DELIVERING FOR OUR FIRST RESPONDERS

Lee has been a constant champion for our local police, firefighters, and health care workers. As the Coronavirus pandemic hammered our community, Lee was proactive in securing over 1.2 million urgently needed masks, gloves, gowns, and more for Suffolk County.  At the height of the crisis, Lee was contacted by health care workers who told him that they were being forced to work in garbage bags due a shortage of gowns. Adding to the urgency, the County Executive’s office informed him that the county’s stockpile of several key items of personal protective equipment had run out. Lee immediately jumped into action.

In coordination with local officials, he reached out to the White House that evening and immediately secured more critically needed masks, which started arriving by the next day in large quantities. Within 48 hours, over a half million items of personal protective equipment arrived to Suffolk County for use by police officers, paramedics, nurses & other hospital workers, and other front line workers. 

This isn’t the first time Lee has delivered for our vital first responders. That’s why Lee fought hard in Congress to make the Zadroga Act and 9/11 Victim Compensation Fund permanent to ensure that the brave first responders who risked their lives while answering the call on 9/11 would have access to the support they need.

He’s helped secure funding of bullet-proof vests for police and helped establish a firefighter’s cancer registry to provide a crucial safety net for families of first responders who are killed or permanently disabled in the line of duty.

To do their jobs and better protect themselves and our community, first responders need reliable access to public safety communications to conduct daily life-saving operations. That is why Lee has led the fight against auctioning off the T-Band spectrum to protect public safety networks that provide reliability and regional interoperability, which is also an effort that will save millions of dollars for NY-1 taxpayers.

He’s also vigorously opposed Albany’s dangerous cashless bail law that has put thousands of dangerous criminals back on our streets, endangered our most vulnerable, and done away with traditional discovery laws that protected once-anonymous witnesses. This law needs to be repealed immediately. 

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