Arena, Harckham Tussle Over Prop 1, Housing in 40th Senate District Rematch

Voters in the 40^th state Senate District will have a familiar choice in this year’s election.

For the second time Republican Gina Arena is running against incumbent Sen. Peter Harckham (D-Lewisboro). Arena lost to Harckham, who is vying for a fourth term, by seven points two years ago.

The district includes most of northern Westchester County, four of six Putnam County towns and Stony Point in Rockland County.

Arena works for the Westchester Department of Public Works and is a working mother with eight children, ages 18 to 35. (She lost one son to brain cancer.)

Her “Save Girls Sports” campaign grew out of her opposition to New York’s Equal Rights Amendment (Proposition 1), which is on the ballot this year. Arena maintains the proposition would give transgender students identifying as boys the right to compete against girls in high school sports, giving them an unfair advantage.

“Years of fighting for Title IX that opened the doors to girls’ sports teams would be undone if the proposition passes,” Arena said. “If a girl has been playing on a field hockey team for the past four or five years and the state Board of Regents wants to make the team gender neutral, boys could more than likely bump a girl off the team. This is about protecting girls’ rights. Mothers and fathers are upset about this issue.”

Arena claimed the wording of the proposition is too vague.

“It leaves too many openings for interpretation,” she said. “If Prop 1 goes through it changes everything about gender issues.”

For Harckham, Proposition 1 protects abortion and LGBTQ rights, among other items, by enshrining them in the state constitution.

“There’s nothing in Prop 1 about girls’ sports,” he said. “The New York State constitution guarantees full protection under the law for all New Yorkers, including those with disabilities and LGBTQ communities. This is about reproductive health care rights and freedoms for providers.”

Harchham added that Project 2025, the Republican-backed plan from the conservative think tank Heritage Foundation, calls for the abolition of Title IX, which created girls’ sports.

The proposed 116-megawatt battery energy storage system (BESS) on the Somers-Mahopac border became a contentious issue between the candidates earlier this year. The facilities store energy generated by renewable technologies such as solar and wind and provide back-up electricity during power outages. They are a key part of New York’s goal to produce 70 percent of the state’s energy using renewable sources by 2030. Battery storage systems are considered essential in meeting that goal.

But growing concerns about the systems’ hard-to-control fires have prompted municipalities across the lower Hudson Valley to enact or consider enacting a moratorium.

“These facilities don’t belong anywhere near residential or business communities,” Arena said. “Towns need to consider the repercussions of a BESS in the area.

To me, the amount of electricity to keep these units cool is far more than the few hours of electricity they would provide when needed.”

According to Harckham, a new report by an interagency fire safety group created by Gov. Kathy Hochul proposes new fire code updates that would apply to BESS facilities.

“This report on fire safety by the state has made strong recommendations such as site-specific emergency response plans and annual site-specific training for local first responders,” Harckham explained. “Other parts of the country and the world have successfully stored energy creating affordable kilowatts from renewable energy, which you need when the wind doesn’t blow and the sun doesn’t shine at night. There are massive storage facilities operating successfully all across the country feeding renewable energy into the grid.”

Building more affordable housing and the housing shortage have become statewide issues due to escalating costs for rentals and house sales. The state has promoted transit-orientated development (TOD), which would encourage municipalities to build housing near train stations.

Additional affordable housing for seniors and younger adults is also needed because many empty-nesters would like to downsize but stay locally and to provide housing for recent college graduates.

Harckham said many towns are reluctant to amend zoning to allow for new housing.

“The critics scream how seniors can’t stay and younger folks have no place to live,” he said. “They don’t want to do anything about zoning to create new housing options.”

The state has established incentives for developers, Harckham noted.

“If you want multifamily housing in the east side of town, we can give you a sewer you need in the west side of town. That’s an incentive example.”

He cited the new $67 million Mid-Hudson Momentum Fund for local projects supporting residential development, which includes money for infrastructure projects such as $10 million for the Indian Brook Water Treatment Plant for 300 homes in Ossining and $10 million for infrastructure improvements to accommodate up to 1,080 new homes in Peekskill.

Arena said she objects to the state pushing for transit-oriented development.

“The state is coming in and telling people what they have to do and that’s unacceptable,” Arena said. “People rely on their town to protect them. The state comes in, housing gets built and then the state leaves and residents will be stuck with housing they don’t want. We are all used to the decisions our zoning and planning boards take and having public hearings. The state’s involvement would erase all that.”

Arena does, however, see the need for more housing for seniors, veterans and the disabled.

“This is an issue I ran on two years ago,” she said. “There are 10-year waiting lists for housing for adults with disabilities. Two years ago, our representatives told me they were working on it and here we are two years later and Albany is saying the same thing.”

One of the main reasons Arena said she’s running again is the high cost of living and escalating taxes in the Hudson Valley.

“People are telling me how very concerned they are about their high taxes. We already have the highest taxes in the country,” Arena said. “A lot of folks around here live paycheck to paycheck, spending more and more on groceries and trying to make ends meet. They wonder if it will ever get better.”

She claimed that the Senate and Assembly passed a budget last year that was higher than Hochul’s proposed spending plan.

“I looked at our representatives and wondered are you on our side? The government is supposed to protect the taxpayer and have their best interest at heart.”

Harckham said he sponsored bills that have cut middle class taxes in five out of the last six state budgets.

“We have the lowest taxes in 70 years,” he said. “We cut small business taxes two years ago, and based on my bill we gave $1.2 billion in state grants to small businesses.”

Democrats in the state legislature have approved adding $350 million to the supplemental child tax credit, Harckham said.

“We’ve also been able to hold down the cap on property taxes,” he added. “That has helped more seniors stay in their homes.”