Agudath Israel of America applauded the news of Governor Andrew Cuomo’s veto of two legislative bills designed to prevent the Village of Kiryas Joel from annexing certain land of the Town of Monroe.
Existing New York State law provides a detailed mechanism through which land may be annexed by a neighboring jurisdiction. Upon the petition of landowners in the Town of Monroe who seek to have their land annexed by the neighboring Village of Kiryas Joel, that mechanism has been activated, and the relevant parties have followed the statutory process for considering the petition.
However, in a transparent effort to block the Kiryas Joel annexation effort, the state legislature passed two separate laws in June that would have added layers of additional hurdles to the annexation process and would have made it all-but-impossible for the Kiryas Joel annexation to succeed. While the bills were neutral on their faces, not mentioning Kiryas Joel by name, it was clear to all that their sole purpose was to block the growth of the Chasidic community of Kiryas Joel.
While the bills were being considered in the state legislature, Agudath Israel general counsel Rabbi Mordechai Biser, Esq. submitted a memorandum of opposition to the bills, pointing out their constitutional and policy flaws. Then, after the legislature passed the bills and sent them to Governor Cuomo for approval, Agudath Israel’s executive vice president Rabbi Chaim Dovid Zwiebel, Esq. sent the Governor a letter urging him to veto the bills. The Governor has now done so, citing a number of the substantive concerns raised in the Biser memo.
Said Rabbi Zwiebel, “What was especially troubling about these bills was that nobody before had ever suggested that the well-settled annexation process be burdened by additional layers of complicated hurdles. For some reason, the alleged weaknesses of the existing process were discovered only now in the specific context of a Chasidic community seeking to accommodate its organic growth. It is gratifying that Governor Cuomo saw these facially neutral bills for what they really were: an effort to prevent the community of Kiryas Joel from growing.
“As the annexation process will now move forward under the longstanding guidelines of state law, we urge all parties to proceed in a spirit of good faith and constructive cooperation, recognizing the need to accommodate the needs of the growing Chasidic community while respecting the rights and sensitivities of neighboring communities. The time has arrived for constructive dialogue among all interested parties to help achieve those ends.”
(YWN Desk – NYC)
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7 Responses
The veto by Gov. Cuomo of these two bills passed by the legislature is doubly gratifying since the governor does not veto bills very often.
Are we in gulas, or not?! Why can’t we live QUIETLY, without fanfare, without annexation?
Just wait until we see the effects of antisemitism because of all of this! We will all suffer. We are starting to forget who we are and how we are supposed to behave. Such behavior ALWAYS has repercussions.
I understand when we need to stand against those who want to take away our basic rights but not when we force our way of living onto others.
philosopher #2: Next thing you’ll be advocating “Are we in gulas, or not?! Why can’t we live QUIETLY, without fanfare, without voting“. How can Jews vote if it’ll change the direction of the politician the goyim want to win office? Stay home on election day because we’re in galus!
No one is forcing anyone with “our way of living” with this annexation. All the proposed annexed land is owned and resided on by religious Jews. You simply don’t like the people of KJ. (Yeah, we know, you “grew up” like them. And I have minority friends so I am not racist, right?) The anti-annex people are plain ‘ole anti-semites dressing up their Jew-hatred in nicer and fancier verbiage and reasoning. They simply don’t want more old fashioned jewboys in their midst.
Lior, you can tanaah whatever you want, but it won’t take away from the FACT that once we start making as much noise as in this case to change things the way we want then antisemitism grows to epidemic proportions and we will suffer repercussions.
Don’t use the taanah that they don’t like Chassidishe Jews. There are Satmer Hidden living quietly in single family homes outside of KJ and it bothers no one.
The problems start when we think it is our ‘right’ to do what we want instead of remembering our responsibility to be good neighbors, creation g animosity. Here in Monsey, we have have heimishe people building without regard to how the character of Money used to be. It is only our love for our fellow Yidden, that we who resent all this that is forced upon us, to try to accept all of these changes without anger. But nonreligious Jews and non-Jews will not look the other way. The anger will grow.
Why did you mention voting? Did I say we are not allowed to be good citizens?
And I don’t just have some Satmer friends. I have lots and lots of Satmer friends. Remember that this is just a few machers who created this situation. Not all Satmer people living in KJ.
I meant Satmer Yidden not Satmer Hidden
So stay in your home lest anyone see the menfolks wearing a yarmulka marring their nice gentile landscape. Walking out with a jewcap on the head can increase anti-semitism. That’s a FACT.
philosopher, the fact is this is being opposed by people who simply don’t like religious Jews. As simple as that. And they’d rather have less of them than more of them in their neighborhood. So if they LEGALLY build more homes for more religious Jews, these people will be mad. And that’s why they’re mad.
Populations grow naturally. Population growth requires additional housing. NYC has no room to build. Building has to be done in suburban or rural areas. That’s the only place their is land to build.
Everyone in existing suburban or rural areas says “not in my backyard”. Thus there are laws. Laws that permit growth. Laws that permit a municipality to annex neighboring land. And it is through these LAWS that KJ is LEGALLY, like good citizens, choosing to build for their growing population.
Yes Jews live differently. Jews in their village are okay with dense population, and denser housing. Yes Jews wear black clothes and fur hats.
I understand, the Jews just are not wanted. A lot of people really have some great hatred towards Jews. A lot of haredim really are obnoxious, when they ought to be lowering their heads. You are foreigners in someone elses land. You sojourn. Some haredi-in-America behavior is absolutely reprehensible!
Past that though, I have little good to say, about the dreamers in that part of the country, the Goyim there that are fighting all of this. You have got to be so far out to lunch you are going to miss diner, to be living all within an hours drive of that super huge city New York, and continue to nurse dreams of solitude and country living. You are being absorbed by that vast city, as have already probably several HUNDRED towns villages and cities already throughout history. Suck it up! If you have eyes in your head, sell your what was almost worthless cheap land 25 years ago, and if you really want solitude and country living, pick up and get lost! Move on and get away from the greater New York City area! Cash in and move on to some real country location. Rockland and Monroe and all of that are doomed, they are now boroughs of the great city! You are not going to stop that reality! Did every other village town and city fight like you? No, people back when rolled with reality, as hurtful as it was to have your hometown or village changed beyond recognition.