Her work with the Scarsdale Woman’s Club, the Scarsdale League of Women Voters and My Sisters’ Place prior to going into politics has continued to shape the career of 88th District State Assembly Member Amy Paulin, a 42-year resident of Scarsdale, and has helped her become one of the most prolific lawmakers in the state.
On the verge of having more than 300 of her sponsored bills signed into law, Paulin spoke to a full house of women and men at the Woman’s Club late last month. Among the main causes Paulin has championed over the years are state government reform, supporting children and families, helping victims of domestic violence and sex trafficking, and focusing on education, health care, renewable energy, animal welfare and ending gun violence. She has also taken on issues brought to her by her constituents in Scarsdale, Eastchester, Edgemont, Tuckahoe, Bronxville, Pelham, Pelham Manor, and parts of New Rochelle and White Plains over the years.
“The Scarsdale Woman’s Club has really led the way for women like me, and has always been ahead of its time,” Paulin said. “As a member of the New York State Assembly, I’m reminded every day of the importance of having women in leadership positions at all levels of government. I am always aware of how grateful we should be for our foremothers, those brave women who fought not only for women’s issues, but for the universal issues that affect our daily lives …”
The Scarsdale LWV, of which Paulin is a former president, grew out of the Woman’s Club. Paulin is proud of those roots and the LWV’s mission “in educating the electorate about good government and civic responsibility.” The LWV is what helped Paulin become engaged in community and civic matters, as she learned to work and compromise “with even the most zealous adversary to find solutions.”
“The League was where I came to understand the relevance of problem-solving through careful, considerate discussion and debate,” Paulin said. “I learned the importance of having the facts and knowing when and how to use them. It is a methodology and work ethic that I bring to my job. I am very proud to represent the 88th Assembly District, one of the most forward-thinking areas in the state. Representing this district has allowed me to work on a broad array of legislation that improved people’s lives, both here in my district and across the state.”
In 2022, Paulin had 48 two-house bills pass and was still waiting on 11 bills to be signed into law by Gov. Kathy Hochul, something she remains hopeful will happen. While much of Paulin’s work is proactive, last year the Democrat had to focus on some reactive measures as the Supreme Court struck down the state’s gun bill and Roe. v. Wade.
Paulin has been working on gun safety and gun licensing bills since she joined the Assembly in 2001. That goes back to her time with the LWV when she helped push for gun legislation following the shooting death of Eastchester police officer Michael Frey.
“Eastchester is a slightly more conservative place than Scarsdale, for example, so when they rallied to pass a bill on gun control, that was a big thing …” Paulin said. “We passed a law which had nothing to do with Michael Frey, but it was a gun control bill, and that added Westchester to Nassau, Suffolk and New York City [as a place] that required a recertification or a relicensing of guns every five years. Up to that point, you got a gun license [and] it was for life. So we did a big thing.”
Over the years, many of Paulin’s gun bills didn’t pass in the Senate for many years. But two of those bills recently passed and are major breakthroughs. One relates to tracking guns that have been used in crimes by forcing gun dealers to do proper record keeping.
The other bill had to do with making New York a Point of Contact (POC) state, and was built on a previous bill that required 30 days of background checks instead of three. There are about a dozen POC states of all sizes and they have the lowest gun crime rates because the measure helps prevent legal guns from getting into the wrong hands.
“Instead of the FBI doing the checking, the New York State Police does the checking,” Paulin said of POC. “And on the surface, you might say why is that better? Well, it’s better because the New York State Police know our local governments, they know how local clerks work, they know upstate, for example, that clerks can be in the office one day a week, one day a month, they know how to find local police. They have a much better sense of the community and the communities in the state and honestly it’s been a much better system.”
On reproductive rights, which have been put in states’ hands by the SCOTUS, Paulin’s goal is to protect legal abortion as an option for women. Paulin introduced “a bill that was among the bills that were in the package to help keep health care workers safe and protected and allowed some civil penalties and other things to help beef up, to make health care workers feel safe.” She noted, “We’re continuing to watch it, obviously.”
One of Paulin’s major focuses has also been laws against human trafficking and finding ways to help victims. That work comes largely from her past role as executive director of My Sisters’ Place, and her networking with various other domestic violence and human trafficking-focused organizations. They now had an ally in the legislature.
Most often human trafficking victims are girls who run away from home — often loving ones — and get taken in or kidnapped by human traffickers and pimps.
“Those are the people who take these young girls and they threaten them and they coerce them and they basically imprison them and they turn into human trafficking victims,” Paulin said. “Part of it is that they’re young, they’re 14 — the average age is actually 12 when they get into this.
“I have had constituents from my affluent communities come to me and say, ‘My girl is one of those girls, and we want her back.’ So I know they may not be captured in Westchester, but they exist among us. I didn’t even know that when I first started. I was just passionate about the idea of [helping] these young girls.”
In 2005 Paulin worked on a bill with prime sponsor Jeff Edwards from Riverdale to actually make human trafficking illegal in the state.
“The law didn’t exist,” Paulin said. “There were other laws. You can’t be a pimp. You can’t coerce someone …. But there were hearings, and we understood that until there was an absolute law saying you cannot be a human trafficker we were not going to do the right thing and be able to take these horrible perpetrators off the streets. So we passed that [law] a few years later. These guys were really smart and evaded the law and learned what to do [and] what not to do to not get arrested. So we went back, which is what we do.”
Legislators cleaned up the language in the laws. In addition, Paulin has worked on other bills, including ones that require restaurants and hotels to post phone numbers where victims can call for help and to train hotel workers in how to identify victims. There is also a bill for airports to do the same, but that needs to pass in New Jersey as well, because the industry there is connected to New York. Other targeted areas will be truck stops and transit bathrooms.
Paulin also discussed a wide range of other legislation topics including: limits of C-sections, providing secure breastfeeding spaces in the workplace, tracking rape kits, robocalls, transparency and open meetings, standards for animal shelters, transgender and LGBTQ+ rights, the environment, mattress recycling, virtual meetings (including for nonprofits), nursing home safety and illegal cannabis sales.
