Committee Work/Travel

As you may know, I am serving on the Human Services Committee (whose entire job is to oversee the Department of Social Service) and the Health and Education Committee (overseeing, among others, the Department of Health, Office for the Aging, and the Mental Health Clinic). I'm also the Board liaison to the Community Services Board, which oversees various mental health, substance abuse and developmental delay services throughout the county.  We got the annual statistical report from the Mental Health Clinic at the last Health & Ed meeting; let me know if you're interested in seeing it.

One of the more urgent issues before the Health and Education Committee (and, eventually, the full Board), is the senior meal program. It is one of the few large programs the County runs which is not required by State or federal law, and so is always on the chopping block come budget time. The contract with the company that provides the meals, and delivers many of them (the rest are delivered by volunteers) expires at the end of this year, and a new one is being negotiated. We've asked for a report on those negotiations at the May Health & Ed meeting, so I'll report any interesting developments then. If you know someone who benefits from the senior meal program, or feels strongly about it one way or another, the next few months would be the time to contact their Board Representative.

I'm also attending other committee meetings as well, now that I have more time, just to learn as much as I can about all areas of County functioning. I've attended all the Manor Committee meetings and Administration Committee meetings this calendar year, and I've also gotten to the Public Works Committee and the Solid Waste/Environmental Concerns Committee. This morning, I attended my first Public Safety Committee meeting.

Brian Pokorny, the IT manager for the County, kindly granted me my wish to have the chart detailing which departments report to which committees on the County website. You can find it here.

By the way – since nearly all the meetings are in Cooperstown, I'm driving a lot this year. I've decided that, as my contribution to the very tight county budget, I won't be claiming the mileage for reimbursement (although I will be claiming it as a deduction on my income taxes). I've traveled almost 1,000 miles to meetings since the beginning of the year (and car-pooled, when possible, to many more).

The 11-C Bridge

As you probably have heard, the bridge that carries County Rt. 11-C over the Susquehanna River was damaged recently by a tractor-trailer rig. The truck was almost two feet higher than the posted height of the bridge, and took out two overhead trusses before it came to a stop. There was other serious damage, as well, and the bridge will have to be replaced.

This is a beautiful spot, about three miles south of Cooperstown, where Oak Creek, flowing south from Canadarago Lake, joins the Susquehanna. The bridge was old, and overdue for replacement. For this reason, the trucking company's liability may be limited; I'm not sure whether insurance is involved, but if so, it would also be minimal. The bridge will be replaced, but it will take about a year; the county employees at the Meadows will have to go all the way up into Cooperstown and then south again to get their Big Macs for lunch. It will cost nearly one and a half million un-budgeted dollars, minus reimbursement from the trucking company or insurance, if any.

The truck, it turns out, was on its way to Brewery Ommegang – from I-88! If you're familiar with the area, you'll realize that the driver was taking the very long way around. But he was, apparently, using Mapquest, and if you're familiar with Mapquest, you'll realize that this is about par for the course. Before we moved to Oneonta, we lived on a lane-and-a-half dirt road high up on a hill overlooking the landscape north of Worcester. One day, we heard a semi laboring up the hill, taking up the whole road. They stopped at our house (the only one on the hill) for directions. Turns out Mapquest had routed them up our road: it was, after all, the most direct route.

Comments

I just wandered through this blog's settings, and discovered that Comments was only open to 'registered users.'  I don't have a registration process, so there are no 'registered users.'  Maybe that's why there have been no comments.  Or maybe it's because noone has wanted to comment.

Anyway, if the urge strikes you to comment on any of the posts, it should be simple now.  If you have trouble, please let me know.

The Local Development Corporation

As you may know, the Board will be considering creating a Local Development Corporation (LDC) to assist in selling the Manor. This is only one of three options for structuring the sale. The other two are using County Law 215, and creating our own local law from scratch. A summary of the restrictions and advantages of each of the three options was available to the public during the Board meeting yesterday, and I can provide you a copy if you'd like.

Going into the process of selling the Manor (which is a result that seems inevitable), my primary consideration will be finding a buyer with a strong record of quality care. This may require that we choose a lower bidder, if the facilities run by the highest bidder do not exhibit an acceptable level of care.

Given this, I certainly can't see us using County Law 215, since this law requires that we simply sell to the highest responsible bidder ('responsible' meaning 'able to pay'). That works if we're selling surplus land or trucks, but not in the case of the Manor.

That leaves the LDC, and the option of writing our own law. There are concerns – mostly technical – about each of the options, but both would allow us to judge the bidders on criteria other than the price they are willing to pay (although there is some uncertainly regarding how specific we can be in a local law).

The LDC is controversial because it will take the decision out of the hands of the County Board. If we decide to create an LDC and appoint the members of its Board, then the County Board will give the Manor to the LDC, and the LDC – now a private corporation – will sell it. The County Board will have no input into the LDC after it hands over the Manor.

The LDC is a creature of convenience: it's pretty clear that a private corporation will find it much easier to process the sale of a complex municipal entity than the County legislature would. Fun fact: the LDC was invented in order to facilitate the sale of the Brooklyn Navy Yard in the 1960s. It's now an industrial park. An LDC owns the former Griffiss Air Force base in Rome, NY, and is developing an extensive business and technology park. And it's my understanding that an LDC was and is involved in the Bresee's sale and redevelopment.

Creating a local law, on the other hand, would keep the process – and the responsibility – in the hands of the County Board, but would also subject the process to much greater legal restrictions, and to the uncertainties of the political process (and the possible change in personnel after the fall's elections). It would certainly take longer. Many County Board members are leaning away from the local law and toward the LDC: in fact, absent some serious obstacle, I would predict that the LDC option will be chosen.

However, I am not convinced, for two reasons. First of all, I have said repeatedly – as many, or most, of my colleagues have – that my primary concern in resolving the fiscal crisis surrounding the Manor would be that quality of care continued. There are many issues and circumstances that I, and the Board, will not be able to control, but there are many others that we will be able to address – unless we give away the Manor, and with it, the process and responsibility for its sale. Right now, I'm not willing to do that.

Secondly, I understand that a municipal sale, through a local law, submits the process to the uncertainties involved in political life, and to the complexity and delay resulting from moving the process from Committee to the full Board and maybe back again. But isn't this how democracy works? It's a little messy, and it takes longer than we'd like. But when all the people are represented, and all the stakeholders have input at each step of the process, we get a result that we all can own. When Winston Churchill said, “Democracy is the worst form of government, except for all the others...” that's what he was talking about. And I agree.

Oneonta Information Meeting

The third and last of the Information Meetings on the Manor will be held at the Oneonta High School (right here in District 11!) this coming Saturday, April 6, at 1:30 PM.  We'll be meeting in the Large Group Instruction (LGI) room in the Science Wing.  Judging by the other two meetings, it should last between an hour and an hour and a half.

Remember that this is an information meeting, not a public hearing.  There will be a presentation on the current status of the Manor and the work of finding a solution to the fiscal crisis surrounding it, and then there will be a time for written questions.

I hope to see you there.  Please let me know if you have any questions about this event. 

The Union and the Manor

As you may know, the CSEA and the Board have been disagreeing on the history of attempts to communicate about the Manor. Today John Imperato, the president of the Otsego County Unit of the CSEA, read a letter to the Board (actually he only had three minutes, so he only read most of the letter) regarding the union's position on this communication history. I have a copy of the whole thing, if you're interested in reading it.

I don't pretend to know nearly enough about the details of this history to weigh in with a comprehensive position on the issue. Much of what I do know is privileged and confidential, having been discussed in executive session. But substantive talks with the union were part of the Kosmer Plan, and central to any result for the Manor that did not include selling it to a private corporation, and so this is an important issue.

I do know that the possibility of a real plan to restructure the contract into something that the taxpayers of Otsego County can afford was too complex, and too fraught with peril for both sides, to ever have been achieved from the beginning. I naively thought that we could all sit down together and talk about what is needed to keep the Manor in County hands – a result that was in the best interests of all parties.

Apparently not. Apparently, you can't just sit down and have informal talks to move toward achieving a common goal. Apparently, every conversation along those lines is consdered a negotiation, and there are rules and consequences which make creative problem-solving just about impossible.

This is a tremendous disappointment. If you put the Board in a room with the residents and staff of the Manor, you'd probably have a room full of people with very similar goals and aspirations for the future of the Manor. But the kind of conversation that could come out of this convergence of interests will probably never happen – and, apparently, never could.

Extended Voting

OK – a few posts from today's (April 3) Board meeting. I'll start with the only non-Manor topic.

Today the Board approved a resolution opposing a bill, currently making its way through the NYS legislature, which would establish early voting options in New York State. I was the only 'nay' vote.

You can look up the details, but the nickel version is that the bill would provide the option for voters to vote up to two weeks before the official 'election day.' Most states do early voting of some sort. In the last election, New York had the third lowest voter turnout of all the states, measured by the proportion of registered voters who actually cast a ballot.

Opponents of this bill contend that it would cost an enormous number of taxpayer dollars to implement, and they are right. Holding an election is an expensive proposition, whether it be primary, special or general. Many opponents also feel strongly that changing the absentee ballot laws to allow anyone to vote absentee for any reason (right now, you have to have a good reason) would achieve the same thing for a small fraction of the cost. Again, I agree, although if we abandon this bill, I believe that the chances of our seeing an absentee ballot bill anytime soon are slim. We've all observed the “Well, we tried it and noone wanted it” approach before.

However, that's not the point. For as long as Americans have had the vote, many of us have struggled to extend that vote to everyone. It was a struggle because there were other Americans struggling to restrict it. The Constitution's original limitation on voting rights to a small minority; the Jim Crow laws; womens' suffrage; current voter suppression efforts in states like Ohio and Florida – it has been in someone's interests to deny the right to vote to someone else from the very beginning.

Does extended voting increase voter turnout? It turns out that it's hard to say – factors from who's running for what to the weather on election day make every vote in every municipality unique, and very difficult to compare. However, we do know that extended voting extends the right to vote to those who have been most disenfranchised in the past.

Sure it's cheaper to resist the change. But if this is true, then we've been saving money for years by restricting access to the poor and disadvantaged. It's time to pay the true cost of a free election in a state that claims to offer universal suffrage.

A Sad Day for Otsego County

As I look over the last few posts here, it seems like all Manor, all the time. Yesterday, the Board took a symbolic but, I believe, substantial vote to recommend repeal of the SAFE Act, the firearm violence act passed by the NYS legislature in January.

I don't want to go into a lot of detail here, unless anyone is interested. The truth is, the SAFE Act does not violate the Second Amendment – not by a long shot – and, similarly, support for the SAFE Act does not mean that I (or anyone else) am breaking the oath I took to uphold the Constitution.

I have a great respect for the Constitution – among the longest-lasting document of its kind in world history – and I happen to know a little about how it came about, and what folks were thinking when they debated, wrote, and ratified it. This is not, apparently, the case with the folks who, during two privilege of the floor sessions, insisted that the SAFE Act violated the Second Amendment, and that my support for it broke my oath. These things are not true, and I take offense at being accused of the latter during a public session, when I had no opportunity to respond.

The Board voted 10-4 to recommend repeal of a broad measure which attempts to keep firearms out of the hands of people who want to kill you, me and our children. They had the opportunity to recommend amending the SAFE Act – which has quite a number of serious flaws which need to be addressed – but chose to recommend 'repeal and replace,' which has, for some time, been Republican code for 'repeal and forget.'

So when the next mass murder takes place, Otsego County will be on the list of those who didn't want to do anything to prevent it. That makes yesterday a very sad day, indeed, for Otsego County.

Why Vote 'Yea?'

I was invited to an informal meeting in Cooperstown about the Manor earlier this week; it was a lively discussion and I am grateful for the invitation. During the conversation, I mentioned that I would probably vote for the sale of the Manor, when that question reappears (as you may know, a judge recently voided our first vote (September, 2012) on a technicality). I got an e-mail from one of the participants today, asking why. This is how I replied:

I feel strongly that we need to be following parallel paths in this: the path toward the eventual sale, and the path toward alternatives to the sale. There isn't time to move exhaustively through one alternative before taking up the other, not while owning the Manor is costing the citizens of Otsego Co. five million dollars a year, which translates into cutting many jobs, and even more services, year after year. If there is no alternative solution, we are responsible for acting in a timely manner.

Of course, if there is a solution, if an alternative path is found, the vote is reversible (as is any vote we take). It will be two years, at best, according to the experts, until the sale papers are signed; that's the point we can't go back from. Until that time, I'll work on finding and supporting plans such as the Kosmer plan.

There is no alternative plan, as you know, without the union taking some pretty substantial actions, rapidly. But the fact that the chair of the Board's Negotiating Committee is not committed to finding an alternative plan, and the union has not independently come to the Board to negotiate an alternative plan (the details of which seem to be pretty clear), makes any other approach much more difficult.

I remain committed to supporting any alternative plans that seem like they will work. The difficulties of this path are tremendous, and the time is short.

Formatting Issue

I'm really sorry about the extra white space between paragraphs lately - I've tried a lot of things to eliminate it, but I've had no luck.