1. Bring Micron's Jobs Home to the 122nd

The largest private investment in New York history is going up about an hour west of here. The jobs are real. Whether any of them reach families in the 122nd depends on choices Albany makes now.

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Micron broke ground in Clay in January and poured the first concrete for its first fab in July, ahead of schedule, with production expected in 2030. The project is projected to support roughly 50,000 jobs across New York, including about 9,000 directly with Micron.

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A plant hires whoever is trained, can get there, and is available the day the job posts. And 50,000 is a statewide number. Our district could see very few of those jobs and still be told it benefited.

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This district runs from Verona and Sullivan to Laurens and New Lisbon. For the western end, Micron is a commute. For Oneonta, seventy miles away, it is not. Any plan that treats the whole district as one labor market misses that.

 

What Ihor will do

• Fund training seats at MVCC, SUNY Poly, SUNY Oneonta and our BOCES programs, tied to the jobs Micron and its suppliers are actually hiring for, with seats reserved for residents of this district.

• Push for a real commuter option west, with vanpools backed by employers and park and ride lots along the corridor, so a job in Clay is reachable from Oneida or Waterville without a second car.

• Fight for childcare that fits shift work, including nights and twelve hour rotations. A daycare that opens at 7 a.m. does nothing for someone on a 6 a.m. shift.

• Make sure supplier and spinoff contracts reach firms and workers in Otsego and Herkimer counties, not only the counties next to the site.

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Ihor spent his career in manufacturing human resources: hiring, benefits, safety and training. He knows how hiring decisions get made and who gets screened out.

 

2. Lower the Bills You Can't Avoid

Families here are working harder every year just to stay where they are.

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The local job market is flat. Utica-Rome had 122,700 nonfarm jobs in August 2026, the same as a year earlier, with private employment up one tenth of one percent. When jobs aren't growing, workers have little leverage, and the bills keep coming anyway.

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Heat, power and water come first. You can't shop around for them and you can't skip them. Then come groceries, prescriptions and childcare. The decisions that set those costs are made far from here, by people who will never see one of our utility bills.

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What Ihor will do

• Fight utility rate increases at the Public Service Commission and demand that regulators weigh what people in this region actually earn, not a statewide average driven by downstate.

• Expand energy affordability discounts and weatherization, so relief lasts instead of arriving as a single credit.

• Extend New York's ban on insulin cost sharing to other drugs people take every day for chronic conditions, and require real transparency from the pharmacy benefit managers who stand between patients and their pharmacies.

• Push back on unfunded state mandates. When Albany passes a requirement and hands the bill to your county and your school district, it lands on your property tax bill. The state should pay for what the state requires.

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Ihor works in benefits administration. He reads renewal letters and rate sheets for a living.

Sources: NYS Department of Labor, Utica-Rome metro employment, August 2026. New York eliminated insulin cost sharing for state regulated plans effective January 1, 2025 (Part EE, Chapter 58 of the Laws of 2024).

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3. Give Small Employers a Fair Shake

Small businesses in Oneida, Oneonta, Canastota, Clinton, New Hartford, Waterville, West Winfield, Oriskany Falls and Milford aren't closing because of one big event. Owners describe costs that keep piling up.

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Insurance renewals. Commercial energy. Card processing fees. Supplier prices that went up and never came back down. Health coverage priced for large companies, when a business with twelve employees will never get the rates one with twelve hundred gets. Regulations written for the largest employers in the state and expected to work the same way for a shop with six people.

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What Ihor will do

• Create a state reinsurance program for the small group insurance market, so one bad claim year doesn't drive up premiums for a shop with twelve employees, and expand the small business tax credit so more employers qualify.

• Build real size thresholds into state regulation, so rules written for a firm with a thousand employees don't land unchanged on one with six.

• Create a compliance guide in plain language and a small business ombudsman who actually answers the phone, so owners aren't left to guess and then get fined.

• Pay state vendors and contractors on time. Late state payments can put a small firm in a cash crunch.

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4. Childcare, Healthcare and Schools

A childcare shortage is a workforce shortage. A parent who can't find care can't take the job, and in parts of this district care is very hard to find.

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In Herkimer County, the state's own analysis found nearly nine children under six for every available childcare slot, among the most constrained counties in New York. In Otsego County, a 2024 county report counted 20 licensed or registered programs with room for 739 children in total.

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In a rural district, healthcare is measured in miles and wait times before it is measured in dollars. Coverage you can't use isn't coverage.

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What Ihor will do

• Stabilize childcare supply by fixing provider reimbursement and supporting providers who care for children in their homes, which is how most care happens out here.

• Treat childcare capacity as economic development, because in Herkimer and Otsego that is what it is.

• Protect rural health services and emergency response, including real recruitment and retention support for volunteer fire and EMS.

• Fight for school aid formulas that account for distance, poverty and declining enrollment, instead of penalizing small districts for being small.

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5. Fix the Water, Wire the Valley

This is the least glamorous part of the job, and one where an Assembly member can deliver real results.

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Water systems here are old, and deferred maintenance turns into emergencies that cost several times what the repair would have. On broadband, Madison County's own buildout began in September 2024 and is expected to be finished by the end of 2026. That shows the gap was real, and that closing it takes years.

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What Ihor will do

• Go after state and federal water infrastructure dollars for the small municipalities here that don't have a grant writer on staff, and treat that legwork as part of the job.

• Replace aging pipes on a schedule instead of waiting for a main to break.

• Challenge the broadband service maps. New York allows an address wrongly listed as served to be corrected, and that correction can decide whether a household gets funded or skipped.

• Direct funding for final connections to homes verified as unserved, and hold providers to the coverage commitments they have already made.

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6. Back Our Farms

Farm families here are price takers in nearly every direction. They don't set what they're paid, and they don't set what they pay. Two issues come up more than any others: labor and succession.

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What Ihor will do

• Work with farmers on farm labor policy, not around them, and share the cost of state requirements instead of putting all of it on the farm.

• Support succession, transfer and new farmer programs so land stays in production and stays local.

• Defend agricultural assessment and push back on state costs that hit small and midsize farms hardest.

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7. Public Safety That Works

People here want to feel safe and want the system to be fair. Those goals don't conflict.

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Bail and discovery law have been rewritten four times since 2019: in 2020, 2022, 2023 and again in 2025. The 2025 discovery amendments took effect that August, with $135 million statewide to help prosecutors and defenders comply. What our counties still lack is a stable system and a permanent way to pay for it.

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What Ihor will do

• Make discovery compliance funding permanent and set by formula for small upstate counties, instead of a single appropriation that runs out.

• Fund pretrial services (supervision, court reminders, treatment referrals) so release conditions can be enforced here, not only in cities that already have the infrastructure.

• Support recruitment, retention and training for local police and for volunteer fire and EMS.

• Judge any further changes by results, using actual rearrest and court appearance data, instead of reopening the law every budget cycle.