There were, as the sheriff noted, large amounts of cash and property involved, for which a careful, independent accounting would seem necessary. “There’s always been good accounting,” Van Blarcum told me after he spoke to the legislature. But it’s always the same set of eyes, something the state comptroller — Auerbach’s self-declared role model — is constantly carping on to local municipalities.
The trust of the people
Did I mention disgraced city police detective and convicted felon Tim Matthews? Van Blarcum did when obliquely referencing the integrity of his URGENT strike team. “We arrested some of the county’s worst, including Tim Matthews. We investigated Tim Matthews. We arrested Tim Matthews and now he’s in jail,” the sheriff told legislators. Point well taken, but beside the point.
Ulster Town Supervisor Jim Quigley, after pulling his investigator out of URGENT two years ago because he said the town wasn’t seeing any payback from drug raids in its jurisdiction, suggests an independent police force may be a contradiction in terms. “Police, in order to be effective, need the trust of the people,” Quigley said, while casting no aspersions on URGENT. “Oversight of the police [by elected officials] is a factor in that relationship.” That town has had painful experience in what a laissez-faire attitude toward police can produce, as evidence by its department’s so-called “cowboy” antics in the 1990s.
Auerbach, after being lambasted by the sheriff, took a few days to gather himself and then expressed “curiosity” and “surprise” at Van Blarcum’s preemptive, highly personal strike. He said he thought the sheriff was on board with the main issues raised by his preliminary report. Obviously not.
A final report, which I suspect won’t differ much from the draft version, is due by the end of the month.
Here and there
Campaign spokespeople for congressional hopefuls Chris Gibson and Julian Schreibman got to yapping last week about a Siena College poll that had Republican Gibson 16 points out in front of his Democratic foe. The Siena poll had it all wrong, the Schreibmanites asserted, offering as proof a Siena poll that had former congressman Scott Murphy leading Gibson by a similar margin at this point in their 2010 campaign. Gibson buried Murphy in November.
The point isn’t that the usually reliable Siena pollsters blew this one; it’s that polls, really nothing more than snapshots in time, can shift sharply. That said, the Schreibman camp should be concerned about polls that consistently show their man running behind by double digits.
I noticed at last week’s Ulster legislature meeting that half the press corps was absent. Maybe it was the unusual date, a shift from the regular once-a-month Tuesday meeting in respect for a Jewish holiday. But it might have been terminal boredom. Like a car with a bad muffler, this legislature just makes noise.
Witness the half-hour circular “debate” over whether the legislature should go on record as being opposed to fracking, ending only by a vote to send the resolution back to committee. A simple show of hands would have sufficed.
