Assembly Minority Leader Brian M. Kolb (R,C-Canandaigua) today issued the following statement regarding the Farm Laborers Fair Labor Practices Act (A.8419, Nolan / S.6578, Ramos), which is being considered in the last days of the 2019 Legislative Session.

“Gov. Cuomo and New York City politicians are about to tell the state’s farmers how to do their jobs. Men, women and families who have worked their lands for decades now find themselves directly in the crosshairs of Albany’s misguided meddling.

The farm bill currently moving through the Legislature will devastate the agricultural industry. It will dramatically raise expenses for farmers and costs for consumers. It will set crushing mandates and requirements that don’t align with the daily operations of farms. And it will force farmers to find another way to survive.

Farming is not a road to riches, nor is it an industry capable of suffering the adverse impacts that the bill in question will bring.

The men, women and families of this industry have invested a lifetime of blood, sweat and tears to produce the goods we need and put food on their own tables. If this bill comes to the Floor, our ‘Queens boy’ governor and New York City politicians will essentially tell the state’s rural communities and hard-working farmers, ‘We know better than you.’

I encourage farmers, consumers and any New Yorker fed up with Albany’s bureaucratic bullying to call Gov. Cuomo, their state Assembly and Senate representatives, and the New York Farm Bureau to let them know that this bill cannot, and should not, move any further.”