The Overlook is conducting a series of interviews with candidates running in the Nov. 3 election, offering readers an opportunity to hear directly from those seeking to shape their communities. In this installment, reporter Isabella Schoonover interviewed Assemblymember Sarahana Shrestha, who is seeking reelection in New York’s 103rd Assembly District, which covers Woodstock, Saugerties, Hurley, Olive, and other parts of Ulster County including the city of Kingston, on the Democratic and Working Families party lines. She faces Republican Santos Lopez.

Shrestha, 45, is a first-generation Nepali American who took office in 2023 and has lived in the Town of Esopus for eight years. Before entering elected office, she worked as a graphic designer and creative technologist and organized around climate issues with the Mid-Hudson Valley chapter of the Democratic Socialists of America.

She is married and has two dogs and chickens. In her free time, she enjoys reading novels, baking, gardening, watching movies, and making her own clothes.

Answers have been trimmed for length and repetition.

What is the single most important issue facing District 103 right now, and how would you address this issue if you’re re-elected?

Shrestha: The number one thing we hear about by far is utilities. So while our office works on multiple issues simultaneously because we don’t have the luxury of choosing just a few things, our office really is known for the Central Hudson problem. So if people have a Central Hudson problem, they come to us, and you know, we have that bill to replace Central Hudson with a publicly owned state corporation, precisely because we really think this investor-owned model for utilities has never worked and is not going to work.

What is your position on New York’s current spending and budget priorities, and where do you think the state should prioritize taxpayer spending? Where do you think the state should spend less?

Shrestha: I will say that we are also spending a lot of money on broken solutions that are more expensive than solutions that go to the root of the problem.

For example, when we don’t build high-quality, affordable homes this year, it becomes more expensive to build them next year.

So all of the money that we are wasting—for example, tax breaks to private developers—if we actually directly funded them in public goods, those would be both cheaper, and the result we would get from it would be more immediate and more impactful. So that’s really my approach to how the states should spend money.

I would frame it as this. Right now, we use a lot of public funds to subsidize private profits. We could be directly investing in the public sector to deliver to people. That’s where the money can be saved, and the New York Health Act is a perfect example.

We could have more free busses. We could have more public transit. We could have better roads. So the possibilities are endless. And right now, we’re fighting for universal childcare. So we could have universal childcare faster if we spend money more smartly, without being so beholden to private interests.

How do you plan to improve communication, transparency, and accountability within the state assembly?

Shrestha: Like of course we have to let the constituents know what we did on their behalf, but we really try to use those newsletters to actually inform them of, you know, what is this bill? Why isn’t it moving? What are some of the questions you might have about it?

And we also complement that with town halls. We have done over 30 town halls since I got into office. We’ve done mass calls. So I think our office philosophy is we are fighting alongside our constituents rather than separately from them. We really bring them into the process, which I think is critical to winning some of the big things that we want to win.

In District 103, more than 50% of renters and 30% of homeowners spend 30% or more of their income on housing. So, what role should the state play in improving access to affordable housing in rural communities?

Shrestha: We are pushing for two things. One is my bill, the Rent Emergency Stabilization for Tenants (REST) Act, which makes it easier for localities outside of downstate areas, outside of New York City, to opt into rent stabilization. Right now, we require them to do a vacancy study, which is just not the right solution for these smaller governments.

And even when you opt in, it barely covers the housing stock that we have up here in more rural and suburban areas like you said. So the the local government opting in should also be able to bring more housing stock into rent stabilization. So this is what this bill does. It came very close to passing this year. So next session we’re going to be starting pretty early to try to pass this bill, you know, building the energy for it. That’s number one.

Number two is we just won in this year’s budget $8 million to build a demonstration pilot project for green social housing that is capped at 25% of somebody’s income forever. So this is the permanently affordable, publicly built housing model.

It also has components of tenant democracy, and it’s also green, so energy efficient, high quality, and so on. And it’s mixed income, so that you don’t have worse units for people who have less money, and better units for people who have more money. And we have a wide range of income that this type of project has to support, going from very low to market rate.

And we want the scale to pass the Green Social Housing Authority bill to do this at the state level to build very quickly a large number of affordable homes, whether that’s from scratch or through rehabbing existing properties that are not being used, so that’s what it empowers the state to do.

Voters across the political spectrum report dissatisfaction with the current healthcare system, including access to providers in rural communities. How do you plan to make healthcare more affordable and accessible in New York? Do you support any current legislative proposals?

Shrestha: Yes. So, I have two priorities. One is my bill. It’s a bill that I’m going to be pushing next year. It’s like a short-term solution. It creates a three-year pilot program to cap prescription drug prices in New York State at Medicare prices, and we want to use this pilot program to see if it works and to sort of work out some of the kinks that might come up.

It’s a test. It’s not permanent. We can see if it works. If it works, we can make it permanent.

However, the second priority is I just did seven healthcare town halls in my district, and we are in a healthcare crisis.

And this is great for providers, especially in rural areas, because rural areas are places where hospitals tend to be financially unstable because they don’t get fully reimbursed for treating Medicare and Medicaid patients, and they don’t have the same volume of business as some bigger hospitals might have, right? And these hospitals also spend a lot of administrative work and money just trying to get paid through the insurance plan. So, under the New York Health Act, we say all of the providers have to be covered the full price of the service that they provide. But also, everybody will have a healthcare plan, which means they are not losing any money providing service.

So how much you pay towards, let’s say a healthcare tax is based on how much you make, but then all of your private spending is gone, and you’re getting a full, high-quality healthcare coverage, and you can see any provider in the state because there’s no network restrictions.

We do believe the time has come to treat this seriously and to come up with a transition plan on how we can do this.

What is your position on the state’s current approach to renewable energy development, and how would you balance the state’s climate goals with concerns about land use and local control?

Shrestha: Yes, so this is why we passed the Build Public Renewables Act.

So we passed this bill to authorize the New York Power Authority to also be able to build new publicly owned renewable energy because they were actually effectively barred from doing that, and we also instruct them to build ambitiously so that we can meet our climate goals. Because when it’s publicly built, not only can you build it faster, you can also build it for cheaper.

But in this bill, we have a lot of guardrails on land use. For example, there are guardrails against using land that is primed for agriculture. There’s language to protect tribal land from being misused. There’s language for using U.S. manufactured steel and so on to the extent that it’s possible.

We passed this bill, but we have followed it up with passing further bills to make sure the implementation is going on. So last year I passed a transparency bill for New York Power Authority that was signed by the governor.

And of course, we require them to do hearings across the state, and they have been pretty good. Their first round of hearings was actually way more than what the bill even suggested. So we’re happy with that portion of how they did it.

BESS stands for battery energy storage systems, which store electricity for later use.

BESS has been a big issue with some asking for moratoriums until their impacts can be better understood. How are you addressing those concerns?

Shrestha: However, I will say that I think part of the reasons BESS specifically has been turned into such a local fight is it does not help that all these large corporations are the ones coming in with these projects. Like we want NYPA to do them because we own that, right? If NYPA does it, we’re using that battery storage project for public use and public benefit, and not to make profits for investors. So that is our position across the board.

We’re not taking a position on specific BESS projects. We are taking a position on the question: Are the projects safe in New York, and are they needed? And the answer to the first question is: yes, because of our fire code, because of the kind of projects we allow.

But also, if we want to use more renewable energy, we cannot do that without battery storage, right? Because we have to be able to store it to dispatch it. And the third reason is grid reliability. We need battery storage. But I think that what’s happening is because these are larger corporations coming in with these projects, people have less trust, which is understandable.

So we hope that through the process of the local government working with NYSERDA to take their vote on whether they want to do it or not, we can show with some successful projects that it is safe.

Why do you identify with your political party, and how would that affiliation inform your approach to government?

Shrestha: I am registered Democrat, and I run on the Democratic as well as the Working Families Party line. I always tell people that if you want to vote for a Democrat, but you want to signal that you want Democrats to do better, then they should vote on the Working Families Party line.

What does do better mean to you?

Shrestha: Don’t align yourself with corporations. Don’t spend all this time and money just tweaking a few things here and there when there are holistic changes needed in sectors like energy, healthcare. We really don’t think public goods should be owned by for-profit corporations, for example, and we are always letting these private actors set the agenda for how our society and economy should be run.

But actually, what we should be doing is creating a very positive role for the government, so that people’s basic needs are taken care of, and people can focus on how they want to improve their lives on their end, and not just merely how to survive, and I feel like that is the push that is coming from the progressive branch of the Democratic Party, is that we really need to break up with billionaires and corporations and actually represent people.

For example, we have public finance in the state of New York now for state offices, and this is great. We should not be running for office with donations from big donors, from corporate donors, and so on. And we also need a reform like this at the federal level as well.

What is your vision for the future of the 103rd district?

Shrestha: I really think when I first ran for office, I said that I was running because I felt like this district was hungry for transformative, progressive policies, and through this district, we could show what’s possible. And I feel like we are doing that. Our district is sort of the battleground for rent stabilization across New York because we’re trying to break it out of the downstate area.

Now with social housing, we’re trying to show how it can be done, how it should be done, with public ownership of utilities. And also we’re trying to show that even in rural and suburban places, tenants should have rights. Usually, when you’re in these kinds of areas, because tenants are not the majority, they are erased from public discourse inside Albany. So I really think we’re trying to show how these things can be done, how they can be won, and how they are winnable issues.

But I feel that voters are also trying to send a message that it does not end with this election. That Democrats really do need to push for all of these solutions we have instead of just sitting on them. You can’t just campaign on things. You can’t just make promises. We actually need to start delivering on things like universal health care, social housing, public power, and so on. So I really hope that people see this election as just step one of what we’re trying to win.

Isabella Schoonover is a staff reporter for The Overlook covering Woodstock, Saugerties, Hurley, and surrounding Ulster County communities. Send correspondence to isabella@theoverlooknews.com.