Don’t do it again, Zweben admonished. A day later, Kirby’s boss also apologized and vowed such a transgression would never recur.
What the hell is going on here? Like Kirby, I’ve spent most of my career trying to dig out the secrets politician hide behind closed doors, what is these days called “executive session.” And now we’re supposed to apologize?
I’m reminded of a story retired journalist Dan Rather told about his early days as a Washington bureau chief. Rather quickly figured out that the real business of government was done at fancy dinner parties hosted by the high and mighty. At one such party, cabinet members of this sort and that were discussing major policy, with Rather all ears.
The host, noticing the correspondent’s rapt attention, advised something to the effect that “You understand that anything said at dinner is strictly off the record.”
And Rather replied, “I hope you understand that my job is to figure out some way to get it on the record.”
Westward ho!
It being an election year, county legislators thought to have died in office are all of a sudden going public on all manner of things. Take a recent trip by the county legislature’s seven-member Environmental Energy and Technology Committee to a garbage recycling plant in Oneida, for instance.
Committee members and staff from the Resource Recovery Agency pronounced themselves quite impressed with the Oneida operation, though we wonder why they didn’t check it out at least a year ago when flow control was a topic of debate.
The Oneida excursion brings back memories of a similar excursion to Oneida many years ago. At the time, Kingston Mayor Ray Garraghan was lobbying the council for a new city hall in Rondout. Aldermen, being less than visionary then and now, weren’t buying, so the mayor arranged what turned into a boozy bus trip, with media in tow, to tour Oneida’s new city hall.
The tour bus wound up back in town around dinner time at upscale LeHerb’s (now Hillside Manor) in Kingston. Hizzoner invited everyone to order off the menu, drinks included. I vaguely recall two inebriated aldermen, ex-Marines, doing close-order drill in the parking lot.
A fine time was had by all, what with the assumption the millionaire oilman mayor was picking up the tab. But Ray Garraghan didn’t get rich buying other people dinner. The next month he sent a voucher to the Common Council for the whole shebang. What could they do but authorize payment? Pay for their own tabs individually?
Shortly after Garraghan left office a year or so later, work began on a new city hall in the Rondout. But as we all know the government moved back into the original (1875) city hall in 2000.
CRIMINALS DESTROYING ULSTER COUNTY’S GREAT HISTORY & FUTURE. That’s all I THINK. Criminals trying to destroy the great history of the Catskill Mountain Railroad! These two are troubled men in my opinion! Rebuild America! Starting with the railroad! LET THE LOCALS VOTE THE FATE OF *THEIR* RAILROAD!
If it is a “conflict of interest” for Catskill Mountain Railroad volunteers and/or workers to be on a transportation board, then most boards in the United States are equally in violation.
Look at the “conflict of interest” in the bar associations, medical associations and others whose members also ply their trade in the areas their boards cover.
Wouldn’t every lawyer in Congress be inviolation of self-interest and conflict of interest as they are sworn to uphold and enforce the laws and regulations they help create.
Bankers sitting on bank boards; funeral directors sitting on funeral director boards that help make public policy.
Do we exclude educators from from school boards and professional assocations; law officers from sitting on law enforcement advisory boards and the like.
Nearly our entire family once lived in New York State and about all are gone now, moving to better climates and lower tax states as Florida, Texas, etc.
What is being done to the Catskill Mountain Railroad is the type of thing that chased a lot of my family out of New York State. Government got too greedy and too powerful. A relative moved from Ulster County to Florida to find no local or state income taxes in Florida and his real estate taxes about one-fourth for the same value of a home.
The railroad has not brought much net tax revenue to Ulster, but have other forms of transportation been a big net money maker?
I think this is all very underhanded and the county manager is licking his chops for the scrap metal value of the rails. I understand he already is in the budget.