Gov. Kathy Hochul, following in lockstep with her predecessor, [recently] vetoed a bill that would have saved the Fulton School District from losing more than $1 million in state aid due to a clerical error dating back to the 2016-17 school year. She did this despite near-unanimous legislative support for the bill and knowing full well the district serves an economically distressed population. They truly do need the money.

Several years ago, the Fulton School District extended its contractual agreement with its transportation provider, but due to a clerical mistake, the state Education Department did not receive the contract in time. As such, the district’s transportation aid was nullified. Gov. Hochul’s decision to veto this common-sense fix punishes students in a high-need area over a filing error over which they have absolutely no control. Now more than ever, we should be putting students first, and the governor’s latest move is unsympathetic and callous, to say the least.

Recently, New York State received a tremendous amount of federal and state revenue, as noted in the Division of the Budget’s First Quarter Financial Plan update. As a result, the state is in a much-better position to remedy this error than the school district. And the state in other similar instances has done exactly that. What makes the matter even more frustrating is that the funds needed to cover the $1.6 million mistake were already appropriated and accounted for in the state budget. Yet students in Fulton and other districts throughout New York were merely an afterthought in the wake of the governor’s vetoes.

While not ideal, clerical errors are common in municipal governance. Under most circumstances, these situations are easily remedied through legislative action and no harm comes from them. Withholding the aid any further is needlessly punitive and extremely disappointing for the families residing in the school district.

The role of government officials is to take care of the residents living in their jurisdiction, not to punish school kids for paperwork oversights. Vetoing this legislation sends a clear signal to the people of Fulton and the rest of the state that this administration, like the one that came before it, is more interested in power plays and gamesmanship than it is in administering equitable governance.

School districts around New York have been put under unprecedented pressure and stress due to COVID-19 and its impact on students, teachers, and parents. Now should be a time when state government does everything in its power to alleviate that stress. Sadly, it appears Gov. Hochul disagrees. As such, I will continue to fight for the people of the Fulton School District and work toward a solution that delivers fairness to the students who rely on that state funding.       

William (Will) A. Barclay, Republican, is the New York Assembly minority leader and represents the 120th New York Assembly District, which encompasses most of Oswego County, including the cities of Oswego and Fulton, as well as the town of Lysander in Onondaga County and town of Ellisburg in Jefferson County. Contact Barclay at barclaw@assembly.state.ny.us. 

Here in the United States, we have grown accustomed to thinking we will always have access to plentiful, clean water. We just assume we can turn on the tap and get all the water we need.

But in much of the world, water for drinking, cooking, and cleaning isn’t something to take for granted. Even in the U.S. and other developed countries, climate change and surging consumption could put our water security at risk. This is an issue we need to take seriously.

The World Meteorological Organization (WMO), an agency of the United Nations, warned in a recent report of a “looming water crisis” in which more frequent and extreme weather events will put a serious strain on the world’s water supplies and systems.

The numbers in the report are staggering. Two billion people live in “water-stressed countries” that can’t provide basic water and sanitation services. Some 3.6 billion people lacked reliable access to water for at least one month in 2018; the figure could rise to 5 billion by 2050, or more than half the world’s population. Over 11,000 weather- and climate-related disasters have taken place in the past 50 years, causing more than 2 million deaths and $3.6 trillion in damages. Since 2000, flood disasters have increased by 134 percent, with their heaviest impact in Asia; drought has increased by 29 percent, causing the most deaths and economic losses in Africa.

A lack of clean water prevents proper sanitation, and contaminated water causes cholera, diarrhea, dysentery, typhoid fever, and other deadly diseases. More than 800,000 people, including nearly 300,000 children under age 5, die each year from diarrhea that could be prevented by good hygiene, according to the World Health Organization.

It’s tempting for us to think these problems are confined to the developing world. But climate change doesn’t spare those of us who live in developed nations. In Europe, record flooding this year killed hundreds of people and shocked climate scientists. Increasingly powerful storms have ravaged U.S. coastal cities from New Orleans to New York. Drought in the American West brought another season of devastating wildfires and hamstrung the region’s agricultural and recreation industries. Western North America, in fact, was labeled a “global water crisis hotspot” in the WMO report.

Water shortages often lead to conflict, as nations and groups compete for scarce resources. Wars, flooding, and drought displace millions of people, creating new crises as nations struggle to accommodate refugees and migrants.

It’s also tempting to think it’s someone else’s job to fix water problems in other regions. But, as residents of the world’s most powerful and wealthiest country, we Americans have an obligation to lead. As a major producer of greenhouse gases that cause climate change, we contributed to the problem.

What can we do? The problem isn’t simply a matter of too much or too little water; it’s that we’re not managing our resources effectively. Water-management systems are “fragmented and inadequate,” in the words of the WMO. It calls for more investment in integrated water-management systems to better conserve and manage water.

Too often we waste water and fail to develop the infrastructure to manage it.

As part of that effort, we must do more individually and as a nation to stem climate change, which is bringing the water to a head.

We can and must step up to the challenge. If we do not, disaster awaits.             

Lee Hamilton, 90, is a senior advisor for the Indiana University (IU) Center on Representative Government, distinguished scholar at IU Hamilton Lugar School of Global and International Studies, and professor of practice at the IU O’Neill School of Public and Environmental Affairs. Hamilton, a Democrat, was a member of the U.S. House of Representatives for 34 years (1965-1999), representing a district in south central Indiana.