Two No Votes

This week I vote no on a couple of resolutions. The first one was in the Economic Development Committee meeting, the second in the Legislature meeting.

First, the Economic Development Committee voted on a memorializing resolution offered by Legislator Peter Loughran that was "in support of allowing certain large corporations at least 100 or more workers to afford employees the option to be restored to the traditional pension plans without repercussions, intimidation or reprisal from that business."

Seems like a nice idea, no? Well there were three reasons I voted against it. First, this was a resolution that would encourage the United States Congress to pass a law stating the same. I voted against it because I believe we should stay focused on more local issues. We are a COUNTY legislature, not a FEDERAL one--that's why we have elected federal representatives. I'm quite confident that the people in Washington don't need to hear, and probably don't really care, what some Ulster County politicians want.

Second, I voted against this resolution because no numbers could be given as to the financial impact to these businesses. We're in an economic recession--the last thing we should be doing is passing legislation that will bankrupt businesses. Maybe it won't bankrupt the businesses, but before I vote for it, I want to make sure, and no numbers could be given. Protect the employees? Absolutely! Kill the businesses while doing it and you're not protecting the employees in the end.

Third, I voted against this resolution because we have an economic development problem in Ulster County, and we're not going to create a business-friendly environment by passing a resolution (memorializing or not) that is anti business.

Next, at our February Legislature meeting, I voted against resolution #22 that would have allowed the county to see properties acquired by court order to be sold. I voted against this resolution because Ulster County shouldn't be in the business of literally taxing people out of their homes. People fall on hard times. They can't afford our taxes, so we're going to sell their house, all to pay a tax bill? No... I won't sleep well at night if I vote to support something like that, so I say no way!

It is Possible to Care too Much

It is possible to care too much... about your image.

You may have noticed that I used to have a hit counter on this website. A hit counter allows the website owner to know how many people are visiting his or her website. Many of the blogs (a blog is a site like this one) have hit counters.

I decided to remove the hit counter earlier this month, for the same reason that I don't read blogs--it's too easy for a politician to concern him/herself with their own self image, that they worry less about doing what's right for the constituents. Don't get me wrong, I used to visit blogs a lot, but I've stopped, and I won't go back, because most of the blogs out there do nothing but encourage juvenile behavior which includes anonymous name calling.

So why did I take the hit counter down? What does that have to do with other blogs? Everything. This website was developed so that my constituents and others can know what is on my mind, and why I'm voting for or against certain legislation. And I know that there are a handful of people that view it--but I don't want to fall into the trap that I become obsessed with "saying the right thing" etc. Therefore, I decided that I'm going to speak my mind on this website, without worrying if 1 person reads it (thanks mom... actually, that's a joke, she's still trying to learn how to send an email), or 1 million people read it.

I know that you may be thinking I'm making a big deal out of nothing, but I don't view it that way. I believe many good people get into politics, but politics changes those people, and it happens one little step at a time. Eventually, that good person becomes someone that you don't know anymore. I don't want to be that person.

I remember in the Fall of last year, while I was knocking on doors on Finger St. in Saugerties, one man stopped leaf blowing to chat with me. He said that we was going to vote for me because he viewed me as being honest--something that we don't view politicians as these days. I want to show everyone that some people CAN be trusted, and some people ARE in it for the right reasons.

To wrap this up, and changing the subject completely, I'd like to wish all of my Catholic & Christian brothers and sisters a blessed Lenten season. If you've fallen away from your church, it's a great time to go back!

State of the County

This evening, Ulster County Executive Mike Hein spoke to the Legislature, giving his annual State of the County address.

I asked some of my colleagues on the way out what their impressions were, and we seem to agree--he said a lot of what people wanted to hear, now we have to wait and see what happens.

There were a few points that I thought I would address. First, Mr. Hein spoke of the importance of the county charter, and the new form of government that is now running Ulster County. He spoke of how "the people" have chosen this form of government because it is better. I agree 100%. Ulster County will be run more efficiently with this new form of government--we needed this a long time ago, and I embrace it wholeheartedly.

I would have liked to hear more about his plans for the coming year--without the fluff of how great our county is. We all WANT Ulster County to be great, but let's face it--we have a lot of work to do to get there. We have to fix our out of control property taxes. Then, and only then, will we see real economic development. No business from outside of our area will come here as long as we have this tax problem--they'll instead go to other counties, probably in other states, where the taxes aren't so oppressive.

I would have liked to hear Mr. Hein address the upcoming budget. With Spring just weeks away, Fall will be here before we know it, and budget time later this year will not be good at all. I think we need to start talking about it now.

This evening, the Executive called for an immediate moratorium on spending. I find that promising. I truly believe that we have to stop every penny of waste, so if there's a freeze on spending, I support that 100%. (As a side note, handing out fancy packets of the State of the County speech after the meeting tonight was probably not necessary, and could have saved a few dozen dollars--every dollar counts.)

To sum things up, while he certainly has his critics, I would say that our Executive's past year wasn't too bad. I definitely want to see him cut the size of his staff, and cut the salaries of those remaining. I appreciate the budget he presented last year--it was better than we've seen in past years, but it didn't go far enough. I sincerely hope he'll propose a budget this year that will not increase taxes at all.

He has a seemingly impossible job--he has to fix the tax problem while trying not to layoff any employees. But it has to be done- Ulster County is Ulster County's largest employer, and that can't go on anymore. I believe he can do great things this year--and I'm keeping my fingers crossed that he does!

One Month In

With just one month into our terms as Ulster County Legislators, I thought I'd take a moment to say how happy I am that we chose Fred Wadnola to serve as our Legislature Chairman.

I have to admit that I didn't know a lot about Fred. I knew he was a military officer, former principal, and former politician, a restaurant owner, and father to an old high school friend.

What I've learned in the past couple of months is this: he is smart... really really smart. In fact, there were a couple of moments in the past couple of months that remind me that I have a lot to learn. First, we had our "employee orientation" meeting in early January. At that meeting, county employees met with us to let us know some of the basics of being an employee of Ulster County. I remember at one point, one person asked a question about health insurance or something. I certainly didn't know the answer, and neither did the county employees. It was one of those questions that no one would know, and the answer would have to be looked up. Fred knew the answer, and quietly gave it.

Just the other day, I had a chance to talk with Fred for a couple minutes about employee contracts. He again started sharing facts about contracts that I never would have guessed in a million years.

There is no doubt about it- we picked a great Chairman. and Ulster County residents will be served very well. And some of us will get a good education while serving.

My Hunch Was Right

Last week, I learned that Ulster County registered me to attend the New York State Association of Counties (NYSAC) conference in Albany today. I didn't ask to go, and I had a hunch that it wouldn't be worth it, so I asked the county to try to cancel my registration and get a refund.

Unfortunately, it was too late, so I worked my schedule around so that I was able to attend.

My hunch? It was right.

The two committee meetings that I attended were the Public Safety Committee and the Economic Development Committee--since I serve on both committees in Ulster County.

The Public Safety Committee meeting included a presentation by a representative of NYS Stop DWI. I found that everything presented at that meeting could have very easily been conveyed through a newsletter and/or email. There was no need for officials from counties as far away as Buffalo to drive to attend that meeting.

One of the things I learned from the Stop DWI Representative was that all Stop DWI revenues are derived from fines paid by convicted drunk drivers--no tax dollars are used. Revenue is approximately $25 million per year. About 10 seconds later, I learned that in 2009, the organization spent $28 million. And we wonder why our governments are broke? Could it be because governments haven't learned to spend less than they collect?

About 2 months ago, my wife and I were driving through Port Ewen, when a commercial came on the radio that encouraged drivers to not follow snow plows too closely. The sponsor of the ad? Ulster County Stop DWI. (by the way, in my opinion, Ulster County spends WAY too much money on radio ads, but that's a posting for another time.). Again, why is government broke?

The next session that I attended at the NYSAC Conference was the Economic Development Committee meeting. This was a NYSAC committee, which I am not a member of, but I couldn't help but address the committee.

For quite awhile, the committee discussed passing a resolution that would be sent on to the Governor that basically stated that NYS is difficult to run a business in because of too many mandates. After awhile, I couldn't stand it any further, so I decided to address the committee.

I told the committee that I meant no disrespect, but the resolution that they were considering was a lot of "fluff", and when the Governor and Legislators (NYS) read it, they won't do anything with it. In other words, the resolution was filled with facts that everyone already knew. So I suggested that the committee consider adding date specific requests to it and furthermore, that the committee consider requesting something like a convention between business leaders and elected officials.

Several representatives from other counties, themselves not members of the committee, spoke up and agreed with my proposal for more date specific requests.

In the end, the committee kept its wording, and the resolution passed the committee, which means it will move on to the entire association next. In the end, this resolution is all fluff, and absolutely nothing will come of it.

In general, the conference was a waste. Maybe some of my colleagues will believe otherwise, but I would say its not worth the expense in the future.

The Fight Against Nepotism Doesn't Go Far Enough

There's been a lot of talk in Ulster County lately about ending nepotism in the county. Nepotism is defined as showing favoritism to family & friends without regard to merit. It seems that in Ulster County, we're concerned only about family, without caring much about friends.

I believe county employees should not have relatives that supervise their work. If they do, that should be corrected, but no employees should be dismissed because they have relatives working above/under them.

The following is a letter I sent yesterday to the Legislator Terry Bernardo, Chairperson of the Government Operations & Efficiency Committee and Legislature Chairman Fred Wadnola:

Dear Legislator Bernardo,

As your committee begins to work on the potential legislation that will be voted on by the Ulster County Legislature concerning “nepotism”, it is my hope that your committee will consider my thoughts on the issue.

As Ulster County develops a plan to root out nepotism, I believe it is important to go much further than discuss the problem of family links within the personnel of the county. I believe we must look at not only the links of family members, but campaign donators as well.

In my opinion, Ulster County should develop a policy that bans the hiring of employees that have contributed to the campaigns of Ulster County elected officials, which includes the County Executive, County Legislators, County Comptroller, etc. Furthermore, I believe we should also ban those elected officials from accepting monies that are donated by unions that represent county employees.

We must show our constituents that our votes and our county jobs are not for sale. By banning elected officials from accepting money from potential employees and from the unions that county employees are represented by, we will also be protecting county employees and their families from feeling pressured to donate to an elected official’s campaign.

I would be happy to address your committee with my thoughts, if you see the need. In the meantime, thank you for your consideration.

Sincerely,

Michael Sweeney

Whooops!

I received a certified letter plus a regular letter the other day from NYS. It turns out I messed up. Maybe since I didn't let NYS know that I have a new email address I didn't receive their friendly reminder (if they sent one, which I doubt), but NYS was not happy with me.

Why? Because I forgot to let them know of my financial disclosure update. All candidates that receive and spend money for a campaign must file with the state. There are a handful of reports due each year. One of the reports you must file is in January. I failed to file my report a couple of weeks ago--my bad, my mistake, I'll try to remember better next time.

When I received the letters (both on the same day) I immediately went online and filed my report. By the way, my report stated that I had no transactions since my last report--I received no donations, and spent no money.

Now that I've admitted that I forgot, and I only have myself to blame, I have to wonder why in the world NYS threatened me as they did. They threatened to bring me to court and push for fines because I was a couple of weeks late with my "nothing to report" report. You would think that NYS would be more concerned with the fact that an UNBELIEVABLE number of Ulster County Legislature candidates have never filed a SINGLE report as required. In Saugerties alone, there were eight candidates going for four seats. To my knowledge, only two of us actually filed as required, and I was one of them. Now, maybe some of those candidates never received or spent money--that is possible, but I'm sure that some did.

To view the list of County Legislature candidates that filed with NYS, copy and paste this into your brower: http://www.elections.state.ny.us:8080/plsql_browser/CONTRIB_PRE_A_COUNTY?NAME_IN=&OFFICE_IN=27&county_IN=56&date_from=&date_to=&CATEGORY_IN=ALL&AMOUNT_from=&AMOUNT_to=&ZIP1=&ZIP2=&ORDERBY_IN=N

If the link doesn't work, just google the NYS Board of Elections, click on campaign finance and then disclosure reports.

To wrap this up... I'm sorry NYS. There's no one to blame but me, and I will try to remember better next time. If I do happen to forget again, please save the certified stamp cost--just regular mail will be fine. In fact, a phone call or email to my new email address would be even better.

Proud to Say...

I'm pro-life.

Someday, I hope there will be a law that will require mothers (and fathers) to view an ultrasound of the baby that they are about to abort.

Why do I hope for this? Because once they do, the chances are good--in fact very VERY good, that they'll save the life of that baby.

Having seen an ultrasound several times, there is absolutely no doubt whatsoever that that baby, even just a few weeks old, is its own precious little life--and I believe that that life deserves protection.

If you aren't sure where you stand on the abortion issue, I guarantee that you will also be pro-life by watching just one ultrasound.

In this month's Lincoln Eagle, there's a tremendous signature ad that shows some of the pro-life people that live in our area. Pick up a copy--it's a great paper that's made even greater with this ad. And the amount of signatures in the ad is just a fraction of the actual number of pro-life people in our area.

I'm pro-life--and proud to say it!

Unacceptable!

For those of you in the Saugerties area, you may have recently received your newest tax bill. To no one's surprise, our taxes are going up a lot. I find this unacceptable.

Here's a breakdown of my tax bill. Keep in mind that our inflation rate for most of last year was actually in the negative, due to the recession.

County General Tax: UP 3.4%

Town General Tax: UP 11.2%

Town Highway Tax: UP 6.7

Saugerties Ambulance: UP 7.8%

Glasco Fire Department: UP 2.6%

Town Library: UP 6.3%

Thanks to the volunteers of the Glasco Fire Department, they're keeping their budget pretty close to what it was, so kudos to them. The county tax increase would have been even worse if the then-Democratically controlled Legislature passed the budget that they really wanted.

It's time to wake up folks. We have to start discussing how to decrease the cost to run our governments, which will have to include across the board pay cuts.

If there is any doubt that we're in a tax crisis, read this line that appeared in midhudsonnews.com last week:

"County comptroller Elliot Auerbach, in his second 'By the Numbers' report, said unpaid school taxes are expected to climb by over 50 percent since 2006-2007." In other words, people can no longer afford their homes because our taxes continue to rise, rise, rise.

We have to start treating our local governments, which includes all of the above categories, like businesses. A business that operates like our government does will be out of business quickly, and rightfully so.

Want Economic Development in Ulster County? We have to start fixing our tax crisis. There is no way a business will relocate here until we do--they'll go where their employees won't be taxed out of their homes.

Wake up folks!

A Few Pennies at a Time

In the big picture, it doesn't amount to much, but this week I declined health insurance from Ulster County Government.

With a budget in the hundreds of millions of dollars, saving a few thousand dollars isn't much, but it is something.

Not only will I not accept health insurance, I also won't accept a buyout. In the regular business world, employees that decline health insurance are often offered a sizable payment by their employers because they are saving the business lots of money by not adding to the business's health insurance costs.

I'm blessed to have a job that offers health insurance, so I'm happily covered already. I could use the nice eye care plan that was also offered, but I don't think the taxpayers should pay for my glasses. I'm being paid by those same taxpayers already, and if I need a new pair of glasses, I'll take that out of the salary I'm already receiving.

This is nothing against the Legislators that are accepting the insurance. I will say, I believe all employees, including Legislators, will probably have to contribute more towards the costs of their insurance someday, especially with the skyrocketing costs of healthcare.

I'm not sure how many other Legislators are declining insurance--if you know, let me know. A penny saved is a penny earned, and they all add up!