May 2006 News

MESSAGE FROM OUR CHAIR, JOHN PARETE

Just because the political pundits don’t consider New York a “battleground” state, we can’t allow ourselves to sit back and coast through the fall election season. Results have taught us that political coattails are real. But if our citizens are persuaded into believing that their vote doesn’t count because this isn’t a swing state, we may lose a great opportunity to sweep even more Democrats into office.

This year, in addition to the powerful State ticket featuring names like Spitzer, Clinton, and Hevesi, we have the re-election of our outstanding United States Congressman, Maurice Hinchey and our Assemblyman Kevin Cahill. We will also have impressive candidates like Karen Peters, running for her second term as Supreme Court judge, Susan Zimet running for the State Senate, and Paul Van Blarcum running for Ulster County Sheriff.

With so many critical races on the Election Day ballot, we must work overtime to turn out every possible Democratic voter. To accomplish this, we are planning to have a coordinated campaign of targeted direct mail, phone calls, Internet messages, hard-hitting radio ads, and intensive door-to-door canvassing. In addition, we’ve seized upon the momentum generated by the legislative campaign to help register many new voters throughout the County.

Let’s work together this fall for the entire Democratic ticket, remembering that we can only count on our hard work and determination to elect our local candidates.

 

 

Ulster County Charter Reform: What it Is, What it Means

By Vic Work

 

There will be a very important vote on November 7^th.

 

Sure we are going to elect Elliot Spitzer as our next Governor, Maurice Hinchey will win re-election, Kevin Cahill will win re-election and Susan Zimet will become the State Senator for half of Ulster County and Paul Van Blarcum is going to be elected Sheriff.

 

But there will be another vote: whether or not to establish a county executive form of government. This will be another attempt at charter reform.

 

The other elections are important, but none will have a greater impact on this county than charter reform.

 

Why does it make any difference whether we have a county executive or a legislative form of government with a county administrator? Will there be more or less accountability? We already have voted to reduce the size of the legislature and go to single-member districts in the 2011 election, after the next census. From that point on we will only have 23 legislators, each of whom will represent more residents. Even so, they will still be part-time legislators.

 

Currently there are 16 counties in New York with a county executive form of government—Albany, Broome, Chautauqua, Chemung, Dutchess, Erie, Monroe, Nassau, Oneida, Onondaga, Orange, Putnam, Rensselear, Rockland, Suffolk and Westchester. There are the five counties of New York City with borough presidents. All the other counties have boards of supervisors or legislative bodies in charge with county managers or county administrators.

 

This past fall we saw a County budget proposed that would increase taxes by 48%, which was reduced to 38% with some fiscal tricks and estimates of revenues. The county administrator, who is appointed—not elected—proposed that budget. How would you like to be the elected county executive who proposed such a tax increase? The counties around us with county executives had no increase in taxes or very minor ones and have huge fund balance surpluses. How did we fritter away our $40 million fund balance and the $45 million tobacco settlement? Everyone blames the jail, but that still has yet to hit our budget and won’t until it is finished.

 

A county executive form of government puts one person in charge—not 33 legislators. That person is elected by a majority of the popular vote in the entire county, not smaller legislative districts, and such a vote gives the person in charge as close to a mandate as possible. The county executive cannot blame anyone else or point fingers at the legislative committees. Rather, the legislators are there as a check on the county executive but the county executive is in charge.

 

It is proposed that the county executive have a four-year term. The legislators will still be elected every two years but a lot of the responsibility for running the government will be in the hands of an elected executive—same as we elect the President of the USA. Would we elect a bonehead? Sure, that can happen—it has in the past. But then we the voters can vote the elected executive out or change the complexion of the legislature.

 

There will be an important vote coming up in the county legislature to put this charter reform on the ballot. Urge your legislators to support the charter reform and put it to a vote of the people. Two former attempts to change to a county executive were defeated, one at the polls when the voters rejected it, the second when the legislature refused to vote to put it on the ballot for the voters.

 

I believe charter reform is very important and I am going to work hard to get it approved by the legislature and finally by the voters in November.

 

 

Straight Answers About the Jail

 

Rich Parete, Legislator for District 3—Towns of Hurley, Marbletown and Olive—knows too well about the headaches and cost overruns. After all, even though he was one of only four legislators who opposed its construction in 2002, Parete volunteered to work as Jail Oversight Chairman this year. Why? Because the 38-year-old Verizon Technician from the Town of Marbletown is a realist. Parete wants to fix what’s wrong and get the facility on its feet as soon as possible. We asked him four quick questions about where things stand now.

 

ONE

Q: When will the construction be completed?

A: It looks like it’ll be finished by the end of May. At this point it’s more touch-up work than anything. Next comes the corrections team that will train all the officers. Remember, there are six housing units and each unit serves 48 inmates. It takes about two months for the officers to learn the procedures for managing these inmates and the facility. So the goal is to have inmates in there some time in August. We’ll have about 250 county inmates to begin with, and after a State Commission of Corrections review, we hope to have an additional 75 board-ins from elsewhere. These additional inmates will generate between $125-$150 a day, which over the course of a year can generate about $3.5 million in cash flow for the county. Unfortunately that’s not enough to pay for interest on the bond for the Jail, which is going to run about $6-$7 million per year. And let’s not forget that as Ulster County grows, we’ll need the jail space for inmates from the county, which means you can’t count on board-ins to make that money back.

 

TWO

Q: Okay, that’s where we are now, and where we’re going. What about the hangovers?

A: In May of 2004 it came out that the jail was behind schedule and up to $20 million over budget. The Republican reaction was to go out and hire attorneys to sue the contractors. What they did was to bring the work to a slowdown because contractors were reading that they were going to be sued, that this whole thing was their fault and nobody was watching what was happening to the pace of the project. After they hired the attorneys we went from a pace of spending $1.5 million a month on work down to $6-$700,000 some months. A lot less was being done. The prior leadership never stepped back to find out what actually caused the problems and how to solve them.

 

THREE

Q: Okay, so what caused the problems?

A: It’s a combination of things, as you would expect. It starts with a poor design. The architect is the prime creator of the problem, but there’s also Bovis Lend Lease, the construction management company, which did not do a good job of coordinating the work. They under-staffed the project and the workflow sequence was flawed. They had people sheet rocking walls and the roof wasn’t finished. Which of course meant the work had to be redone. And I was told that when Central Hudson came in to hook up the power all of the conduit wire and pipes in the mechanical room had been rusted because it had been exposed to weather for a year. Central Hudson said that was a dangerous situation and wouldn’t hook up power until that work was redone.

 

The root of that problem is that Bovis was supposed to do a constructability review of the set of plans in the beginning. They were supposed to answer one question: Can this building be built using this set of plans. With hindsight the answer is clearly ‘NO!’ but Bovis never completed their constructability review.

 

Then comes the cascade of change orders. For instance, at one point when they were putting in an elevator it turned out that a support beam ran right through the path of the elevator shaft. Obviously that requires a change order to be resolved. But Bovis and Crandall, the architect, refused to sign change orders because that would reveal that they had missed these flaws during the design and approval processes.

 

FOUR

Q: So what are the legal ramifications?

A: The contractors have filed claims against us for not being paid. In this business time is money. We have to either go to court to sue the contractors or settle the claims and negotiate with them. I’d prefer negotiation. Sure, some people think there’s a pot of gold somewhere. But I believe—and this is just me—that when there’s $10 million of additional work and no coordination from Bovis and a horrible set of plans I think we’re going to have a hard time going to court proving that contractors were actually at fault. And the more Ulster County spends in legal fees and the contractors spend in legal fees the less likely anybody is to settle because all the parties need to recoup that money. We have to be prepared to go to court but we should be trying to come to an agreement first so that we can finally move on.

 

Susan Zimet Officially Declares for NY State Senate

Susan Zimet, Town of New Paltz Legislator, officially declared she was running for the 42^nd district State Senate post, which includes Ulster County. The seat is currently occupied by republican John Bonacic.

At a rally held in New Paltz on May 4^th to kick off Zimet’s campaign she said, “I’m running to make Albany work for you and stop the mismanagement of your tax dollars, to make life in New York affordable and bring humanity back to government. We Democrats need to win 4 seats in the New York Senate [to have a majority]. Real reform begins here!”

To read more about Zimet, to sign up to fundraise or work for her campaign, please visit: www.SusanZimetforSenate.com.

 

Congressman Hinchey Launches Newsletter

In an effort to improve communication with his constituents, Congressman Hinchey is preparing to send electronic newsletters to individuals interested in receiving periodic updates from Washington. The newsletters will cover a wide range of topics and subscribers will have an opportunity to choose from a list of issues when they sign up. Items in the newsletters will address issues that are currently before the Congress and share information that might not be included in local media reports.

Anyone interested in receiving these newsletters should go to www.house.gov/hinchey and complete the boxes on the left margin of the home page under “Issue Alerts.” Anyone can sign up, not just residents of the 22nd congressional district, so please feel free to forward this information along to anyone you think might be interested in receiving the information.

John Parete, Chairman and The Ulster County Democratic Committee Presents:

A WORKSHOP ON THE ART AND CRAFT OF THE PERFECT PETITION !

When: Saturday, May 20, 2006 11:00 am to 1:00 pm

Where: Democratic Headquarters 292C Fair St., Kingston

There is no charge for the workshop. We will have an experienced panel to explain in clear and easy to understand language the somewhat arcane law of the New York petition process, plus providing examples of what to do and not to do so that you can have the perfect petition. All Town Chairs and representatives of campaigns are encouraged to attend this important workshop.Please RSVP to 331-8275 or by email to SFraser0326@aol.com. Seats are limited so make your reservations early!!