Flatbush Assemblyman Nick Perry is a do-nothing legislator who continually fails to address important issues affecting his constituents, says an attorney and community board chairman hoping to unseat the 20-year incumbent this September.
“I think after 20 years there is a tendency in any position to become complacent,” said Terry Hinds, who is currently the chairman of Community Board 17. “But the primary job of a legislator is to make laws that make life easier for their community. I have not seen that coming from our assemblymember.”
Hinds, a Flatbush native who attended PS 244 and Tilden High School, said Perry (D–Flatbush) hasn’t addressed pressing community issues, such as education and the neighborhood’s high foreclosure rate.
If elected, he said he would fight to end mayoral control of the Department of Education, which he claims Perry has failed to do.
“Now that we see it hasn’t had the positive results which we expected, I would expect we would have some legislation that would give more of a voice to parents to allow them to have a say about what happens with their children,” Hinds said.
Yet Perry, who was one of 18 Assemblymembers to vote against Mayoral control in 2009, stood by his record in Albany — dismissing Hinds’s comments as meaningless blather.
“Obviously Mr. Hinds’ ambition to take my job is much larger than his knowledge of his problems in the district,” said Perry. “He has a very mountainous task of trying to make his candidacy viable. What he will find out is that an overwhelming majority of voters will disagree with him when they cast their votes.”
Hinds will also have a financial hurdle ahead of him: Perry has a $43,471 war chest to wage a reelection campaign. Hinds has yet to file anything, according to the state Board of Elections.
May 29, 2012, 10:49 am. Story has been updated to correct an error.
Reach reporter Eli Rosenberg at erosenberg@cnglocal.com or by calling (718) 260-2531. And follow him at twitter.com/emrosenberg.
