The following is a first-person account by Tri-State’s new Albany legislative advocate, Nadine Lemmon.

I joined TSTC last week, and will be based in Albany working on sustainable transportation policies—helping to ensure safer streets, improved bus service, and adequate transit funding for all New Yorkers. Once a week on MTR, I’ll be sending out a view from the capital.

Ten years ago, if you’d told me this is where I’d end up, I would have chuckled. At that point I was an academic, and had moved from NYC to the Hudson Valley to finish up my doctorate on medical imaging technologies. However, my new home of Gardiner was seeing a flood of growth. Much to my dismay, farm fields began sprouting suburban homes, and the central hamlet had become completely deteriorated. After talking to my neighbors, I became a squeaky wheel at Town Hall and, before I knew it, was elected to the Town Board.

So my lingo changed—my world morphed into a swirl of smart growth policies, linked bike/ped corridors, and hamlet revitalization. When I figured out that the local representatives on the board of the Ulster County Transportation Council, the region’s Metropolitan Planning Organization, held the purse strings for transportation money in the county, I became a voting member there and started squeaking for more non-motorized transportation options. Soon thereafter, I was able to secure state and federal Marchiselli, Transportation Enhancement, and stimulus funds for a $1.6M sidewalk project in our town—it’s literally been fifty years since the town had sidewalks in the central hamlet.

New York’s home rule policy means that many of the key land-use decisions in these little towns happen on local boards. However, if you follow the money, you need to pay attention to what’s happening on the state and federal levels. This is especially true at the moment in NY, because funding for our schools, municipalities, and counties is primarily secured through property taxes—a method that overburdens those who are land-rich/cash-poor, and actually encourages people to sell their land (spurring more sprawl…and more taxes). In order to keep property taxes in check, local officials become dependent on state and federal grant money to make the necessary capital improvements for smart growth: transit, sidewalks, sewer, water. Despite home rule, local policy decisions aren’t truly in the purview of local politicians.

So I’ve followed the money. My initial focus in Albany will be on MTA funding, the pending bus camera legislation for NYC, and statewide complete streets legislation. From there, we’ll see…

I’d love to know who the audience is for this blog, so please don’t hesitate to pop me an e-mail: nadine@tstc.org.