ALBANY COUNTY — Mary Finnernan and Janet Tweed are facing off in the June 25 Democratic primary for the chance to unseat Republican Chris Tague as representative of the 102nd Assembly District in November.
The 102nd Assembly District comprises all of Greene and Schoharie counties, along with parts of Albany, Otsego, and Delaware counties, and is primarily rural. In Albany County, it includes the towns of Coeymans, Berne, Knox, Rensselaerville, and Westerlo.

Finneran, of Cairo, is a retired art teacher, environmental and social justice advocate, and former member of the Sierra Club Atlantic Chapter’s executive committee who has received endorsements from the Working Families Party and New York Progressive Action Network. 

Tweed, of Delhi, is a physical therapist who serves on the Delhi Village Board and was formerly a member of the Delhi Town Board; the village is in the town of the same name. She has also been an election inspector and a member of local Democratic committees.

Rensselaerville Democratic Party Chairman Hébert Joseph had made an effort to join the primary race but was eliminated from the ballot after the New York State Board of Elections determined that he had submitted only 488 signatures out of the 500 required by state law; 223 of those 488 signatures were invalid, mostly because signees had listed their village or hamlet rather than their town. 

Joseph was similarly struck off the Democratic line due to errors on his petitions when he ran for county legislator in 2023.

The Enterprise spoke with Finneran and Tweed about a number of issues facing New York legislators in the upcoming term, namely drug and mental health services in rural areas, renewable energy development, abortion, and public school funding. 

Finneran

Mary Finneran says that the problem of getting drug and mental health assistance to rural residents is a multi-faceted one, with rural sprawl making it hard for people to get to where help is located, and lack of education keeping the benefits of resources out of view. Funding of the facilities themselves is also an issue, she said.

“It’s a question of, how do you get someone from Lexington to get help down in Cairo, or in Catskill, or even to Columbia Memorial,” Finneran said. “People in the western part of [Greene County] probably have to go to … another county to get help, and they might not be as funded because it’s out-of-county.”

She said she feels that more satellite offices are needed to shorten the distance between help and home, but acknowledges that part of the problem is convincing people to use these resources once they’re there.

“It’s generational, this idea that people can do it themselves, pull themselves up by their bootstraps,” Finneran said, adding that she doesn’t see an easy solution to this mentality. 

“It’s something to ponder and really think about, because I’m not sure how to get people to accept help,” she said. “It’s been a difficult challenge, and it involves people talking to them face-to-face and saying, ‘This is here and it helps you, helps your children, helps your children’s children.’”

Finneran said it’s important to reframe assistance not as a “handout” but as a “human right.” 

With regard to renewable energy development in rural areas, Finneran says that the focus should move away from the green, open fields in the countryside and onto what are known as brownfields — areas where prior industry has made the land difficult to use for most types of development preferred by communities. 

Rooftops are also an underused location for solar panels, she said. 

“When I get in, I want to have a bill that mandates that for every acre [of solar panels] on rural property, there’s an acre on a parking lot or an acre on a building,” she said. 

Finneran said that rural development often includes cutting down trees, which draw carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and play an important role in mitigating the impacts of manmade emissions. 

“In New York City, all their roofs could have solar, and they could probably power every building if there were a will, and if the solar companies would let a little bit of their profit base go towards really developing a lot of this,” she said, adding that she’s in favor of public power. 

One means through which utility companies could be incentivized into more renewable energy investment is the negotiation of rate cases, Finneran said, which is how utility companies get government approval for their service rates, using project proposals to justify the increased expense. 

“They’re using the rate increases to pay for certain projects, and if they can say, ‘Well, we’re getting these solar projects and they’re a little less expensive,’ the ratepayers don’t have to worry about it so much,” she said. 

Finneran said she’s been involved in rate cases in the past and that it’s an area of focus for her.

On the issue of misinformation as it relates to abortion, Finneran said she applauds the attorney general for cracking down on the violating facilities and that it should be “across the board.”

“We cannot go back to the days of the wire hangers and the alleys,” she said, referring to aspects of pre-legal, ad hoc abortions that are significantly more dangerous than professional ones. 

Finneran said that it’s also a matter of equity, since “wealthy women will always have access to abortion. They will always find a way. If they have to fly to Europe, they will find a way. But poor women here who have no recourse, we have to make sure that they have access to healthy abortions.”

And because it’s such a difficult decision to make, access to true information is vital, she said, so that people know what they’re getting into medically, without that information being affected by moral judgments from third parties. 

“It’s not an easy choice for anybody, so we need to make sure that, if this tough decision is made to terminate, that they’re able to do it in a healthy way that’s going to maintain the life of the mother and maintain her viability to have children when she’s at a point when she can,” Finneran said. 

She added that she’s supportive of the proposed Equal Rights Amendment in New York state which would bar discrimination based on “pregnancy outcomes” and “gender identity.” It was intended to be on the ballot this November, but a Supreme Court  judge ruled against it over a procedural error. 

On funding for public schools, Finneran said that rural schools, which provide agricultural training, among other things, are the foundation for “a lot of the things the state needs” and should be well-funded.

She said that the district where she taught high school art, Coxsackie-Athens, is rural bordering on suburban, and that kids in schools like hers “don’t get the same opportunities that kids in urban districts do. For them to go and see a museum, or to take them to go and observe something going on in the city, it takes a lot of transportation.

“They probably need to have more funding so they can have virtual learning opportunities, more so than in the urban districts,” she said.

One major area of focus for Finneran is affordability. 

“You get these people who have to decide between their health care, their housing, their food, their heat … We have to take care of people’s needs first,” she said.

Finneran said she’s here to “fight for working families, and families that cannot work.”

She also said she wants to see terms for legislators lengthened from two years, possibly with term limits in place to ensure a certain amount of turnover, likening two-year terms to a high school without a junior year.

“When I was teaching, my favorite students were the juniors … because you could talk to them about anything,” she said. “They were nearly adults, but they weren’t worried about graduating. They didn’t have senioritis. They were getting the most work done.”

Likewise, adding at least another year to the term would provide some more time for legislators to be productive, without worrying so much about the superficial aspects of electoral politics that have little to do with improving people’s lives. 

Finneran also said she would like to work on rate-case legislation to make that process more transparent, particularly for people who don’t have the time she had to get involved with specific cases. She learned things  the cases that she said she’s not allowed to share because of confidentiality agreements.

Governor Kathy Hochul vetoed a bill last year that would have compensated participants of rate cases — known as intervenors — for any money lost as a result of participating. 

“Very few people have the time to be on these calls, to be following these, and to have it not be allowed for people to know what’s going on is, I think, basically disgusting,” Finneran said. “I think that is a bill I’d like to work on — adding more transparency. Not taking away all confidentiality, but making rate cases more transparent.”

Tweed

Janet Tweed said that she decided to run after being approached by the Delaware County Democratic Committee. When she brought the idea up to her family — her husband and their 13-year-old son — their support pushed her over the edge, she said.

“I decided that it was time to throw my hat into the ring, and look onward to Albany to see what more I can do, knowing that in Albany there’s a chance to advocate at a higher level for different issues than what I do at the town or village level,” she said. 

On helping rural communities with drug and mental-health counseling, Tweed said that what “has worked well in other communities … is supporting public health to be able to guide these programs and meet the needs of their area, listening and following their advice for what works in their region and not trying to fit into a program that does not meet the needs of the community.”

She said that outreach is crucial, as is “education to our health-care workers, our police, as well as our community or public-health people who may be the first line or direct line [to patients].” 

Tweed said that the group Friends of Recovery of Delaware and Otsego, known as FOR-DO, is a model program that “provides a layer of peer support as well as trained professionals to help guide that recovery,” and that programs like this need to be supported while efforts are made to increase the number of social workers and other specialists to increase the availability of services. 

As an elected local official, Tweed said that she greatly values home rule and that redirecting smaller renewable energy projects through the state planning process “does not feel like the right thing to do for these communities, communities that should have some say in what’s happening in their area.”

She said that when larger projects are pushed through in Delaware and Schoharie counties, the feeling among residents is “they’re not being respected.” 

Tweed said the state should instead “encourage looking closer to where this energy needs to go,” since shorter transmission distances mean more efficiency, and take advantage of flat surfaces elsewhere.

“Every parking lot or flat-roofed building that can have solar arrays or wind should be looked at more closely,” she said. 

On abortion, Tweed was straightforward: Misinformation crosses a line and should be dealt with.

“These decisions are not made lightly, and to have incorrect information that is someone else’s own agenda is not appropriate,” she said. “And so where the line is now, going after misinformation [and] disinformation where it’s almost predatory on someone who is looking for help, seems to be the right course of action.”

As for state aid to public schools, Tweed said that the state erred in not giving districts like hers enough notice when it threatened to cut their aid. 

“We need to fund all of our public schools,” she said. “But if you are going to make changes in funding, you have to give schools enough notice that they can adapt to changing levels of income or reimbursement — wherever the funds are coming from.”

Tweed also said that enrollment shouldn’t be the primary metric since there are factors not captured by it, such as administrative costs and burdens. Public schools are “frequently the center of a town or village, especially in these rural communities,” she said, and that officials need to communicate with “teachers, education specialists, and their unions to make sure that we are not leaving children behind, no matter where they live.”

Tweed’s primary focus, if elected, would be improving the affordability and accessibility of health care. 

As a physical therapist, she has worked primarily in hospitals but has also worked with patients at home, and has seen “firsthand how important adequate health care is — being able to get to appointments or have help come to your home — and how it can be the difference between a patient never walking again and a patient being able to work hard with me and get to walk their granddaughter down the aisle for her wedding.”

Tweed said that a state-wide role would offer her the opportunity to create a more lasting change in New York’s health-care system, potentially influencing outcomes nationwide. 

“It really hurts that I even have to say no one should go bankrupt because of sickness or injury,” she said.

Tweed said she’s also passionate about conservation and making sure that the region’s soil, water, and other resources are protected. 

With a background in local government, she said that she understands “the persistence of seeing an idea become legislation, become a program or project that succeeds and is sustainable.”

The Enterprise asked Mary Finnernan and Janet Tweed about their relevant background as well as about these issues:

— Drug and mental health services

Rural communities often lack mental-health and drug-addiction resources, and residents can be reluctant to take advantage of resources that they do have. For instance, Albany County removed a satellite office that offered counseling from the town of Berne shortly before COVID because it was underutilized by residents. How would you go about increasing the availability of these types of services while also encouraging people to take advantage of them?

— Environment

Renewable energy development has proliferated in sparsely populated areas due to the open spaces, less costly land prices, and the relative ease with which developers can get approval for commercial projects — though projects nevertheless generate significant controversy, often being the largest industrial facilities in these communities that value rural charm.

The state’s 2020 Renewable Energy Growth and Community Benefit Act requires solar facilities generating over 25 megawatts to be handled through an office at the Department of State meant to speed the process of reaching New York’s clean-energy goals. Home rule still applies for projects smaller than 25 MW. Do you feel that these smaller projects should also be handled by the state rather than local government?

— Abortion

Although abortion is legal in New York State, The Enterprise has reported twice on pro-life facilities that rely on misinformation and/or obfuscation to further their cause. In Albany County, legislators put forth — and, after backlash and legal threats from the Thomas More Society, retracted — a law that would have made it illegal for these facilities to spread misinformation as defined in that law, subject to fines.

The New York State attorney general has taken advantage of existing state laws about medical disinformation to bring some of these facilities to court for more narrowly defined infractions. In addition to the stated goal by the majority party of preserving abortion rights, do you think the state should also go after entities that have a pro-life mission, and if so, where should the line be drawn? 

— Funding for schools

There has been much discussion this year about state aid for public schools, following Governor Kathy Hochul’s proposal to eliminate the hold-harmless clause from Foundation Aid, which promised schools with declining enrollment that they would not suffer any aid reductions. Hochul framed this as a redistribution of state money from schools that she feels are overfunded to ones she feels are underfunded.

However, the New York State United Teachers and many school administrators felt that this would put certain districts at a disadvantage, particularly rural ones where enrollment is more of a challenge. The elimination of hold harmless was postponed while a committee examines the formula. How should the state approach school funding?