Leadership has its prerogatives, and one of them is the farewell gesture. When the full legislature met this Monday evening, December 18, their last regular session of the year, the legislators were scheduled to vote on changes in the county charter which would have gone on the books for the next decade.
It didn’t happen. A procedural requirement made postponement necessary. The vote is now scheduled to take place not a week before Christmas Day but on Thursday, December 21, four days before Christmas.
The lively session Monday was attended by a number of protestors favoring a county memorializing resolution for a ceasefire in Gaza. A number of legislators called for them to be removed.
In January, this legislative body as currently constituted will no longer exist. Seven of the 23 legislators, including legislative chair Tracey Bartels, majority leader Jonathan Heppner, and minority leader Ken Ronk among them, will not return.
Their farewell gesture was the changes they made in the proposed draft which the legislature-appointed Charter Revision Commission (CRC) had toiled over for a full year.
The members of the CRC were furious. “If you appoint commissions and boards, have some respect,” scolded one of them, retired legislative chair Dave Donaldson. “Listen to them, not just the things that are swirling in your head.”
“An idiotic sense of duty”
Ahead of the county budget vote on December 6, just at the beginning of the public hearing for Local Law #16 to amend or modify the language in the county charter, Donaldson approached the microphone to speak.
Applause greeted the popular Donaldson. One legislator shouted, “Welcome back, Dave!” Donaldson sported a stylish cloth hat. When he spoke through the microphone, out came the rasping voice from his damaged throat familiar to everyone in the room.
“It’s good to see,” he rasped. “Some of you.”
After the laughter subsided, Donaldson let the assembled legislators have it. He accused the legislature of trying to fool the people of Ulster County with Local Law #16, an amended and modified version of the county charter, which doesn’t need to go before the electorate for a ratifying vote.
“I believe that this local law, the way it was drawn up, without the side-by-side comparison, was to avoid transparency,” Donaldson declared.
With over three decades in government, the ex-chair of the legislature had been picked in 2022 along with eleven other veterans of public service to serve on the CRC.
“I had the idiotic sense of duty and said yes,” said Donaldson, deadpan. “The commission considered every suggestion, small and encompassing. In the end, some changes went directly to the voters as a referendum. A redline copy of the rest were sent to the [legislature].”
The planning director
He pointed to one contentious change in the proposed charter. A modification stripped the prerogative of the county planning board to provide candidates for the next county director of planning from which the executive must choose.
The 25-member planning board consists of a representative from every town and village in the county along with two from the City of Kingston. Some members have served on the board for more than two decades. None receive pay.
“After lengthy discussions, the commission unanimously rejected the request to strip the local municipalities of their step to choose the director of planning,” said Donaldson. “We rejected it both when the chair offered it and when the executive offered it.”
The separate recommendations of the legislature and the county executive’s office appeared on a decision matrix compiled by the commission on May 1.
Who had the idea first?
The legislature’s Laws and Rules Committee received the recommendations of the CRC’s study into the pros and cons of the charter on October 18. By its November 9 Laws and Rules Committee meeting, the recommendation championed by Bartels and the county executive had made it into the language after all.
Legislator Chris Hewitt grilled Bartels about where the idea came from.
“You mentioned that the executive branch had a similar idea for the change,” said Hewitt. “Who had the idea first?”
“I don’t know,” responded Bartels.
“In the legislative department, then, whose idea was it?” asked Hewitt.
“I definitely brought it to the commission,” said Bartels, “after discussing with both majority and minority leader. So I brought it in the packet.”
“It was your idea?”
“I represented everything as my idea. But I told the commission when there was consensus from the majority and minority leader, which I did tell them that.”
“So was it a coincidence that the executive had the same idea?”
“I expect so,” responded Bartels, “because I didn’t see the executive’s list…. I didn’t know until I was there [before the commission] that it was also on their list.”
“I hate this thing”
At the meeting of the Laws and Rules Committee on October 12, chair Bartels, minority leader Ronk and majority leader Heppner had lopped off the language which the charter revision commission had tried to protect… the prerogative to provide the county executive the prospective pool of future planning directors.
“I hate this thing,” said Heppner at that meeting, referring to the clause.
“I would just get rid of it right away,” agreed Ronk.
“I don’t think there should be any recommendation,” added Heppner.
Bartels said the idea of limiting the potential-candidate pool terrified her.
The three wanted no limitation on the candidates who should be considered for the job.
“I feel really strongly and made the argument, but they [the CRC] did not take it up,” said Bartels “I think it’s so limiting.”
The language was struck. The planning board can continue to advise, but the county executive need not listen to the advice.
This change to who chooses the county planning director is one among the bottom-of-the-ninth-inning changes to the county charter which need not go before the 125,722 registered voters of Ulster County.
Residency requirements
The residence of the deputy comptroller of Ulster County was also inserted into the revised charter by the Laws and Rules Committee. Whoever performs that job will have to live in the county. The present jobholder is Alicia DeMarco.
“DeMarco lives in Dutchess County,” county comptroller March Gallagher explained. “Her husband works in Dutchess County. She lives next door to her parents. Her kids go to school there. She’s been working for me for three years, and now you’re going to require her to move into the county in the middle of a housing crisis?”
When DeMarco first worked for the county in 2016 as a CPA and the director of internal audit and control, her efforts attracted the displeasure of then-finance commissioner Burt Gulnick.
“She asked a lot of questions about the lack of internal controls, why they operate, the way they work,” said Gallagher. “And the director [and] commissioner of finance at the time, Burt Gulnick, did not like that very much.”
Gulnick attempted to write DeMarco’s salary out of the budget, withholding the funds in his proposed departmental budget. The legislature ignored Gulnick and restored her pay.
Resigned and facing prison, it seems the ex-finance commissioner had ample reason to undermine the efforts of anyone looking over his shoulder.
“It’s ridiculous to take action that doesn’t account for existing county employees,” said Gallagher. “If I have to seek an injunction to stop it, then that’s what I’m gonna have to do. But what a waste of taxpayer money.”
In-county residency is not so unusual an ask. This requirement exists for numerous roles in the county government from the county executive to the undersheriff, from the district attorney to the comptroller herself. The director of planning is not one of those jobs. And neither is the commissioner of finance.
A new requirement has been added for the job of county executive. Going forward, not only will a candidate for county executive need to be a qualified elector of the county, but now they will have had to be living in Ulster County for the four years prior to their election. According to Donaldson, this added provision would have disqualified previous county executive Pat Ryan because while he was attending West Point or serving his country in Afghanistan he was not residing in Ulster County.
How we got where we are
Vice-president of the county planning board, Rochester town supervisor and chair of the county association of towns and villages Mike Baden expressed his frustration.
“There was a charter commission that was duly formed by this body. They met for a year and held I believe 25 public meetings, took testimony, presented a report to the legislature,” said Baden. “And then a change to the charter, which happens once every ten years, is done counter to what was presented from the charter commission. It was changed in two hour-long [Laws and Rules and Government Services] meetings and presented as a local law. And that’s how we got to where we are today.”
Baden questioned the timing of a 62-page local law sprung on the legislators in the middle of a major budget discussion.
“I just question what this whole rush is,” said Baden. “And apparently now, as I discovered, it’s very hard to figure out what has changed, you really have to take the current charter, the charter commission’s redline report, and the proposed local laws, and print them out and put them side by side by side because the local law in some places shows cross outs and changes. But in other places, as with the planning-director language, it simply says the section is repealed in entirety and replaced. We don’t know what’s changed and what’s not changed unless you happen to be very knowledgeable of the charter.”
“We considered everything”
Fawn Tantillo spoke to the legislature after Donaldson and before Baden. Like Donaldson, she was greeted by applause. Like Donaldson, the former New Paltz legislator was also a member of the CRC. And like Donaldson she immediately began to chastise the legislature, calling the local law presented as written confusing and riddled with error.
“I would bet money that not one of you legislators read this local law in any detail before bringing it here tonight,” Tantillo said.
She cited several examples as proof that the document had been carelessly altered and then hastily reassembled. She pointed out numerous snafus, one of which, she said, had been the elimination of the Department of Veterans’ Affairs.
“I’m sure that’s not your intention,” said Tantillo. “You had five former legislators on that charter commission. Five of us. We get it. You had former supervisors, people to talk to on the planning board. We talked to the town supervisors about the planning board. We talked to the comptroller, we talked to the executive. We considered everything you brought for us, and we discussed it in great detail. The fact that you are rushing this through feels like you’ve just hacked apart something that we did. You cherry-picked things you liked and you just threw other things in. You should not rush this through. There’s no need.”
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