ALBANY — Assemblyman Chris Tague, a rising voice among state Republicans, has gained a new leadership post within the Assembly’s minority conference.
Tague, R-Schoharie, has been appointed as vice chair of the Joint Conference Committee, Assembly Minority Leader Will Barclay announced Wednesday.
Tague, a former dairy farmer, is also the ranking Republican of the lower house’s Agriculture Committee, and serves on the Election Law, Environmental Conservation, Real Property and Tourism committees.
“I am honored to have the opportunity to serve in this role and get to work to address the challenges facing the people of the 102nd Assembly District and New York state as a whole,” Tague said in a statement. “As always, it will be my mission to ensure our state government works for all New Yorkers, from the rolling hills of Schoharie County to the towering skyscrapers of Manhattan.”
Tague, who represents all of Greene County in the state chamber, also represents parts of Columbia and Ulster counties, as well as the entirety of Schoharie county.
Tague was first elected to represent the 102nd Assembly District in April 2018 and has been re-elected twice since.
“I want to thank Leader Will Barclay and all of my colleagues in the Assembly Minority Conference for their vote of confidence in my abilities and look forward to continuing to work alongside them to make our state the safest, most prosperous and free place it can be,” the assemblyman added.
Barclay praised Tague for his new role in the GOP conference.
“Chris has been a fighter for the people of his district and for this conference since his first day in the Assembly,” Barclay declared in a statement. “He’s earned the respect of his colleagues on both sides of the aisle because of his passion, hard work and collaborative efforts to deliver results for the people of New York. I congratulate him on this well-deserved leadership position.”
The Greene County Legislature sent a letter to Gov. Kathy Hochul, a Democrat, on Feb. 16, demanding the governor immediately end the statewide school mask mandate.
Hochul and her top aides have said they will review the school face mask requirement next week, or in the first week of March, after students return from mid-winter recess.
Tague has sponsored legislation that would prohibit state agencies from mandating the masking of healthy and asymptomatic children in schools and similar settings.
“Whether or not an individual wears a mask in any setting should be up to only themselves or their parents,” Tague in a statement. “While I’ve been opposed to universal mask mandates since they were introduced, if there was ever a time for them to end, that time is now. The number of new COVID cases has cratered rapidly over the last few weeks. With that said, we need this mandate to come to an end for all of us, but especially our children. They’ve had their educational and social development stifled because of this mandate for far too long, and our state stubbornly retaining it, even as neighboring states with majority leaders scrap theirs, is entirely senseless. The negative effects of the pandemic have dragged on for far too long and the pain we’ve felt in our communities has only been prolonged by these ill-conceived edicts.”
New Jersey’s statewide mask mandate for public school students expires March 7.
Hochul has suggested New York’s school mask requirement may end the same date depending on coronavirus positivity, hospitalizations and deaths.