Five questions for Democratic county executive candidates

The two Democrats running in Tuesday's primary election for Westchester County executive met in Peekskill to answer voters' questions.

The Peekskill Chapter of the NAACP invited County Legislator Ken Jenkins of Yonkers and state Sen. George Latimer of Rye to the Field Library, where the candidates were given two minutes to explain their positions. The winner of Tuesday's primary will face County Executive Rob Astorino, a Republican, in the Nov. 7 election.

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The questions ranged from affordable housing to health care to President Donald Trump's reversal of President Barack Obama's executive order protecting from deportation illegal immigrants who were brought to the United States as children.

Here are the first five questions the public asked.

1. How would you increase affordable housing?

Jenkins: "We need to work with our planning departments, with the local municipalities and come up with municipality-specific plans to ensure that it takes care of public transportation, livable communities and making sure that we are working with developers."

Latimer: "I think we have a continuing commitment for affordable housing. We're going to have to be creative to get the money, find the sites and in some cases overcome the political opposition that exists, but my record has proven that."

2. How would you ensure fair economic development?

Jenkins: "If we take and repurpose an office park and create fair and affordable housing and we make its uses to be more than 9 to 5, Monday through Friday, then we can help invigorate the community, but we have to do that by working with the local municipalities and we can't do things like with the tax give-ways with the industrial development agencies."

Latimer: "I think one of the problems we have is when we talk about county-wide economic development, so much of the debate seems to be about major corporations on the 287 corridor. ...The real economic development we need is in places like where I grew up, on the south side of Mount Vernon. We had blue-collar factories that employed people who were not corporate executives but their skill set...fed their family, and those businesses don't exist to the same degree anymore."

3. How can county government safeguard the health of residents?

Jenkins: "One of the 260 overrides we did on the Board of Legislators was putting money back into our not-for-profit partners and neighborhood health centers....Under my administration we would implement one of the pieces of legislation I put forward where our not-for-profit partners would not have to come back every year to sing for money, that they would be part of the county budget."

Latimer: "I believe that health care is exactly like education, it is a societal requirement that we would provide that opportunity to everybody on an equal basis....The simple answer is we will get back to the standard we used to have in Westchester County to make sure the county is involved in good health for everybody."

4. How would you protect 'Dreamers'?

Jenkins: "First we would take a step back and enact the Immigration Protection Act and I'm expecting that the Board of Legislators would go back and override that veto and work on that one Republican we need to see the light at the Sept. 25 meeting. But if that didn't happen as soon as I became county executive that would be one of the first things I would work with my partners on the Board of Legislators to move forward with was making sure we had an Immigration Protection Act which sets forth the policy on how we interact with the federal government."

Latimer: "As a state legislator I'm a co-sponsor of the state Dream Act and I voted for the Dream Act when it came to the floor of the Senate....In the first week of my tenure as a county executive I would pass an executive order implementing (the Immigration Protection Act) with the authority to do that to the county police and county corrections facilities and so forth, and then I would invite the Board of Legislators to act as legislators and come back with a law that would protect greater than an executive order does. You've seen how (President Donald) Trump has reversed all of President (Barack) Obama's executive orders, so an executive order is not enough."

5. How would you increase the diversity in appointed county positions?

Jenkins: "We need to have Westchester County be a place where you look and you can see the diverse nature of everyone....I will bring back the offices of diversity that we used to have under Andy Spano, which represented Hispanic, African American, LGBTQ and...Asian American."

Latimer: "I'm going to do the same thing that I did when I became the chairman of the Board of Legislators....During that period of time I made it a point of changing the demographics with talented, qualified people. I made outreach to some of the organizations of the day."

Twitter: @ErnieJourno