Rebecca Kassay is the Democratic nominee for State Assembly in the 4th District, which includes Three Village. She is the former Deputy Mayor of Port Jefferson Village and is challenging incumbent Assemblyman Ed Flood. Below is the full transcript of our interview with her, lightly edited for clarity.
To start, why are you running for State Assembly, why do you feel you are the best person to represent our district, and what issues are you most focused on in your campaign?
I’m running for State Assembly because I realized that I wanted to see more public servants who are coming from different backgrounds. A lot of folks who go into politics do not have the hands-on experiences that I’ve had and I’ve shared with our community.
I was a director of a program at Avalon Park and Preserve. I created the teen volunteer program there, and I got to work alongside dozens of environmental nonprofits and teenagers in the area. When I talk about climate change and environmental issues, they’re not just theoretical for me. They’re something that I’ve lived and breathed. I’ve worked along and built connections with the people who’ve been working on this for decades.
I’m a small business owner. My husband and I have just celebrated 10 years of Fox and Owl bed and breakfast being open. Being a small business owner is challenging, having gone through the pandemic with our small business. We’ve been in the Chambers of Commerce and Rotary Club for over 10 years. It’s through those connections and experiences that I feel it’s important to bring voices up to Albany.
Having worked with the community in so many different ways for over a decade, I feel like I’m really well positioned to be an effective public servant. The campaign is all about bringing public service back to politics. I think too often we see, both on the local level all the way up to the national level, politics getting in the way of much needed progress for communities.
Republicans and Democrats are always fighting, and one side doesn’t pass a law because it makes the other side look good. I think the people who lose every time in those debates are the American people and our neighbors here at the local level. I’m someone who’s always put partisan politics aside and just focused on the issues.
I served for four years at the Port Jefferson Village as a trustee and as the deputy mayor there. And what’s cool about the village elections is you don’t run as a Republican or a Democrat. You run on your own party name. I was the Action Party. I was the only member of my party there up until this last year, when Kyle Hill, a new trustee, ran on that ticket as well.
It’s a really awesome opportunity to connect with people about issues and not have them say, well, they feel this way because they’re a Republican, or they’re not doing this because they’re a Democrat, right? Which is just so unproductive.
And so I got to practice that for four years and build connections with my neighbors and people in Port Jefferson and beyond Port Jefferson as a strong public servant, not as a strong Democratic public servant, where you’re already being judged. So I’m really looking forward to bringing that practice of working with people, no matter what their affiliation is, to solve our local issues.
A primary concern for many voters in the district is the high cost of living and housing. What can the State Legislature do to address the cost of living, and why should voters trust you to deliver on these issues?
Having purchased our home 11 years ago, when we knew we wanted a house in the area and we fell in love with Port Jefferson and the area in general here, we knew that even though we both worked full time jobs, my husband and I, we were going to have to have another income source in order to fix up our home and have a comfortable lifestyle.
And so that’s in part why we opened the Bed and Breakfast in our house. We bought an 1850 Victorian that needed a lot of work, and so we fixed it up, opened the business, and so we’ve essentially been working between the two of us, three to four full time jobs at any given time. And that’s not a lifestyle that I think every single person or couple or family should have to lead because it’s very challenging and it’s tiring, and it’s part of what compels me to go in and help solve these issues.
The housing issue is really important to find balance between maintaining the character of the neighborhoods and the communities here, but also creating more opportunities for whether it’s young people who want to stay in the area or seniors who want to downsize their homes, but stay in the area and find something smaller.
We’re working class people who are saying it’s really difficult to pay $2,500-$3,000 for a one bedroom apartment per month. That’s crazy. It’s absolutely crazy, and so I think that the state’s role in this is to work with local municipalities, to provide incentives for these local municipalities to help build up the workforce, and create housing opportunities especially around transit areas, like around train stations, so that maybe people can get around using the train for work or our bus system and not be feeding into our traffic problem, which anyone on Long Island knows we also have a traffic problem.
But I plan on helping local municipalities create these developments that balance the needs of the local community, who are always a little reluctant to have more dense developments in the area, but also understand that if their children want to stay here, or if they themselves might need an affordable place to live, that this is something that may be an asset for them as well.
Significant numbers of young people have been moving out of the area, and school districts are also struggling with declining enrollment. What will you do to counter this?
That is one of the biggest problems facing not only our district here, not only Long Island and the state of New York, but across the nation. We’re finding that people are having fewer children. This can be for any number of reasons. I think being a parent looks like the most difficult job in the world, and so, especially having, we just spoke about the cost of living here, that’s one of the big challenges. If a family doesn’t feel like they can afford to give a child a good quality of life, they’re less likely to start a family or have a larger family.
We’re also finding that the people love living here, and so folks will stay in their homes for many, many decades. And so there’s not a lot of availability in the housing stock for new families, young families, to come in and buy a home and make a family there. I know I have friends who would have liked to stay in the area, but moved away so that they could be somewhere where they could afford to have the family that they want to have.
We definitely need to be looking at maintaining the value of current homeowners’ homes, but also seeing how we can help young families, maybe with tax credits in order to help them have the families they want to have.
I’d like to make the program for first time homebuyers more robust to make sure that we’re giving families this head start in order for them to stay in the area, or come to the area and have the opportunity to raise kids in these incredible school districts that we have in District Four.
As Port Jefferson Deputy Mayor, you spoke out against Governor Hochul’s proposed state funding cuts to schools like Ward Melville. Are changes to the Foundation Aid formula necessary in the future?
I think we definitely, as the state of New York, need to be supporting our schools with issues like declining enrollment, and that was the key of the Foundation Aid formula change. And so right now, there is a public hearing that’s open about this and other changes to the Foundation Aid formula.
I’m reaching out to the school boards to make sure that they’re aware of the public hearing and speaking about them, and reaching out to parents and others in the district to help make people’s voices heard about the potential changes in the Foundation Aid formula.
We need to have a conversation. I am someone who knows very well that ignoring problems only makes them worse, and New York is pretending that we’re not having this issue across the board. The declining enrollment issue is not healthy, but we also need to make sure that we’re not cutting funding to our schools and losing the quality of education, risking teachers jobs and also shifting burden to our local taxpayers.
Taxes are already crazy high in the area, and so we need to make sure that the state is delivering funding to our schools, because we’re already sending more tax dollars up to Albany than we get back. So I’ll be a fierce advocate to make sure that our schools are well funded and that our schools and all the schools across the state of New York have the support as we have conversations about how to look at the school funding formula in light of issues.
On the issue of schools, do you support reinstating universal free school meals across the state?
That’s something that I definitely want to look at as far as a budgetary item and needs. I firmly believe, without any hesitation, that every child in the state of New York should have three meals a day.
If giving meals through the school systems gives them access to their two meals a day, breakfast and lunch, and we can fight hunger in that way, then there’s no question that I will support that. We need to make sure that we’re not only utilizing our tools for education, but also the other resources that families might be struggling to get.
There has been much discussion about banning cellphones in schools, and Governor Hochul plans to introduce new legislation for that next year. What is your position on cell phone usage among students?
Me being far enough away from being a student and not being a parent, I would look to our local school boards and our local superintendents for them to inform me about the issue. I would also want to talk to student councils and the students who are looking at this issue and ask what they think the challenges are and the different solutions that both the students themselves, the advisory boards for schools and the superintendents want to see.
And I will try to facilitate conversations and bring those up to Albany, because for me, as a representative, it’s not about what I as an individual thinks. I think it’s more about reaching out to the community, the people who are really living these issues day to day, and bringing those voices up.
You’ve focused a lot on your past leading Avalon Park and Preserve’s youth volunteer program in your campaign. What does environmental stewardship look like to you, and would you support climate change bills being considered in the State Legislature such as the NY HEAT Act? What is your stance on offshore wind development off of the East End?
Absolutely. So like I said before, working locally with all of these individuals on different environmental issues, from habitat restoration to protecting local species that are becoming endangered, to cleaning up our beaches and other issues, I lean on them for a lot of information. We have incredible people on Long Island in the area here, like Adrienne Esposito, who heads the Citizens Campaign for the Environment. And we need to be looking to them for help getting messages out to our communities.
To the first question, what does environmental stewardship look like? I would love to help every single individual realize that they have the opportunity and the capability to be a local steward in whatever way works for them.
For instance, I worked with a group called Relic to install beach cleanup stations at all of Port Jeff’s beaches. So when you leave the parking lot and go to the beach, there are little baskets that you can take with you. So if you’re going for a walk, if you happen to see trash, you pick it up and put it in the basket, and then when you come back from your walk, you dump it in the garbage. And that was your good deed for the day. But if every person, or even if half the people who passed those baskets did that we’d never have trash on our beaches, because people would constantly be picking it up.
I also want to be working with the folks who are looking at how to prevent more trash from being on our beaches. How do we prevent it from being in the water and washing up in the first place? So there’s so many opportunities in the area for environmental stewardship. You know, planting a small portion of your yard as a pollinator garden to help the monarch butterflies, and looking at programs to help that promote our incentives to create habitat in their yards. So just continuing to empower individuals to be stewards. Not every one of us is going to go and study the environment and work solely on the environment, but if everybody does just a little bit, the whole world will change. So that’s what environmental stewardship looks like to me.
With the New York HEAT Act and other legislative and large statewide efforts for green energy and environmental stewardship, I think that we have to be very realistic and pragmatic about the steps we’re taking. New York laid down a very ambitious plan, and I applaud that, and support ambition.
I think especially because of setbacks with contracts with wind farms, New York consistently has to be taking a look at the timelines that it’s set out for itself for what our energy goals are. Are we still on track to meet them? Do we need to adjust them because we’re finding that, due to contracts being delayed or building infrastructure being delayed, we’re not able to meet them? I think being ambitious and flexible is really important.
And also seeing both environmentally and across the board, how are laws playing out on the day to day for the everyday person, and bringing those voices back as we look to continue developing these plans.
The fentanyl crisis has affected many communities in Suffolk County. What actions would you support taking to address this issue?
This is one of the biggest issues we’re facing here. It’s literally life or death, and if it hasn’t affected someone’s family themselves, everybody knows someone who’s been affected by this crisis. And so I have, for years, been working closely with Catholic Health Services, and I know that they’re making big strides in creating rehab centers so that communities and individuals can have that resource and be able to provide functional addiction services.
I think we need to be putting more pressure on the insurance companies who currently do not cover inpatient addiction rehabilitation care without first having gone to outpatient, and usually outpatient, statistically, is most likely to lead to the individual relapsing and dying. That, to me, is something I’m going to fight strongly to make sure that our insurance companies are covering inpatient care so that we can stop that cycle and really get people the care that they need.
It’s between that and then programs like Hope House and Father Frank, which I live two blocks away from. They are just wonderful groups in our community, and we need to be working with them to not only fight the stigma and come out and talk about addiction as a real problem that affects any family.
It doesn’t matter how much money you make, or your cultural background, this is something that affects everybody across the board. And so we can find great strength in coming together and uniting around it and deciding that we’re all going to work together to fight this instead of trying to keep it in the dark.
How do you plan to make the district, and our schools, more safe?
I look forward to continuing to build relationships with superintendents, school boards and student councils to see on those three, that triangle of perspective in schools, where our students and teachers feel unsafe. I know one of the biggest issues is gun violence across the nation, and there’s a lot of conversation about bringing in armed guards.
I’m a woman of science, and I look at statistics a lot, and so I want to see both across the state of New York and across the nation, what is actually effective in reducing the risk of or increasing the effectiveness of response to gun violence in schools. I’d want to have my legislative team do that research and work with groups like Moms Demand Action and other groups and individuals who have been working on anti-gun violence for as long as I’ve been alive or longer. And hear from them what really is going to help make our schools safer in actuality. Not just feel safer, but actually be safer, and sometimes there’s a difference there.
It’s my job and the job of other electeds and community members to help communicate with folks and make sure that we stay on the same page and bridge that gap between feeling safer and being safer.
Those in Suffolk County will have two ballot initiatives to vote on this November: the Equal Protection of Law Amendment and the Water Quality Restoration Act. What is your stance on each of these?
I strongly support both of the ballot amendments that will be on November’s ballot. The ERA is the Equal Rights Amendment. It expands equal rights to every New Yorker and just creates more clarity in that. There’s a misnomer that the ERA will be changing laws in some other way. The ERA does not change any laws. It just gives every New Yorker equal rights, and that’s a baseline, and how one would not support that is mind boggling to me.
As far as the Clean Water ballot amendment is concerned, that’s something that is so necessary in order to make sure that we here on Long Island continue to have clean drinking water and to make sure that our we can expand our sewers so that the cesspools aren’t leaching out, both into our aquifer and also the Long Island Sound, or the bays and the ocean.
Suffolk’s economy is largely based on tourism, and so if we don’t keep our water clean for the people who just care about dollars and cents—obviously, I’m a bleeding heart environmentalist, and that’s first and foremost—but right up there is the economy. And if we don’t take care of our water, we’re going to lose a huge part of our economy. I think getting that message out to anyone considering those ballot measures, realizing that it’s such a small percentage that is going to do so much for us here in Suffolk County,
Young people generally vote at lower rates than other age groups. What can you do to promote civic engagement among youth?
As an elected official, I will encourage other elected officials to be reaching out to listen and to listen all year round, not just during the election time, and not just to ask young people for their votes during the election time. We need to be making sure that we’re hearing your voices, because many of you are already the leaders of today, and you will be the folks filling our shoes in the coming decades.
We need to bridge that gap and make sure that we are building a state and a county and the local district, and accounting your perspectives into the laws that are affecting your lives. This is your home, and these are your laws as well. So, for me, having created a program that empowers youth, I’m going to be carrying that into this legislative office and making sure that we have ongoing dialogue with student groups or student individuals to make sure that the voices that I’m bringing up to Albany include student voices.
Are there any other local issues or projects you are particularly focused on? Anything else you would like to add?
There’s so much. I am so looking forward to being in this office and doing the work that I know this community needs and this community deserves. I look at public service as a lifestyle, not just a job, and having been serving the public for over a decade, I’m working with the community. I’m really excited to continue expanding the relationships that I’ve built and delivering for the community in all the ways I already know it needs, and the ways that I don’t yet know that it needs.
This is a position that has a great deal of potential for the community. I’m running because I know that this community deserves someone who’s very proactive, someone who’s making sure that they’re showing up, that they’re answering constituent calls, that, even if we don’t agree on every single issue, the phone line is always open, or there’s always a meeting to be had. And I’ll always be listening to more deeply understand the different perspectives in the district, and go and represent the district, not represent myself, but represent this district as fairly as possible.
Kaleidoscope would like to thank Ms. Kassay and her team for the interview opportunity.
