SYRACUSE -- The “Bathroom Bill” has surfaced as the latest issue in the race for the 120th Assembly District.
Republican Rick Guy is accusing incumbent assemblyman Bill Magnarelli of being more concerned with the so called "bathroom bill" than passing a state budget – which was four months late.
Guy criticized Magnarelli for being one of many sponsors of a bill he says would allow men dressed as women to go into ladies’ rooms where children may be present. "They're fiddling with a bathroom bill making it a hate crime for someone to interfere with a man dressed as a woman going into a woman's bathroom...imagine that your daughter was in there." Guy told CNY Central's Jim Kenyon
Guy takes issue with a provision of Assembly Bill 05710 which prohibits discrimination based on “gender, identity or expression” as it would apply to “public accommodations” which he says would include bathrooms.
Guy says while that bill was being pushed through the assembly, Magnarelli was not working on the state budget. Guy says as Chair of the Ethics Commission. Magnarelli had the " duty to enforce the 2007 Budget Reform Act which required the budget be done in open conference in the sunlight of day....125 days go by and they're not doing their duties but they're fiddling with bathroom bills."
Assemblyman Magnarelli tells CNY Central’s Jim Kenyon that was “not true... I had no more power than any other assemblyman at the time. He is absolutely wrong." Magnarelli says he was working on the budget and Assembly Bill 05710 was not a distraction.
Magnarelli accuses Guy of being the “same old Guy” who he describes as being "anti-gay, anti-women and anti-civil rights" when the two served on the Syracuse Common Council in the 1990’s.
The Empire State Pride Agenda calls a "myth", Guy's claim that the bill would make all public accomodations including bathrooms open to men and women alike. The organization points out that 13 states have similar laws protecting transgender people and "not one prohibits or had done away with gender-segretated restroom or locker facilities."
A-10750 passed the State Assembly by a vote of 100 to 43 on March 2nd It remains stalled in the State Senate's Government Operations Committee.
