Dean G Skelos

Skelos (R-NY 9th District) is currently a member of the Capital Program Review Board and the Metropolitan Transportation Authority Capital Program Review Board. He is also a member of the NY State Senate Rules Committee. Skelos is the author of Megan's Law, which created the New York State Sex Offender Registry. He also serves as the current Chairman of the Senate’s NextGen Task Force.In November 2010, Senator Skelos was re-elected to serve his fourteenth term in the New York State Senate. As the author of Megan’s Law, Senator Skelos created the New York State Sex Offender Registry and authored numerous measures strengthening this powerful statute, including the Workplace and Campus Registration acts and laws establishing lifetime registration for dangerous sexual predators and posting information and photos about more sex offenders on the internet. This year, Senator Skelos worked with Attorney General Andrew Cuomo to enact the new e-STOP law which prevents registered sex offenders from accessing social networking websites, including MySpace and Facebook, and prohibiting online communication between sex offenders and children. In addition, Senator Skelos wrote laws eliminating the statute-of-limitations in cases of rape and violent sexual assault and, to further assist law enforcement, dramatically expanding the state’s DNA Databank. To fight fraud, waste and abuse in the state’s Medicaid program and save billions of dollars for state and local taxpayers, Senator Skelos authored the nation’s most sweeping Medicaid fraud law in 2006. Building upon his record of combating fraud and abuse in government, Senator Skelos negotiated an agreement ensuring that school district lawyers who are ineligible for public pensions cannot access the state’s public retirement system, making school districts’ administrative costs more transparent and establishing new safeguards to end school superintendent ‘double-dipping’ practices that have cost property taxpayers millions of dollars. Senator Skelos also wrote the law eliminating the unfair New York City “Commuter Tax” and, during his tenure as the Senate Aging Committee Chairman, the law creating the Elderly Pharmaceutical Insurance Coverage (“EPIC”) program. Senator Skelos served as the Senate representative on the Metropolitan Transportation Authority’s (“MTA”) four-member Capital Program Review Board and Co-Chairman of the Legislative Task Force on Demographic Research and Reapportionment. As the Chairman of the Senate’s NextGen Task Force, Senator Skelos wrote a comprehensive plan that resulted in the enactment of various tax credits and other incentives designed to promote the creation of high-paying jobs in the fields of high-technology and biotechnology. Moreover, Senator Skelos developed the landmark HELP program and passed the Long Island Workforce Housing Act to make homeownership more affordable for Long Islanders, the New York State Center for Excellence and Innovation in Homeland Security and, in 2002, the $71.5 million Long Island Biotech Investment and Job Creation Program. Prior to his election to the State Senate in 1984, Senator Skelos represented New York State’s 19th Assembly District for two years. Born, raised and educated in Rockville Centre, he graduated from South Side High School, Class of 1966. In 1970, Senator Skelos received a B.A. in History from Washington College in Maryland and, after attending at night, graduated from Fordham University School of Law with a Juris Doctorate Degree in 1975.