court decision handing the matter back to states.
Another student asked whether Skoufis’ job is stressful, and he admitted it can be. But, he said he “welcomes the stress, because it means I’m doing my job”. Skoufis, who told the students he gets paid $110,000 a year for his position as a state senator, added “we get paid that amount whether we work 10 or 100 hours”.
He said he averages about 60-70 hours of work a week, and noted he has a staff of about a dozen people who work with him.
Another student asked about the environment and clean water, bringing up the recent months-long need to boil water in Jackson, Mississippi. Skoufis said New York State has some of the strongest environmental laws in place in the U.S., and also added that if there was some type of emergency like in Mississippi, the state has money set aside in the Clean Water Fund to help any communities facing water emergencies.
One student wanted to talk about money, wondering: “Does money ever go missing from the state budget?”
Skoufis said much of his, and other state officials’ time, is spent uncovering fraud against the state.
“As COVID progressed unemployment fraud was proven in many cases,” he said. Skoufis had earlier talked about money as it pertains directly to state residents too, citing his work to compel ticket-selling websites to show buyers the full cost of a ticket at the start of the process of buying.
Of the state’s 63 senators, Skoufis told the students that he’s proud that he’s passed the most bills of any of them in the past two years.
“But I’ll tell you,” he said, “if you want job security don’t go into this line of work. I basically have to have a job interview every two years when I’m up for re-election.”
He explained that, if re-elected this fall, he’ll be closing his two current offices (in North Rockland and Newburgh) and moving to new locations because of redistricting.
