Ah, the budget. Would it be any stretch for the executive to “defund” the sheriff’s patrol, as he did the Resource Recover Agency in this year’s budget? Saddle up, sheriff, and quickly.
The Law Enforcement and Public Safety Committee of the legislature, well aware of the executive’s maneuvers, seems to be taking a wait-see attitude.
The committee, and by extension the legislature, might be well advised to cut to the chase on this one before the executive gets too far advanced with plans for the road patrol.
It could declare as a matter of policy that the sheriff’s road patrol is absolutely essential to the safety and well being of at least half (by population) of county residents. And it should ready the extended families of the members of the road patrol for some heavy lobbying.
Again, the clock is ticking.
No position on gun control
Meanwhile, pundits have begun to ask where the county executive stands on the controversy regarding Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s implementation of new gun-control laws. The answer, via Sudlow, is that the executive has no position, that he is involved in public-safety issues, specifically, school safety, details to be announced. This of course is not an answer but an evasion. The county executive frequently reminds constituents he represents “183,000 people,” thousands of whom have a lively interest in this issue.
Public opinion is a tricky thing to gauge. Mitt Romney thought he was president based on his polls. But if massive turnout at two public sessions of the county legislature on gun control is any indicator, this is very much a pro-gun county. (In Shandaken, the other side will ask the town board to rescind a pro-gun resolution when it meets next month.)
Local sentiment notwithstanding, Cuomo and Hein are joined at the hip, with the governor supplying the grant money, which state legislators call “governor’s pork,” for some of the executive’s more ambitious initiatives. Cross Cuomo and that well dries up fast.
The county executive might not get a pass on this one from the general public. Given the demonstrated history of home-grown gun killers, mostly mentally unstable young men, the executive’s decision to eliminate more than two dozen mental health workers in this year’s county budget may be perceived as going in the wrong direction.
Not that the always nimble executive wasn’t ready for this one. In a “Dear [county] legislators” letter dated the same day the state legislature rubber-stamped Cuomo’s emergency legislation on gun control, Hein noted recent federal and state cutbacks in mental-health support and “implored” the county legislature to join him in calling on the state legislature to restore funding.
This coming from a guy who just cut mental-health funding to a legislature which gave his position its overwhelming support.
Morning gunpowder
Fortunately for Hein, his would-be opposition is weak, divided and at times a little weird. Witness legislature Chairwoman Terry Bernardo’s 17-minute monologue on the history and consequences of gun control at last week’s SRO session of the above-mentioned Law Enforcement and Public Safety Committee at Ulster County Community College.
Bernardo, as legislature chair, appoints and serves on all committees as an ex-officio member. I’m no authority on Robert’s Rules, but tradition suggests to me that “ex-officio” generally means an elected observer. Bernardo, at other committee meetings, usually keeps her peace, offering a suggestion or raising a question now and then. Not so at the public safety meeting, in front of hundreds of cheering supporters.
Though most of us could have used a history lesson on firearms legislation — I was only dimly aware that automatic machine guns were outlawed in 1934 — we were unready for Bernardo’s take on women’s make-up as it relates to public policy. In a lame analogy to Cuomo’s rush-job gun law, Bernardo said that if she hurriedly put on her makeup like that in the morning, well, the result, like Cuomo’s, wouldn’t be very pretty. Gunpowder in the morning? Jeez.
As a footnote, Cuomo had an answer for critics of his emergency legislation. “The legislature didn’t have to vote for it,” he told an interviewer.
I doubt the state legislature will reload and challenge the contents of the gun-control legislation.
