Gov. Cuomo has assumed expansive emergency powers as the state continues to battle the impact of COVID-19, and he hasn’t been shy in using them. He’s spent over $3 billion in taxpayer dollars. He’s chosen which businesses are shuttered and which ones stay open. He’s imposed lockdowns, closed schools and commandeered medical supplies. Reasonable people can disagree about the wisdom of any of these decisions. Complex problems create difficult choices.

One thing we should all be able agree on, though- the time for government as a one-man show is over. The Legislature must return to Albany and do the job we were elected to do.

Every New Yorker deserves to know that their state representatives, the ones who are the most accessible and responsive to them, have a vote on how we move forward, not just an opinion. The governor’s four-phased approach to re-opening ten arbitrary regions of the state beginning May 15 has been accepted as gospel by the media. Couldn’t it be improved by the 213 duly-elected officials who intimately know their own districts? Shouldn’t it be vetted by the Assembly Committee on Economic Development? What do members of the Health Committee think?

Weeks ago, our Assembly Minority Conference released a report outlining our vision for re-opening the state’s economy. It emphasized partnership between public health officials and small business owners. It didn’t make sense to us that mom-and-pop hardware stores couldn’t establish new sanitization and social distancing practices and stay open when hordes of people were crowding into Home Depot. It didn’t make sense to have a retail economy based on closing every big box store’s local competition. It would’ve been great for Minority and Majority politicians in the Legislature and for New Yorkers across the state if we could’ve debated our plan on the public record.

Having input from representatives who are in constant contact with local hospital officials, healthcare providers, small business owners and unemployed workers would obviously help our state re-open in a thoughtful, balanced way. There’s so much other work for my colleagues and I to do, too.

We need to prevent the governor from radically reimagining our statewide education system. He recently questioned the viability of returning to what he dismissed as “the old model”- teachers inspiring, guiding and challenging their students in the classroom setting. I’m certain that a bipartisan majority of my colleagues agree with me that classroom learning can’t be replicated on a screen. We should go to Albany and take action.

I’m certain that a bipartisan majority of my colleagues want answers about why our nursing homes were so vulnerable to the COVID-19 crisis as badly as I do. We should go to Albany and hold bipartisan hearings.

And I’d hope that a bipartisan majority of my colleagues would rather see the governor tout his desire to collaborate with duly-elected members of the Legislature instead of an endless array of famous people. (No disrespect to Danny Meyer’s Shake Shack, which is delicious.)

I am certain the members of our Legislature are not as tough as the essential workers who have kept our state running during this crisis, especially our heroic healthcare workers. I do, however, believe we owe it to them to get back to work immediately. Deciding how 19 million people move forward after the most devastating crisis in a generation isn’t a job for one man.

It’s a job for one state.