There will be blood. Fortunately, any and all charter changes will go before the public in November.
Musical chairs
The untimely and lamented death of legislature Clerk Karen Binder last month has produced a number of personnel changes. Effective July 18, Senior Deputy Clerk Vicky Fabella will assume the position of clerk at a salary of $73,354. Here, readers might exclaim, $73,000 for a clerk! But it’s $5,000 less than Binder’s pay. It would appear that legislative Chairwoman Terry Bernardo, who cut salaries of new appointees across the board, is trying to get a grip on payroll (for clerks!). Those earning the county’s median income of about $29,000 might consider it exorbitant.
Fabella, who recently returned from maternity leave, has worked for the county for about two years.
Krista Barringer, fired by the executive as county youth director a few years ago, will replace Fabella at a slightly reduced $60,000 a year.
Recent hire Frank Reggero, whom Democrats considered unqualified for the job, is being reassigned as a senior legislative clerk at $50,000, but with no concessions to the minority. The legislature is accepting applications for the job of budget analyst.
And finally, I was in error in last week’s column in stating the Democratic congressional candidate Julian Schreibman has the Green Party endorsement. Greens tell me they do not endorse major party candidates for state office. A Schreibman spokesman said his candidate never asked for formal endorsement from the Greens.
It appears that Hein is a forward thinker, and Gallo is not!
Evidence Hein is no forward thinker: 1)He “fixed” something that was never broken(ie, Golden Hill HealthCare Facility) by ditching it, with long term consequences of higher costs in a system out of control with costs already; 2)He is in NYC and Albany seemingly more than he is in Ulster County and doesn’t know anything–or have any clue(which everyone ELSE WOULD KNOW IF the media did its job on that) about the day to day operations of Ulster County(neither does the professional managers he has under hire in his office, who can’t stop from stumbling over themselves in trying to deal with any bungling in any dept.–“more on that later”), so Mr. Hein has obviously paid NO attention there). He wants everyone to believe that since he is fighting for the county on water issues his neglect of the other items listed ought be viewed as “water over the DAM.” I view it as more “a brain waterlogged from a sense of his own power.”
Further, Gallo only seemed so outgunned and outwitted on these issues if you are a media watcher or so stuck on yourself in the media you are hopeless;indeed, the media blew it up to the level of some World War, which it was not. Gallo was RIGHT to criticize this man Hein (who is so full of hubris from his ditching of Golden Hill and his seeming unbroken string of victories), on the issue of Sophie Finn School, and has less egg on his face than does Hein on that one(he merely–and additionally— has fewer SMILES on his face for a photo op–but only those in the media literally forever seem to care about that one at least overtly either).
Mr. Reynolds, maybe it is about time you hightailed it out of town in Mr. Rooney’s nonexistent F-105–you could try to reach the sound barrier in so doing….(ok retirement in Florida might be a suitable substitute) and let those of us with any actual information on the topic your blather tries to pass off as the last and definitive word fill in for your perennial covering of your ignorance with your supposedly huge level of cleverness that everyone is supposed to be bowled over by and kowtow to. [And if that’s a run-on sentence, I don’t care:Mother Dorothy Robinson(they since became known as “Sisters”) was known to actually side with me moreso overall in the old days than say, Mr. Sottile(who would of course prefer to posit and present the opposite), and I claim “an academic exemption” from overcriticism on that point from HER.(seems Reynolds has already granted Sottile “a bungling exemption” himself). Whether Cardinal Dolan will grant HER the privilege of doing so–or any other Nun– of course remains, well, his prerogative, “per the usual power flow”].
” Gore Vidal, R.I.P. “