Trustee Don Frank provided the following statement:

Assemblyman David Dipietro (inset photo left) of the 147th District came to Bethany Feb. 18 to speak on behalf of the bill that he authored, proposing to Partition the State into three autonomous Regions.

He explained that this would include a 52-county Upstate Region, a five-county NYC Region, and a four-county Long Island Region.

Each region would have its own governor and legislation and would function independently of the others. A token Governor and State government would remain to care for those things required of the state by the federal government.

This would allow us a rare opportunity to reimagine our government with things like term limits, voter ID and campaign finance laws in place on day one. We would also be able to rework or discard all of the unfunded mandates that Albany has foisted upon us in the past several years.

This would give us the opportunity to reduce property taxes considerably. This would allow us to review, rework or scrap any law that is on the books in this state. We could instantly repeal the Safe Act, the bail Reform Law and the Farm Labor Law that were passed last year would also be scrutinized.

As Assemblyman DiPietro put it: "It doesn't matter what political party you support, as a resident of Upstate, this plan will benefit you greatly."

He explained that there is growing support for this idea in New York City as well. With so many people leaving because of COVID-19, the residents there are feeling the strain of the COVID-19 shutdown and it has become clear that they could save billions of dollars of their own tax money for their own purposes, if they were on their own.

To learn more about this plan, please click here.

If you would be interested in hearing more or you would like to help this effort in Genesee Co. email: divideny.genco@gmail.com