In the wake of Weinergate, Governor Cuomo brought some much needed good political news to New Yorkers when he announced his selection for Special Deputy Superintendent of the New York Liquidation Bureau of the newly created Department of Financial Services. That person is none other than our bill’s main sponsor in the Assembly, Jonathan Bing. While this is great news for New York and for Assembly Member Bing, the timing couldn’t have been worse for our final push to get licensure passed this year.
But before we get into the ramifications for our bill, we should pause a moment to thank both of our sponsors. Assembly Member Jonathan Bing has been our bill’s main sponsor in the Assembly. He has always believed that vision rehabilitation professionals should be licensed in New York. As our main sponsor, he has driven our issue to the forefront of the ongoing overall licensure debate in the Assembly and made great efforts on our behalf over a number of years. His enthusiasm and dedication to our cause will be missed. We thank him for all of his support for licensure for vision rehabilitation professionals and wish him the best in his new position.
In the Senate, Senator Joe Griffo is our newest champion and we applaud his great efforts. As our bill’s main sponsor, Senator Griffo was inspirational on our lobby day and demonstrated his commitment to licensure by navigating our bill to the floor of the Senate where it passed unanimously. We are thrilled with his efforts and look forward to working with him to enact licensure in New York.
Prior to this announcement, 2011 was a banner year for VRT/O&M licensure. Our efforts have been very productive. We want to especially thank our enthusiastic and hardworking supporters from all over the country who helped make the case for licensure. Thank you for the memos of support from AER, NYSAER, AFB and all of those who sent their own letter and/or signed on to Dona Sauerburger’s letter, Marjie Wood and the O&M Division. Thank you to NFB for participating in an ongoing dialog to iron out our differences.
All of our calls, emails and faxes made by our numerous supporters continue to garner the attention of Assembly Members, Senators and their respective staff. These efforts have seen the sponsors of the Assembly bill rise to seventy-three and counting. And, finally, as previously stated, the New York State Senate unanimously passed our bill sponsored by Senator Joe Griffo.
It is with great pride and satisfaction that I can report that there are now only two final issues that stand in our way. 1) We need the Assembly to name the licensing board we will join as a subset, and 2) we need confirmation that, once licensed, the State Education Department will implement the same or similar procedures for us that were created for licensed social workers. This allows social workers to work for a person who is not a social worker – otherwise known as the “Corporate Practice Fix.”
Next year is the second year of the 2011/12 session and Assembly Member Glick (the Higher Education Committee chair) promised during the 2009/2010 session to do something for our bill during the 2011/2012 session. We expect her to honor her promise. We are hopeful that she will move our bill out of the Higher Education Committee so that it can get to the Assembly floor for a vote. In a very positive development, we already have several offers from Assembly Members who have an interest in being the new main sponsor of our Bill. We are confident that we will have great news of our new main sponsor in the coming weeks.
While losing Assembly Member Bing right at the end of session was a setback, it is far from defeat. It is vital that we remain positive and make sure that we do not lose the momentum that we have been building. To that end, we will continue to ask all of you who have been so supportive to help in a number of different ways moving forward to make sure that our licensure bill remains a hot topic in the legislature all the way into next year until we get it passed and signed into law!
Thank you again for all of your commitment, hard work and enthusiasm! Let’s keep this going!! Let’s get licensure in New York!!!