Legislature regroups, amidst the rally

Shawna Black returns to lead; union nursing measure passes

Reporting and Analysis by Robert Lynch; January 9, 2026

You shouldn’t be faulted had you’d walked into the Tompkins County Legislature during its January 6 organizational meeting and didn’t know half the people casting votes.  That’s because exactly 50 percent of those who represent us and sit twice monthly at that big, oval table downtown are brand new, the largest legislative freshman class in recent memory.

Due to redistricting enacted years ago, the Tompkins Legislature this term expands from 14 to 16 members.  Six of those from last year’s Legislature, including 2025 Chair Dan Klein, retired.  The remaining eight ran for new terms, and each won. 

Whether new or returning, the newly-sworn members faced few political headwinds getting to where they got.  Most incumbents ran unopposed.  Another eight freshly-scrubbed faces got added to the Legislature in last November’s General Election, but rarely with opposition.  Most challenges, if any, took place during scattered Democratic primaries last June.

Given the massive turnover, calling the new Legislature as green as it gets not only becomes a dead accurate assessment; it also understates the fact.

Nevertheless, while this incoming class may be inexperienced, it doesn’t lack spunk or shrink from attention.  If last Tuesday’s performance represents what lies ahead, our newly-minted crop of legislators—all Democrats—will be brash, assertive, activist to the core, and not willing to sit for long on any back bench.

Take Adam Vinson, for example.  He’s the one with the broccoli-style haircut.  If you think he looks like a kid, you wouldn’t be far wrong.  Vinson’s 22 and only graduated from Cornell last spring.  Nobody ran against him in his campus-Collegetown district.  Now he’s among the 16 who govern us.

And while during an interview last September. Vinson told The Cornell Daily Sun he’s passionate about the Green New Deal, his platform also called for extending the last call time for bars in Ithaca to 2 AM. “This is something that would be good for our economy, and it would be good for the student body,” Vinson told the paper.  (Ignore, for the moment, that New York sets the legal drinking age at 21, and that there’s also a nasty little crime called DWI.)

True, at age 22, this story’s writer (Robert Lynch) also immersed himself in local politics.  But it was merely as a lowly radio reporter covering what was then the Tompkins County Board of Representatives for WTKO, and before that, WVBR.  Would I have then considered elevating myself to elective office?  Not in your life.  I knew I lacked the seasoning, perspective and maturity to serve as a legislator back then.  Adam Vinson lacks it now.  Yet no one will ever dare tell him that.

As their first order of business Tuesday, legislators elected Democrats Shawna Black as Chair and Deborah Dawson as Vice-Chair.  Both have been on the Legislature for at least eight years.  Black was Chair in 2022 and 2023.  Dawson has played a key role in financial and Budget Committee matters during her tenure.

“You’ll notice a few changes around here,” Shawna Black remarked as she retook the gavel, taking note of the Legislature’s expanded membership and the table’s rearranged seating. 

“I’d also like to acknowledge we have eight returning legislators and eight new legislators that represent a beautiful balance of fresh perspectives and experienced leadership,” Black added.  “This will be a year of firsts, and I’m really excited about that.”

Dawson followed Black as she accepted second-in-command. “Of course, the Chair is the boss, and she is our outward face,” Dawson acknowledged, and then added, “I view my job this year as helping to shepherd and integrate our eight new legislators, and I’m very excited to work with each and every one of you.” Dawson continued,  “I have rarely worked with a group that brought such a wealth and diversity of generational perspectives, education, and life experience, and I’m sure that our Legislature and our county will be much richer for all of that.”

Deborah Dawson would probably revile anyone’s calling her the new legislators’ “mother hen.”  So let’s more discretely refer to her as the equivalent of a freshman orientation counselor at Donlon Hall.

And yes, Dawson has much work cut out for her during the months ahead.  As prestigious a position as some may find their new roles to be, it’s clear that many newbies have neglected their homework. 

Acronyms prove a special problem.  Committee names often get abbreviated in legislative slang.  “Budget, Capital and Personnel” becomes “BCP.” New arrivals were clueless that night.  Greg Mezey mentioned “NYSAC.”  “Hey, Greg, what is NYSAC?” someone called out from across the room.  It’s the New York State Association of Counties, only the most prominent training and lobbying arm for county governments statewide.  Most of our legislators attend NYSAC’s conferences twice yearly.

At the close of Tuesday’s reorganizational meeting, Chairperson Black announced the convening of a special legislative session seven days later.  Its posted agenda lists the only business as a closed-door “Executive Session.”  Most likely it’ll provide opportunity to acquaint the incoming crowd with all those secretive matters that never see the light of day for the rest of us.  Any other purpose for an executive session would violate state law.

Shawna Black was elected legislative Chair on a 13-to-three party-line vote Tuesday.  Minority Republicans nominated Lansing’s Mike Sigler and then all voted for him.  Sigler now becomes the body’s senior serving member.  Majority Democrats never see fit to recognize his seniority with any leadership.

If there was a moment of dramatic surprise during reorganization, it was about what never happened.  Dryden Democrat Greg Mezey, last year’s legislative Vice-Chair and a rising star within the group, was never nominated for any top office.  Whether Mezey had sought—but then lost—a leadership straw poll during the Democrats’ private caucus held prior to Tuesday’s meeting remains to be learned.

What others may dwell on—but I will not—is the substance of what consumed the bulk of legislator attention and provided most of the media eye candy Tuesday night.  It was the community advocacy and the Legislature’s subsequent endorsement of a cautiously-worded, though transparently one-sided resolution supporting unionization by Cayuga Medical Center hospital nurses.

There was the substance, and there was also the circus.  For purposes here, reporting on the circus is more instructive.

On social media, the Tompkins County Workers Center, the local living wage lobbying group, had urged all union supporters to “fill the chamber” to support the nurses.  Its plea succeeded.

At meeting’s start, nursing-rights advocates packed the gallery.  Attendees, we were told, spilled into the hallway, down the stairs and out to the building’s door.  That said, only fifteen people provided public comment.  Had everyone exercised his or her entitlement to three-minutes of speaking time, the two hour meeting would have stretched past midnight. 

Advocates’ themes proved consistent; often repetitive: Cayuga Medical Center (CMC) nurses are overworked, poorly paid, and under-appreciated by hospital management.  Nurses deserve the right to form a union.  And CMC management has employed unfair labor practices to thwart their efforts.

After about 40 minutes of public comment—far less than the several hours some might have expected—legislators unanimously voted to support a slightly-revised pro-union draft.  No one at the table considered opposing it. Essentially, it was all an exercise in labor rights messaging, words carrying no real impact beyond the point of public persuasion.

In retrospect, one suspects the political theater on display was intended not so much for the Tompkins County Legislature as for a broader audience; for the media, for the public, and for the rank-and-file nurses who will vote on union affiliation January 14 and 15.  Lawmaker support was pretty much assured. The signs, the speeches, the show of force, the largest of its kind in years, if not decades, were massive overkill.  But how the resolution came into being tells us much about those now feeling their oats. 

On the meeting’s posted agenda, Deborah Dawson had been listed as resolution sponsor.  Not so.  When meeting time arrived, newcomer Iris Packman, a Cornell labor lawyer who now represents Ithaca’s East Hill, placed the measure onto the floor.  She advanced it; indeed, she anointed it; and did so with an exuberant, proactive passion that shook the chamber.  Packman owned the moment.  She made nurse unionization not just as a goal, but as her crusade.  Shawna Black later acknowledged that the eight new legislators, not Dawson, had collaborated to give the resolution life.

“Government support for unionizing is not new; it’s not a radical idea,” Packman proclaimed in a floor speech that commanded five minutes of legislative time and was greeted afterward by applause. 

“We want the nurses to feel the energy that we have in this room right now; to know that the community is behind them,” Packman closed her endorsement.

Packman’s speech proved a standout moment Tuesday night.  Watch Iris Packman. Her words, her projection, her body language are that of a blossoming politician.  The Tompkins County Legislature may not be her last stop.  Think Albany.  Think Congress.  Think wherever.

Yet for those of us accustomed to restraint and decorum, the January 6 organizational meeting riled our gut.  It was as though when Dryden’s Mike Lane vacated legislative chambers last month, ending service that stretched back to 1993, he took gravitas along with him.  This latest meeting just felt different.  And for some of us, it didn’t feel right.  It felt cheapened.

First off, there was the applause; so much of it.  After every pro-union advocate spoke and every legislator weighed in, the room erupted.  The size of the crowd only amplified the annoyance.  It transformed our county government’s sedate deliberative body into the likes of your average daytime TV talk show.

At one point, Deborah Dawson admitted that clapping violates legislative rules.  But no one really tried to stop it.  Dawson brushed off the violation as a one-off, not to set a precedent.  We’ll see.  One senses that the emotion-driven, incoming 2026 freshman class finds it fun to break some china.

Yet dig deeper.  Irritation draws its energy from another source.  It comes in the incoming class’s celebration of “Me;” in members’ frequent self-indulgence.

“I don’t know if  I’m gonna’ get weepy now as I’m all cried out… but it is just such an absolute honor to be sitting here tonight,” newly-elected Irene Weiser began her two-minute, scripted inaugural statement, choking on her words.

“And it’s an honor unlike anything I’ve known before.” Weiser continued, holding back tears. “People keep asking me, are you excited?” she said.  “What I’ve been feeling isn’t excitement as much as deep respect and humility and honestly just a sense of awe at the seriousness of the responsibility we carry, and the care and thought that goes into the work, and awe at our collective commitment to serving something larger than ourselves.”

Irene Weiser, who now represents Caroline and Danby on the Legislature, has reason to be the most adroit among any who assumed their new responsibilities Tuesday.  Weiser’s served on the Caroline Town Board.  And when former Legislature Chair (and one-time congressional candidate) Martha Robertson served a few years back, Weiser was one of Robertson’s closest allies.  Weiser knows the ropes.

In the CMC nurses debate, if you’d call it that, Iris Packman referenced her kids getting injured and needing after-hours treatment.  Christy Bianconi drew upon her day job as a clinical social worker.  Judith Hubbard recalled when she gave birth to a three-pound baby and learned only from nurses how to breastfeed and change an under-sized infant’s diaper.  At times the meeting begged for Oprah.

Tompkins County lawmakers have long pulled themselves to messaging resolutions like a magnet, taking stands on such issues like the minimum wage and single-payer health care.  If anything, the newly-sworn half of the incoming Legislature may gravitate to messaging even more.

“I felt the pulse of democracy coming back,” Irene Weiser stated as she paid respect to the scores of placard-carrying labor activists crowded into the chamber to plead the nurses’ case.  “I felt our opportunity to take this country back from the oligarchy and corporatism that is ruining our lives for the sake of profit.”

Given words like Weiser’s, expect the Legislature’s liberal-powered arm to reach ever-farther, well beyond such comparatively mundane, everyday responsibilities as whether to build a Center of Government, remodel a jail, or replace the Podunk Road bridge.

One who observed the real-time video stream of Tuesday night’s meeting “struggled” watching and pledged afterward never again to watch a Legislature meeting.  The over-the-top self-centeredness and cheapened theatrics became too much to take.

All during the nearly 90 minutes of public supplication and member posturing meeting night, Newfield-Enfield’s Randy Brown sat silent as talk about the nurses’ went on and on… and on.  Brown voted in favor of the resolution, but he saved his observations about the evening until two nights’ later when he addressed the Newfield Town Board.

Brown’s assessment to Newfield:  “What a waste of time.”

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Cloudy conclusions flow from Enfield Water Survey

Fewer than 25% “very interested” in public water; 45% very opposed

“I’m pretty sure at this point we’ve decided that we’re not looking into this any further because clearly it’s not affordable.”

Enfield Supervisor Stephanie Redmond, on prospects for municipal water, Sept. 17, 2025

by Robert Lynch; January 4, 2026

If those who conducted a limited-reach survey of Enfield residents last year were looking for public consensus toward building a municipal water or sewer system within the town, they didn’t find it.

True the sample size was tiny; small enough to make a statistician wince.  That said, only 24.7 percent of respondents to a Town-authorized, geographically-targeted survey last summer in Enfield said they’d be “very interested” in changing to a municipal drinking water supply.  Another 15.1 percent said they’d be “somewhat interested.”  By contrast, a full 45.2 percent said they were “very disinterested” in making the change.  An additional nearly ten percent said they were “somewhat disinterested.”  That’s more than half the respondents turning thumbs-down.

“Opinions on municipal services are somewhat polarized,” former Town Board member Becky Sims, now New York State Manager of the water consulting group RCAP Solutions, advised the Town Board, at its special meeting September 17^th.  The consultant clearly stated the obvious.^.  Sims’ presentation got eclipsed that night by budget talks covering matters ranging from new tractors to health insurance rates to an administrative aide requested by the highway superintendent.  Sims’ data got lost in the clutter.

And for months afterward, just about everything else in Enfield politics seemed more important to chronicle than the prospects for a town water district that’ll likely never happen. Still, before we launch headlong into the business of 2026, best we discuss the water survey’s findings and do it now.

By design, the Enfield Water Protection Committee, a semi-public advisory group with no real power, identified five sections of the town where it inferred public water was most in demand and concluded a municipal system was most affordable to build.  The Town Board then commissioned Sims’ consultancy study. The only out-of-pocket cost, Board members were told, was the postage.

Any Enfield household stood eligible to participate.  Prompts were posted on the Town website and paper copies were available at the Town Hall.  But a select 368—and only 368—households were also mailed postcards alerting them of the survey’s existence. Ninety-three (93) responses came back during the survey period that ran in July and August.  That’s a 25 percent response rate. “I would say it’s pretty great given the methods of outreach and the way that the survey was conducted,” Sims told the Town Board.

Yet the U.S. Census reports as many as 1,293 households exist in Enfield.  So most people never got notified by mail.  Fewer than three in ten of us received the cards.

The survey asked more than a score of questions.  They dealt with homeowner water quality and quantity, resident interest in municipal water and/or sewer service, and the degree to which residents would be willing to pay for those services.

More than nine in ten respondents said their primary water supply comes from a drilled well.  Five in six said their well never runs dry, even during droughts.  Yet 65 of the 93 respondents (70%) reported hard water problems.  Over 35 percent indicated orange or red staining.  Twenty-eight percent said their water has sulfur.

“Water quality problems and treatment for those problems are widespread throughout this community,” Sims concluded.  “Two-thirds of people report having at least one treatment system in place even if they’re not drinking the water,” the consultant stated.  Forty-four percent of respondents say they drink their tap water untreated, but another 24 percent purchase their drinking water.  (30% drink their own water, but treat it first.)

Nevertheless, while many in Enfield may agree their well water stands less than perfect, tapping into some future municipal system, and more importantly, paying for the privilege to do so, remains a reach too far for many.

Forty-two of 92 respondents (45.2%) said they’d be “unwilling” to pay anything to tap into a municipal water line, a number closely in parallel with the percentage opposed to municipal water in any instance.  Another five percent said they were “unable to pay.”  Thirty-three percent said they’d be willing to spend only less than $500 per year.  Just 15 percent were willing to pay a greater amount.

“Willingness to pay is limited,” Sims conceded, “and I think that presents a real challenge for the Town if you were to want to pursue the development of a new water service area in earnest,” she said.  “I think you’d be hard-pressed to get a new system built.”

Sims said that if more potential customers were willing to pay $500 to $1,000 per year for water—the survey said only 8.6% would do that—“I think your chances would be better.” 

Sims speculated that had more people responded to the survey, the willing-to-pay percentages could have improved. Councilperson Jude Lemke also pointed out a potential survey flaw:  If given a range of choices, people are apt to choose the lower-cost option.

But Enfield’s top elected leader has already made up her mind; resolved that given the results, any thought of setting up an Enfield water district now or in the near future has become a non-starter.

“I’m pretty sure at this point we’ve decided that we’re not looking into this any further because clearly it’s not affordable,” Redmond told a questioner from the meeting room’s gallery that night, the Supervisor, again—as she has the (unfortunate) tendency to do—imparting her own opinion and also assigning it to her four Board colleagues.  “I think that was the point of the survey,” Redmond continued, “to see if it was going to be something that people really wanted and we should look into it farther, but clearly not only is there maybe not enough interest in it, but there’s not enough interest in paying for it.”

“That’s the value in doing these surveys,” Sims played off of Redmond’s conclusion.  The alternative, Sims said, would be for Enfield to invest $30-50,000 on an engineering study; more technical, perhaps, yet still money wasted if a water district is something that neither the public nor the Town Board wants. 

“For the Town being the size that it is, I’m not seeing that,” Sims weighed the prospect of advancing to an engineering probe.

But the reliability of a 93-respondent survey holds only the value of its underlying methodology.  The Water Committee confined postcard distribution to just five Enfield roadways, most notably to Enfield Main Road (NY 327) from Route 79 south to the current Highway Garage, running through the heart of Enfield Center.  Hayts Road (from Sheffield to Halseyville Road) was also carded.  A large, eastern and central stretch of Route 79 was polled, as was at least a block of Van Dorn Road South.

“We can’t cover every house in Enfield,” Redmond stated, explaining why neither the entire town could be considered for water service or not every household polled. “So we targeted spots,” the Supervisor explained, where if a water district were built it would be “most likely to be built.”

That said, well-populated—and water-needy—Enfield neighborhoods remained inexplicably excluded. 

“When I first looked at this map, what struck me most pronounced was there wasn’t a single response from Iradell Road,” this writer, Councilperson Robert Lynch, told Sims and fellow Board members, “and that’s in the shadow of the big blue tank,” reference made to the standpipe at Iradell and Van Dorn Roads. The standpipe is used by Ulysses to hold water it purchases from the intermunicipal Bolton Point system.  Ulysses says the tank holds excess capacity that Enfield could access, should it build a pump house there.

True, Iradell is a town line road demarking Enfield from Ulysses.  But Ulysses’ Supervisor has said that multi-town water districts can be created. Still,  Enfield residents living along Iradell were never asked.

Moreover, long stretches is Halseyville Road were similarly ignored, leading to a minimal response. 

“The water up there is downright terrible,” this Councilperson informed the Town Board.  Shale rock limits well output there, the taste is bad, and wells run dry.  Halseyville also borders the 33-lot Breezy Meadows subdivision.  Breezy Meadows remains largely unbuilt, yet it’s destined for development—and the need for plentiful water—in the years ahead.

“People are concerned that their wells will run dry there when Breezy Meadows gets fully developed,” the Councilperson conveyed their worries.   As for Halseyville Road, “I wish it had been surveyed.  Too late now, but you might have gotten some responses up there.”

The relative demand for municipal water becomes “a self-fulfilling prophesy,” the argument held.  And it does so when only select portions of the town receive postcards.  “If people were not aware of it… they might not have known the survey was going to be taking place,” this Councilperson posited.

“Those are irrelevant to the survey,” Redmond countered as to the excluded neighborhoods, “because we were not considering putting any municipal water in their area because we can’t afford to,” she said.

Redmond’s argument may hold for sparsely-populated places such as uphill from Enfield Center.  But what about Iradell and Halseyville Roads?  What excluded them apart from arbitrariness?

Most discussion to date involving municipal water in Enfield has focused on drilling wells into the plentiful aquifer somewhere near Enfield Center.  But a virgin water source like that would require a treatment plant and the staff to run it.  An alternative would be to purchase already-treated Bolton Point water and then extend pipes down Iradell and/or Hayts Roads to Enfield Center, tapping Van Dorn, Rt. 79, Applegate and Halseyville Roads along the way.  The idea earns nary a mention.  Perhaps it should.

While the RCAP Solutions study focused mostly on water service, it also asked about municipal sewers.  Sewage treatment would become a far heavier lift for a community Enfield’s size.   Resident response about sewers paralleled that for water.  Slightly more than one in five respondents expressed great interest in public sewers. Forty-three percent were very disinterested.  

“Did anything surprise you,” a Board member asked Becky Sims as her 35-minute presentation wound to a close.

“I actually was a little bit surprised how many people were potentially interested in service,” the consultant responded, referring to the near 40 percent supportive of public water. 

But it’s still a minority viewpoint.  And perhaps more importantly, only a much-smaller minority would be willing to pay as much as it would likely cost to get public water to their homes.  The polling showed that a quarter of Enfield residents buy the water they drink.  Given survey results and the political lay of the land, expect that 25 percent to keep schlepping their water bottles for some time to come.

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Posted Previously:

Never (Should) Say Goodbye

County legislators depart at time of transition

Reporting and analysis by Robert Lynch; December 23, 2025

Mike Lane was first elected to the Tompkins County Legislature in 1993.  Aside from four years when a Republican briefly represented his eastern Dryden district, Democrat Lane has been a legislative fixture ever since.  Come January, Mike Lane will be gone.  He’s retiring to make way for someone new.

“There’s so much institutional knowledge that’s going to be walking out of the door,” Shawna Black, a continuing legislator and former Legislature Chair, remarked December 16 as Mike Lane and five colleagues, all Democrats, convened for the final legislative meeting of their careers.  None was voted out of office.  Each is leaving voluntarily. But their departures will leave their mark.  For better or for worse, next year’s County Legislature will look, sound, and feel far different from the one we’ve come to know.

Next year the Tompkins County Legislature will expand from 14 to 16 members.  With six departures and two new additions, exactly half of those newly-convening in January to govern us will be freshmen.  Moreover, most of those eight new arrivals are political novices, inexperienced in elective service at the local government level.

Experience lost will come with the retirements of Mike Lane (28 years), Dan Klein (12 years), Rich John (10 years), and Anne Koreman and Amanda Champion (each 8 years).  The sixth retirement, rather unique, is that of the Ithaca City’s Dan Nolan, elected this past June to fill out an unexpired term, but who did not file to run this fall in a redrawn district.

Decennial redistricting, first imposed with this newest election cycle, played a small role in the incumbent departures.  For example, new district lines would have thrown two Ithaca City incumbents, Rich John and Veronica Pillar, into a Democratic primary.  Rich John bowed out early, leaving the field open for Pillar to win reelection unopposed.

But most others, including Enfield-Ulysses legislator Anne Koreman, gave no particular reason for their decisions to exit.  There’s no imminent catastrophe that would prompt any of them to hightail it from governmental service, to terminate their twice-monthly attendance in meeting chambers on the edge of DeWitt Park.  Financially, Tompkins County remains sound.  Controversies, like the (now) $64 Million Center of Government project, loom large, of course.  But over the years issues like that have always arisen.

What appears more likely is that many of those leaving are simply tired. “You know when it’s time,” Mike Lane, who continues a family law practice in Dryden into his mid-70’s, quietly told a confidante before he announced his planned departure last February.  When he publicly disclosed his plans, Lane told fellow legislators much the same thing.

At this more recent legislative meeting, the Dryden incumbent’s colleagues—and the broader community—gave Mike Lane quite a sendoff.  State Assemblymember Anna Kelles attended and presented Lane a giant plaque on which was written a proclamation commending Lane for his decades in government, not only on the Legislature, but before that as Dryden Village Trustee and Village Mayor.

“From me to you, I deeply appreciate you, your 44 years you’ve given to all of us in service,” Kelles, a former Tompkins legislator herself, commended Lane.  “When I was on the County Legislature, we didn’t always agree on things,” Kelles conceded, “Where we did, we were allies; where we didn’t, we were respectful,” she continued. “And you can’t ask for anything else.”

When Anna Kelles and Mike Lane, both Democrats, served at the same table a half-decade ago, Kelles was the more progressive lawmaker, Lane the more moderate.

“We have to represent everybody,” Lane counseled fellow lawmakers  near the close of the December 16 meeting, taking his turn to speak as Chairman Dan Klein—himself retiring—offered each member, whether departing or continuing, an opportunity for final thoughts.

“We have to represent the folks in business, the folks in labor, the folks that are rich, the folks that have no money, they maybe have no house to live in,” Lane advised legislators, both present and future. “We have to represent the people we don’t agree with politically, and we don’t turn our back on any of them,” he went on.  “We have to do what we can for them when we encounter those needs.  Sometimes we can’t do anything.  Sometimes we can.”

At the Legislature’s organizational meeting January 6, Democrat Dan Wakeman will take over as Mike Lane’s District 10 successor.

But the winds are changing.  Observers keen enough to raise their political fingers into the air near the Gov. Daniel D. Tompkins Building, the 19^th Century landmark where the Legislature meets, will realize it.  All the new legislators are Democrats.  Republicans, all incumbents, will still hold just three seats.  And as the Legislature will expand by two, the GOP members will find themselves even more outnumbered.

And one can also foresee the incoming Democrats providing the Legislature a slightly more progressive tilt.  Already five of 14 current legislators decline to recite the Pledge of Allegiance.  One can easily imagine an incoming majority following the earlier lead of Ithaca’s Common Council and the Enfield Town Board and purge the pledge from the regular meeting order entirely.

The principal advantage Republicans will hold next year lies in experience.  Newfield-Enfield legislator Randy Brown, Lansing’s Mike Sigler, and Groton’s Lee Shurtleff, comprise three of the new Legislature’s eight continuing incumbents.  They may find a way to shepherd those eight newly-arriving lawmakers into the ways of Tompkins County Government and educate them to their own points of view.

Change in Tompkins County’s governance comes in a different way as well. 

During the past decade, the role of County Administration has risen in prominence, perhaps in large part due to the presence of two men; former County Administrator Jason Molino (2018-2021), who steered Tompkins County through the COVID-19 crisis with what was viewed as a “more regimented, by-the-book management style;” and now Korsah Akumfi, who took over as County Administrator this past January and has since driven legislators with resolve rivaling that of an elected county executive toward their building a Downtown Center of Government.

Whatever course the newly-installed Tompkins County Legislature may take in 2026 and in the years beyond, a key dynamic to watch will be the interplay between an increasingly powerful County Administration and a Legislature which has—at least, traditionally—preferred to have the final say.

But December 16 was a night when incumbent departures, not future power struggles, held sway.

Lansing’s Deborah Dawson almost cried as she lauded the accomplishments of Ulysses’ Anne Koreman, who sat across the big, oval table from her, and then as she hugged the Ithaca Town’s Amanda Champion, sitting beside Dawson.  Both Koreman and Champion are leaving.  Dawson, herself, almost retired this year as well, only to change her plans.  Dawson ran and won this fall as a write-in.

“To the members of my cohort:  Annie, you’re the heart; I’m going to miss you,” Dawson praised Koreman, tears welling up.  “And you, too,” Dawson reached over and embraced Champion.

That term “cohort,” carries meaning here.  It dates back to 2017, when Dawson, Koreman, Champion, Shawna Black and the late Henry Granison ran for and entered the Legislature together.  They forged a political and emotional bond, doing so as like-minded liberals. If the Tompkins County Legislature ever had a “caucus” that burrowed inside mere partisan affiliation, theirs was it. During these past four years, the now foursome, one might say, comprised sort of a “sophomore class.”

Praise for Anne Koreman came from other places that December night, including from Veronica Pillar, elected in 2021, but who now usually allies with Koreman, sitting beside her.

“I’m going to miss you all, and that’s a bummer,” Pillar said of the six who convened with her for the last time that night.

And to Anne Koreman, Pillar said, “Annie’s like my big sister.  Now I’m going to cry.”  Pillar composed herself and continued. “Thank you for everything; for supporting me when I’ve been crying, because sometimes the job is hard, but you’ve taught me a lot, up, down, and sideways.”

Then even Koreman’s pet calico cat earned credit. “And sometimes you brought Princess Buttercup in, and that also makes everything better,” Pillar commended the retiring lawmaker.

Anne Koreman put her departure message this way:

“This experience has been for me one of the hardest, one of the least paid—and I’ve done blue-collar work—but one of the most rewarding things that I’ve ever done,” Koreman reflected on her eight years of service. 

Koreman commended fellow legislators, the clerks, the department heads, the county employees, and the late legislator Granison.

“We did this together,” Koreman told them all. “We always haven’t been perfect, and I apologize for my mistakes, hindsight is 20/20; but I hope people know that everybody here, including all our department heads, employees, everybody does the best they can every day for the community, and I hope that people in the community hear this and know that we are doing the best we can,” she said.

The Legislature’s Chairman spoke too.

“It’s been an amazing experience,” Dan Klein stated, as he stood at the podium, presiding over his final meeting.  “Mostly, I just feel grateful,” Klein read from prepared remarks.  “I’m grateful to my constituents, who entrusted me to be a shepherd of the public good for a little while, and to the people who have given me positive feedback.”

Dan Klein credited fellow legislators, whom he described as “smart, dedicated people who take their jobs seriously.”  Klein likewise praised those others who labor for a Tompkins County paycheck.  “The employees are the Tompkins County Government,” Klein assigned gratitude, “and Tompkins County Government rocks.”

“As colleagues, we disagree,” Rich John acknowledged, the long-time chair of the Legislature’s Public Safety Committee, taking his final turn as he ended a decade of service.  “We’re a decision-making machine.  That’s how we’re set up,” John observed. 

 “We’re supposed to bring a lot of different perspectives to the table, and we do, and we often disagree with each other and that’s the way it’s designed,” the adjunct law professor, took note. “It’s really frustrating at times, but that’s the democratic process that makes Tompkins County work.”

Not all, but most legislators, both those departing and those remaining, reflected on their past four years in office during the December 16 meeting’s final 40 minutes.  Some focused on the future; others the past.  Mike Lane, the leader with the longest legacy, struck a balance somewhere in-between.

“You think of this Legislature as an hourglass,” Lane reflected.  “It has the sand of the beginning, of the four years, in the top. And slowly the grains of sand fall through to the bottom.”

“Those grains of sand are the work we do,” Lane analogized, “the projects that we take on, the discussions we have, and at the bottom the little mound grows higher.”  Lane’s comparison continued, “Well, tonight, we’re down to that very last grain of sand about to fall through the neck of the hourglass to the bottom.”  

“But don’t fear,” the retiring Dean of the Legislature concluded.  “Even though this four years is up, the new legislators will turn the hourglass over, and the sand will start to fall again,” Lane predicted.

A cynic might suggest the symbolism’s weakness:  Do successive legislatures do the same things over and over again without progress?  But that was not Mike Lane’s intent.

When Anne Koreman exits the Legislature within days, Ulysses’ Rachel Ostlund will take over her role.  Enfield’s other legislator, Randy Brown, plans to stay on for one more term.

“This is the best legislature I’ve ever served on,” Brown quipped. (He’s never served on any other.)  Then, getting serious, Brown said of his service, “This is one of the highlights of my life.”

“These are really hard jobs,” Anne Koreman closed out her final statement and her near-decade in public office.  “We feel a lot of the issues in the community, and we’re trying to do things that are trying to make things a little better for people and more fair and lift people up.”

“So thank you for giving me this privilege,” Koreman concluded.  “It’s been an honor, and I’ll see ‘ya.”

Turn the hourglass.

###

A Center of Presumption

County’s downtown building design fails to impress

Reporting and commentary by Robert Lynch; December 15, 2025

Around these parts these days every new building needs a catchy name.  So if we want to assign a trendy title to Tompkins County’s proposed new Downtown Center of Government, let’s call it “The Lashes.”  Because if built the way architects presented building plans to the public December 8, that’s what would catch every passerby’s attention as they approached the Buffalo and Tioga Street corner for decades to come.

Whatever those horizontal thingamabobs are cutting across each third-floor window on the eight-figure building’s corner facade—sun shades, ice shields, or just plain decoration—they resemble long, fake eyelashes and create the impression of prying peepers staring down upon all of us at street level. That’s scary.

Last Monday night’s county-sponsored Public Engagement Session, the third and final one of its kind, marked the first opportunity architects had to show off their handiwork, to present what they’d have us construct and pay for to consolidate many—although not all—Tompkins County government departments in a central location. 

Beauty, of course, always rests in the eyes of the beholder.  You may admire the initial design.  I do not.  To me, it should never have left the drawing table at Holt Architects’ West State Street offices or wherever it was sketched.

That said, you can erase a design easier than you can erase an attitude. 

What happened one week ago in legislative chambers was not so much a demonstration of appearances as one of presumed outcomes.  In certain places, and by certain people, it’s become gospel:  The Center of Government must be built.  It must be built in Downtown Ithaca.  And it must be built the way County Administration wants it built.

Monday night was a cold one.  The presentation played to a nearly empty gallery.  Yet with the help of online visitors, it stretched to 90 minutes.  County Administrator Korsah Akumfi introduced the event:

“Tonight represents an important milestone in a vision that has been more than twenty years in the making,” the Administrator proclaimed.  “This meeting is an opportunity to gather your final comment, build qualitative endorsement, and make minor adjustments needed to move confidently towards a final design,” Akumfi added.

Minor adjustments?  Final comment?  A milestone vision?  That may be County Administration’s view of where things stand.  But it’s an opinion not shared by everyone.

“I will not vote for it; it’s a luxury” Newfield-Enfield’s legislator, Randy Brown, stated bluntly as he updated the Enfield Town Board on the Center of Government two nights later.  “I think the project should be smaller and other locations can meet our needs efficiently with better access for the public and at a lower cost,” Brown wrote Enfield in a statement that accompanied his December 10 report.  

What they’re proposing, “they’ll be living with for a long time,” Brown forewarned Newfield’s Town Board the next night, Thursday.  “The County received various cost estimates for the Center of Government Building… and the cost estimates were above previously budgeted numbers,” the Newfield Legislator cautioned Enfield.  “I am not surprised, and the Legislature is looking at all options before committing to this project,” Brown promised the Enfield Board.

Mind you, Randy Brown is not some contrarian, rogue back-bencher.  Brown chairs the Legislature’s Downtown Facilities Special Committee, the panel actually charged with building the Center of Government.

So juxtapose Korsah Akumfi’s visionary optimism with Randy Brown’s gut check.  We’ve got a problem here.   Nevertheless, the divergence would have eluded most casual observers at the rollout.  You would have needed to slog through many months of legislative deliberations to gain true perspective and refused to accept County Administration’s gloss at face value.   As much as money-sponging architects and overly-assertive bureaucratic brass would have you believe otherwise, the Downtown Center of Government is not necessarily going to happen.

Alternatives abound.  Most recently, developers of Downtown Ithaca’s imperiled Harold’s Square have begged the Legislature at more than one meeting to lease or buy long-vacant office space in Harold Square’s 12-story high rise.  They’ve pleaded to the point of desperation.  

Before that, Tompkins Bank approached the County about its purchasing one or more buildings in the Cornell Business Park near the airport, ground leases upon which the bank had foreclosed.  And then there’s always the Shops at Ithaca Mall, a place that’s fallen so far from grace these past 50 years that its south wing may convert into cubicles for you to store an old couch.

But as administrators see it, those alternative choices are now off the table.

“The new construction has the highest capital investment, but it also provides a purpose-built facility designed specifically for County functions,” Deputy County Administrator Norma Jayne began Administration’s supposedly objective comparison of a more expensive new building versus its three competing retrofits.  New construction, she said, “ensures full accessibility and compliance with modern standards and it allows consolidation of operations in a true, one-stop governmental center.”

Please don’t fault Norma Jayne for any of this.  Jayne’s halting, diffident delivery that night laid bare the truth that she was just reading a script.  She hadn’t written it.  And what Jayne read reflected not so much a study in search of a conclusion as a mind made-up in quest of a rationale.

Harold’s Square, Jayne recited, has “public accessibility” concerns, and parking there can’t be assured.  Either the Cornell Business Park or the mall would “pull the government activity from the civic center and away from the existing county campus,” she said.  (Yes, “civic center” has blossomed as a new buzzword phrase; one envisions a gymnasium.)

“It still is the overall conclusion that the new construction provides the strongest long-term value and the most predictable outcomes,” the Deputy Administrator’s hesitant, conclusory comparison ended. (Of course, a critic might counter that the “most predictable outcome” of a new building for you or for me would be higher taxes.)

Just eleven minutes into that evening’s hour-and-a-half rollout, Administration on its own accord had tossed aside any thought of going elsewhere.  No, it insisted, we should move full speed ahead toward a new building.  Administration’s overarching opening narrative tarnished whatever of the meeting remained.

Quay Thompson leads Holt Architects’ design team.  Bernard Best is Holt’s project manager.  Holt has good reason for making “The Lashes” happen.  Last December legislators authorized a nearly $4 Million contract with Holt for “the planning, design and development of the Center of Government project.”

“We’re about halfway through the design in terms of the big schedule,” Thompson led off his presentation.  “As we design more, things get harder and more expensive to change,” he cautioned.  Yet “there’s still an opportunity to make adjustments and fine-tuning of the design,” Thompson assured.

Those words provide reassurance.  Some of us would welcome many a change.

For starters there’s the façade.  Plans call for stone of some sort at the corner entrance where Buffalo meets Tioga.  But there’d then be a transition to brick on both sides.  The aim, we were told, is for the appearance to blend in with the courthouse on Tioga and with the historic, 1865 Boardman House bordering DeWitt Park. 

But brick and stone (or its synthetic substitute) can fight when put side by side.  It looks like either you ran out of money or that a design committee couldn’t make up its mind.  The latter explanation wouldn’t be far from the truth.  Bernard Best drew guidance for the stone-to-brick merger from an online survey.  Respondents liked one facing or the other, sometimes both.

“They liked the brick; they liked a little bit of the limestone at the entry ,” Best reported, “and that attractive mix that comes between that; breaking down the scale of the building.”

For those who might have expected something dramatic or award-winning, this ain’t it.  Architects had once toyed with a gabled façade to complement the courthouse..  They rejected it.  What’s before us now is just another flat-roofed box.  It could have emerged from a Cornell second-year architecture class.

The Center of Government would stand four stories tall.  Why there’d be no basement, no one’s adequately explained.  But the Center’s top floor would be pulled back from the floors beneath it “so from street viewpoint it scales the building down much closer so it isn’t overpowering the Boardman House,” Best explained.

Still, withdrawing that top floor wastes a valuable ground footprint.  Across DeWitt Park, developers of the Library Place apartments did the same thing, forced into it by historic preservationists.  Library Place owners would later say the restriction impaired profitability.

Another thing:  Designers would place the names of Tompkins County’s nine towns—in strict alphabetical order— atop each Center of Government window that faces a street.  Some may call that creative; others tacky.  But there’s already controversy.  Someone emailed in to point out there’s both a Town and City of Ithaca.  Sorry, the critic was told.  The two “Ithaca’s” will have to share.

Administration’s vaunted PowerPoint had claimed that a (now) 59,000 square foot new Center of Government “meets all Legislative criteria.”  No, it does not.  One of those key criteria is parking availability.  And a downtown center would meet the commuter test only if one expects employees and the public to keep plugging those increasingly costly City of Ithaca parking machines forever or trudge four or five blocks in every day from residential side streets.

“Employees are (to use) street parking, and we have a couple other lots that we’re looking at, someplace,” Thompson conceded, feebly attempting to tiptoe around the downtown building’s Achilles’ heel.  The architect would later acknowledge that those “other lots” include City-managed garages, the ones that are often filled-up by hotel patrons.

And in the meeting’s most embarrassing moment, landscape architect Laura Seib of Fisher Associates found her homework absently undone when legislator Mike Lane quizzed her as to how many courthouse-adjacent employee parking slots the project would consume.  Seib couldn’t say.

“I don’t have a set difference here and that is something that we can continue to refine,” the landscaper said, groping for an unknown answer.   But one thing she knew: “Because of the increase in the number of people who would be on campus, even retaining all of the existing spaces wouldn’t come close to providing adequate parking for the employees who’d be in the new building,” Seib said.

Administrator Akumfi stepped in: “At the moment, the County doesn’t provide parking for visitors to any of the offices,” he sought to clarify.  But Akumfi missed the point.  It’s not so much about visitors as it is about employees.  Already, the State Court’s system pre-empts many of the courthouse spaces. 

And nothing may frustrate a county worker more than having to pay for the privilege to earn a paycheck. Legislator Shawna Black, attending remotely, gave voice to that frustration.

“I continue to have concerns about the parking situation for our employees,” Black advised the Administrator and the design team.  “And I would ask that if and when we decide to pursue this location and this building, that we have a plan moving forward, because we have employees that come to work every day, and they shouldn’t have to walk halfway across town in order to get to work.”

In some ways, building architects have tripped over good sense to be dutiful stewards of a Green New Deal.  The Center of Government would be framed in “heavy timber,” not structural steel.  Crews would finish the building in that timber as well.  The argument goes that trees capture and contain carbon, steel mills spew it out smokestacks.  And cement plants do too.  Toward a green goal, designers would build with wood and confine concrete only to the foundation.   

Yet one wonders if any fire chief was ever consulted.  Timbers burn.  Steel and concrete do not.  And one cannot forget the bedtime story piglet who built his house with sticks only to become a wolf’s ham sandwich.

Only about half of the Legislature’s 14 members attended the rollout meeting.  Questions by them and from online visitors often drifted to minor stuff, straying from the bigger picture.  Will the building have public bathrooms and a public water fountain bordering DeWitt Park, one legislator asked?  Can Gadabout buses easily drop off their riders?  Could the Boardman House tap into the planned geothermal heating system?

“I have a concern with too much white,” legislator Greg Mezey, remarked at one point.  It can get “fading and dull and kind of grimy-looking over time,” he said.  Mezey also requested a local artist paint a mural near the entrance.  He also requested washable outside walls to more easily cleanse away graffiti.  (Yes, it’s downtown.)

To some, the Tompkins County Downtown Center of Government has become a runaway train without brakes.  Little by little, a point of no return creeps upon us.  In November, legislators, but only after a long executive session, authorized spending $2.6 Million to remove the three buildings now resting on the Center of Government site.  In early-June, those same legislators agreed in principle to fund up to $50 Million for the Center of Government project.  At the time, some said what they had done stopped short of an irrevocable promise.  Randy Brown was among last June’s four dissenters.

Over the decades, the Tompkins County Legislature has prided itself as sitting in government’s driver’s seat.  Our county has no independently-elected County Executive, a top boss drawing power from a separately-defined constituency.  In Tompkins County, in both tradition and by law, the County Administrator and his deputies are mere employees of the Legislature.  They serve at the Legislature’s will.

But since he arrived here in January, imported from Schoharie County, a place where he may have managed a more deferential Board of Supervisors, Korsah Akumfi has exercised what some may see as an inordinate degree of executive authority when it comes to the Center of Government.  Akumfi wants progress, not procrastination.  The new Administrator’s driven resolve is why old buildings will soon be tumbling down and that new “Civic Center” may soon be rising.

Holt Architects’ timeline would put the Center of Government out to bid in September 2026.  Construction would be finished by early 2029.  The clock ticks.

If anyone—aside from legislator Randy Brown—pushes back on this $50 Million perilous venture, it’s the public at large.  Zach Winn, a frequent speaker at Legislature meetings, voiced his criticism that cold December night. 

“I don’t think it’s a good idea to spend $50 Million on a new building,” Winn spoke from the gallery.  “Who knows what that could balloon to by the time the project’s over,” he warned.  Winn would prefer using Harold’s Square instead.

Ten minutes before everyone went home, Norma Jayne relayed another question from the chat box.  “Shawna (Black) said if and when we do this option,” the questioner inquired.  “I thought this was a done deal?”

Legislature Chair Dan Klein was handed this toughest-of-all questions to address.

“So we have authorized the project to continue forward,” Klein admitted. “And it is, but we have not put the money on the table yet.”

Greg Mezey interjected and Klein clarified.  There’s $9 Million “in the bank” so far.  The rest would need bonding.

And if the Randy Browns of Tompkins have their way, any more money will never reach the table.  Unlike in some other places perhaps, Tompkins County’s legislators, not the Administrator, still run the show.

###

Brown’s Sudden Switch Codifies Tompkins CEDO

Equity Officer’s job gains permanence in close legislative vote

by Robert Lynch; December 6, 2025

In this age of Trump, one could argue the Tompkins County Legislature last Tuesday painted a big, blue bullseye on this community’s backside.  Yes, it may have done so.  And if it did, you can credit (or blame) Newfield-Enfield legislator Randy Brown for having brought the blue paint.

Because and only because Brown, a Republican, switched his vote from no to yes at the last minute did the Legislature muster the minimum eight votes it needed December 2 to elevate the job of Chief Equity and Diversity Officer (CEDO) to a permanent place within the Tompkins County Charter.

“If we want to say that Tompkins County believes in inclusion… if we want to continue backing up what we’re saying about having a diverse and equitable and strong workforce, we need to add this position to the charter,” Amanda Champion, Chair of the Government Operations Committee and prime sponsor of the charter-changing local law, advised colleagues as she brought the measure to the Legislature’s floor.

“The CEDO brings the tools and the knowhow and the training and the coaching and the listening and the policies to embed this into the way we do things,” legislator Veronica Pillar, like Champion, one of the body’s most activist liberals, echoed her fellow Democrat’s endorsement that night.  “The CEDO is how we operationalize our values,” Pillar said.

On the one hand, the addition of a CEDO as a charter-bound administrator constitutes little more than window-dressing; symbolism over substance, a transparent tip of the hat to political correctness.  But on the other hand, Tuesday’s action grants the equity officer an ongoing degree of institutional tenure.  Future legislatures will find it next to impossible to eliminate the post should finances tighten or political winds shift.

The Tompkins County Legislature created the equity officer’s position in late-2019 and filled it the following year.  The CEDO answers to the County Administrator.  Two people have occupied the job since it was established.  There was a long gap between when the first CEDO, Deanna Carrithers, departed in mid-2022 and when her successor, Charlene Holmes, took over in September 2023.

This past October, Holmes herself resigned, quietly exiting without disclosing her future plans.  The position again remains open.  Administrators hope to fill it in January.  They reportedly have 25 applicants.

Chief equity officers stand as a rarity within county governments of our size.  When Tompkins County’s legislators created the job six years ago, the only similar position in governments upstate, we were told, was in Buffalo.

Perhaps gun-shy to the likelihood of political pushback, few, if any, have called over this past half-decade for the CEDO position’s elimination.  Yet some of the Legislature’s more conservative members have at times questioned the officer’s goals and initiatives; even the way the appointee chooses to write.  Those subtle critiques drew from Enfield-Ulysses legislator Anne Koreman during Tuesday’s discussions an impassioned rebuke.

“There is more scrutiny over this position than any position that I’ve seen in my eight years (on the Legislature) and it is really upsetting to me,” Koreman told those beside her, her voice cracking with anger.  “I don’t know how else to describe it except it’s a prejudice in itself, and we need to take a hard look at the scrutiny that we are putting on the person in this position,” Koreman counseled.

How Randy Brown came to change his planned vote against the CEDO position’s charter codification Tuesday could be viewed by some as one man’s surrender to racial and gender shaming.

As the hour-long legislative debate meandered toward a vote, the charter change’s supporters quietly counted noses, speculating how members would fall on the issue, even those who hadn’t spoken.  Randy Brown had already telegraphed his intent to oppose.  Supporters sensed they’d lose.  They pleaded for at least one opponent to defect.  At that point, Lansing’s Deborah Dawson brought out the heavy artillery.

“I don’t often find myself in my colleague’s camp chastising all the old white guys,” Dawson proclaimed, tapping Amanda Champion on the shoulder as she spoke, “But this is not going to look good if this vote comes down to women and our one man of color and our one gay white guy voting for it and everybody else going, ‘Oh, no; can’t do that.’ Think about it.  Is that what you want?  Is that how you want to be viewed?”

And yes, if you’re one of those who counts by race, gender, and sexual orientation, that’s what it would have looked like.  Supporters Dawson, Koreman, Champion, Pillar, and Shawna Black are all female.  Travis Brooks is black.  Greg Mezey is gay.  That’s seven votes, one short of the eight needed.  All the remaining legislators are straight, white men and all had planned to vote no. (Dan Nolan wasn’t present.  His Zoom link had cut out.)

No one budged.  And then Randy Brown did. 

“You know, I’m going to change my vote,” Brown announced.  “I think it’s going to happen anyway next year,” the Newfield legislator predicted of codification, remarking at the time that he’s always thought of himself as a “mutt,” part Native American.  Brown credited his native heritage for influencing his decisions.

If anything, the new, larger Legislature, set to be seated next month, may be more liberal than even the one at present.  And it requires only a simple majority to change the charter.  So Brown surmised that if the current body didn’t codify the CEDO position , the one that followed it likely would.

“I do think we do need to go through the charter and clean it up, without a doubt,” Brown added.  Any significance to his switched vote he left understated.

Brown’s fellow Republicans, Mike Sigler and Lee Shurtleff, never spoke during the protracted, one-hour debate.  Each would eventually vote against CEDO codification, as would Democrats Mike Lane, Rich John, and Legislature Chair Dan Klein. 

And while Deborah Dawson had observed that a united straight white guy vote would send everyone the wrong message, Klein countered that assertion.  He alleged that putting the CEDO into the charter would send its own toxic message, one not well received by power brokers elsewhere.

“The President has taken the stance that anywhere the term DEI appears it must be eliminated, and I do not agree with that stance,” Klein reminded legislators, reading from a prepared script.  “However, I feel like some people here have taken the opposite position; anytime the term DEI appears, it is sacred and should not be examined or questioned or discussed, and I do not support that stance either,” the Chairman maintained.

“For me, I do not see any evidence that our Chief Equity and Diversity Officer position has improved any measure of diversity, equity or inclusion in our organization,” Klein insisted, the Chair rationalizing his opposition to placing the job of CEDO within the county charter.

From the visitor’s gallery at meeting’s start, eight supporters of the charter change spoke or wrote messages in support of the CEDO-inclusive local law.  Those eight included several County employees and a couple of newly-elected future legislators. 

Two more attendees spoke against the local law, including former Enfield resident and one-time town office seeker Amanda Kirchgessner.  Kirchgessner expressed much the same position as Dan Klein later would.  She recognized Washington’s new reality.

“We do not need to virtue signal through a hyper-localized tokenization process, especially given the retaliatory nature of the current federal administration,” Kirchgessner pleaded to County lawmakers. “We cannot afford to risk losing federal funding or getting involved in an expensive, lengthy lawsuit all because you want to put this into the books,” she maintained.

“I’m not opposed to equitable outcomes,” Kirchgessner qualified.  “I am opposed to you putting us in substantial financial risk.”

Dryden’s Mike Lane stood among those legislators opposing CEDO codification.  But it was the “straight white guy” insinuations that touched Lane’s nerve and prompted his reply.

“I don’t like what I’m hearing about this debate degenerating into subtle accusations of bias,” Lane commented.  “I don’t think that’s the case.  I think we’re better than that.”

The CEDO charter debate probably went on far longer than needed.  But perhaps because it did, it left several dangling loose ends that never got retied.

First point: Codification’s advocates spoke of the significant support among the Tompkins County workforce for the CEDO position’s preservation.  Employee support is important, of course, since its job duties remain primarily inward-focused, advancing equity interests in hiring and promotion.  Dan Klein pushed back on any assertion of rank-and-file consensus.

Klein counted only five supportive employee messages.  “That’s not a mandate to me,” Klein asserted, adding “And we know, legislators, that we have a bunch of employees that do not like what’s happened with this program.  We’ve gotten our emails about that.”

Legislators about the big oval table challenged Klein on that point and maintained they hadn’t gotten those employee protests.  The chairman begged off, claiming the emails were confidential and couldn’t be shared publicly.

Second point:  When Deanna Carrithers was CEDO, back when the George Floyd-prompted demands for racial justice swept over America and locally, administrators delegated to Carrithers much of the Reimagining Public Safety initiative’s heavy-lifting.  But Deanna’s successor, Charlene Holmes, transitioned her priorities and spent nearly two years compiling an “Institutionalizing  Equity Report,” a 52-page, densely-worded document that oftentimes read like a doctoral thesis and played to mixed reviews locally.

For public consumption, both Carrithers and Holmes were well-liked.  But behind closed doors, it may have been different.

“We’ve had two of them,” legislator Dawson referenced the successive CEDO’s.  “One of them I liked very much.  The other one I didn’t have much use for,” Dawson conceded, the two-term legislator allowing an ample amount of candor to spill in public view.  “And there might have been a dispute between one of our CEDO’s and one of our other highly-placed department heads,” Dawson added.  “That’s not the point.  There’s always going to be differences of opinion and differences in the way people do a job.”

Dissect Dawson’s comment as you may.  We do not know which Diversity Officer Dawson disliked, nor of which “highly-placed department head” was drawn into disagreement.  We only know there was trouble and that it involved a personnel dispute of which we were never told.

Amanda Champion will leave the Tompkins County Legislature in a few weeks, retiring after two, four-year terms.  In many ways, codifying the Chief Equity Officer could be her way to cement a legacy.

During these past five years, no one has dared—at least, not publicly—to eliminate the Chief Equity and Diversity Officer’s job, even though doing so could save local taxpayers a salary listed for 2025 at $110,593, plus benefits.

What’s more, the CEDO’s elevation to its placement within the county charter seems a relatively recent leap of mental inspiration.  Champion told colleagues the idea emerged from her attending a Government Alliance on Race and Equity (GARE) conference a couple months ago.

But whether spontaneous or long-contemplated, the CEDO job is now engrained within the charter.  It was put there by majority vote.  It could be extracted the same way.  Just don’t expect it ever to be pulled.

And what about the danger that the equity officer’s newly-granted institutional prominence could subject Tompkins County to fresh trouble from Pennsylvania Avenue?  Deborah Dawson doesn’t plan to worry.

“We’ve already got a big target on her back,” the Lansing Democrat advised skeptics that early-December night.  “I just don’t think that adding the CEDO to our charter is going to make the target on our back any bigger than it already is… You know, come and get us.”

###

Taller, Stronger, and Also Plain Ugly

$88M NYSEG FLAIR powerline draws concern from Enfield, Newfield Boards; neighbors

by Robert Lynch; December 4, 2025

It is aging infrastructure older than most of us.  We’ve taken it for granted; long accepted it for what it is.

But if the power company has its way, that wooden nonagenarian on stilts will soon die a quiet, unheralded death and vanish from the landscape to usher in its 21^st Century replacement; a bolder, taller-standing offspring set to strut its copper-brown steel self across the rural landscape of Enfield’s southwestern corner and Newfield’s northern edge. Some call it progress.  Others hate it.  They’d prefer that the old,  wooden granddaddy live on forever.

“It’s a terrible idea,” Enfield Town Planning Board member Rich Teeter opined at the Planning Board’s November fifth meeting.  “They’ll be ruttin’ all over on the land.  I don’t like it.  I like stuff the same, and they’re changing it, and I guess I don’t have a choice.”

The “they” to whom Teeter referred is New York State Electric and Gas Corporation, NYSEG.  And the “it” is NYSEG’s “FLAIR” project, the utility’s fast-tracked $88 Million rebuild of a 21-mile transmission line (#982) that links two large power substations, one in Montour Falls, and the other on Ithaca’s South Hill.

Pending grant of a “Certificate of Environmental Compatibility and Public Need,” an application now before the New York State Public Service Commission (PSC), the FLAIR endeavor would dismantle a long stretch of 91-year old, tandem wooden poles that drape their transmission conductors side-by-side within a 100-foot wide right-of-way.  The current wires hang beneath an “H-frame” wooden configuration.  NYSEG would replace the 1930-era H-frames with far-taller, brown, steel monopoles, supports that would attach wires to their sides.

Each gray wooden pole rises only 30 to 60 feet above ground.  The steel monopoles, although fewer in number, would anchor in concrete and elevate from 74 to 122 feet.  A NYSEG manager, speaking to Enfield officials, struck the average height at 88 feet.

“The existing line is over 91 years old and the asset condition is poor,” Emma Timerman, Project Manager for the FLAIR initiative, defended the replacement during a presentation to the Enfield Town Board November 12, a session that came one week after Enfield planners had given the company’s plans their initial look. 

“These structures are made of wood and have been there for almost a century,” Timerman explained. “So you’ve got several generations of woodpeckers that have made their homes here.”

But a closer look readily confirms that our friendly, foreign-based utility has more on its mind than just deterring the unlikely prospect that poles will rot and drop their wires.  Eighty-eight Million doesn’t get spent without a better purpose.  The newly-rebuilt line would handle far more energy, NYSEG admits.   The FLAIR cables would carry more than 2.5 times as much current of do the lines they would replace.

FLAIR would “remove bottlenecks to the local transmission system,” Timerman explained.  “We’re trying to meet New York State energy goals, and we’ve got to put more power through these lines,” the manager advised the Enfield Town Board.

“FLAIR,” is an acronym probably conceived by some well-compensated, PR-savvy NYSEG marketing consultant.  It stands for the “Finger Lakes Area Infrastructure Reliability” Project. PSC documents indicate that the utility first filed for the agency’s approval in December of last year.  NYSEG’s timetable calls for a final PSC decision by the second quarter of 2026.  Construction would start in early-2027, with the new lines completed and energized two years thereafter.

To their (supposed) credit, NYSEG and the PSC have purportedly fulfilled all legal obligations to notify municipal stakeholders, to post public notices, and to invite citizen comment.  Nevertheless, the line replacement ingeniously for almost a year found a way to evade municipal and media scrutiny. 

No news stories on FLAIR have yet found their way to the local press.  An advisory letter that NYSEG supposedly provided to Enfield’s Town Supervisor last spring never got shared with other Town Board members or with constituents.  The PSC held its obligatory Public Hearing October 8 in Montour Falls. The agency’s Administrative Law Judge kept the session open for half an hour that day, encouraging someone to speak.  The hearing transcript reveals that no one offered testimony.

Only in November, slightly less than three months before the PSC’s January 29 deadline for written comments, did FLAIR generate serious public attention. And when it did, it certainly did. 

More than a dozen residents turned out for the Newfield Town Board’s monthly meeting November 20.  Neighbors living near the NYSEG line and its right-of-way criticized FLAIR and ate up more than an hour of a session which Newfield customarily keeps succinct and to the point, but which this time dragged to until nearly Ten O’clock.   Critics took frequent aim at the monopoles’ proposed height and how they might obstruct view of residents’ surroundings.

“I have one of the double wooden, electrical thingies in my backyard,” Cynthia Henderson of Millard Hill Road told the Newfield Board, Henderson referring to the poles standing there now, “which means it might end up being replaced by that gigantic monstrosity that they’re talking about putting up,” she surmised.  “And it’s going to affect, possibly affect my property value and potentially cause some health issues.  So, I’m quite against it, and I’m very concerned.”

“My whole life, I’ve dreamed of having my house on a hill with a scenic view,” 24-year old Kirsten Hamburg, a new homeowner on Douglas Road, informed the Town Board.  “These aged poles were a concession for me, but I was fine with it because it blends in with the tree line.  I cannot handle a ginormous pole in my backyard,” Hamburg complained. 

“And I’m very concerned, because… I got no notice of this project,” Hamburg insisted.  “I got no letter, I got no email. I got no phone call…. I did not get any notice of this project until I received a paper on my mother’s door last week that this is going on.”

That paper on the door was likely put there by Ann Brown or her son, Shaun.  Mother and son spent days canvassing the neighborhoods of northern Newfield; knocking on doors, telling residents about the project, and leaving flyers if no one was at home.  Credit the Browns not only for waking up those living near them, but also for first informing Enfield Board members of the incipient controversy.

“As you may or may not be aware, NYSEG is currently seeking Article VII approval for replacing their 115 kV transmission line (line 982) that runs from Montour Falls to south of Ithaca,” Shaun Brown emailed the Enfield Town Board on the first Sunday of November. 

Concerning the nearly 100 foot monopole that NYSEG proposes, Brown critiqued.  “A structure this tall is overkill for a 115kV transmission line, indicating that in years to come NYSEG will seek to increase the voltage and right-of-way.”

Three days after receiving Brown’s email, and at this Town Councilperson, Robert Lynch’s, request, the Enfield Planning Board took up the FLAIR project, yet issued no formal recommendation.  One week later, the Enfield Town Board gave FLAIR its own look.

By a pair of 4-0 votes, the Enfield Town Board agreed to enter the ongoing PSC FLAIR deliberations as a “Party of Interest” and also to designate this Councilperson, Lynch, as its ”municipal representative and  liaison” in the matter.  On behalf of Enfield, electronic paperwork was filed November 17.

“I don’t think it does any harm,” this Councilperson advised the Town Board before it cast its final November vote.  “I think it’s something we should do just to protect the Town of Enfield’s interests.”

“This Town Board believes NYSEG in its PSC filings has failed to justify the need for this transmission line replacement,” Enfield’s adopted resolution to join negotiations stated, in part, adding “this Board believes that the higher metal structures FLAIR proposes would impose glaring visual impediments inconsistent with the text of… this Town’s Comprehensive Plan.”

The Enfield resolution also raised potential health hazards associated with electromagnetic energy, risks stemming from the increased current-carrying capacity of the new lines.  Even though NYSEG submissions to the PSC purportedly affirm the company’s compliance with regulatory standards, the Enfield and Newfield discussions raised doubts, including about the safety of the line  that already exists. 

“I have in the past traveled that driveway under those 130 kilovolt lines,” a driveway leading to a constituent’s private residence, this Councilperson advised the Enfield Board in November.  “And after I have done that and been at that residence for a while, I feel ill.”

“Being that proximate to it may be like standing in a microwave,” this writer related his sensation.

Joining the PSC review process does not obligate Enfield to file legal pleadings, retain counsel, or spend money, even though it could should it choose to do so.  Instead, involvement will ensure that if NYSEG or anyone else pleads for or against the FLAIR project, Enfield officials will receive timely notice.

So far, the Newfield Town Board has not followed the same path.  It has not formally joined the PSC proceeding.  Yet Newfield Supervisor Michael Allinger signaled near the end of the November 20 meeting that Newfield will likely draft a formal comment, adopt it as a resolution, and forward it to the PSC by the agency’s late-January deadline.

Newfield has also announced plans for a second discussion of the FLAIR project at its next meeting, Thursday, December 11.  NYSEG representatives will attend.  Further Town Board action could follow.

That said, one’s actually stopping the FLAIR powerline replacement, although not impossible, could prove for any homeowner—or group of homeowners—a daunting challenge.

“I think it’s very unlikely that they’re going to stop this project,” Thomas Smith, Attorney for the Town of Newfield, advised during the November 20 meeting.  “But I think that it’s also very unlikely that there’s not going to be a compensation element for landowners whose value is diminished as a result of the project.”

“So we lose,” one unidentified woman responded from the gallery in frustration.

Nevertheless, the prospect of landowner compensation could provide with it a small amount of solace.   And for Supervisor Allinger, urging monetary rewards could become part of his town’s strategy.

“If we can draft a resolution of support to, for either compensation or movement of these structures so that they’re not obstructing any current easements,  I’d like to make that one of three action items that we could possibly do,” Allinger told Board members.  The Supervisor would also like more information through Tompkins County Government to help identify exact pole placement.

“So, on the one hand, I’m hearing from constituents all the time about why are we getting so many blackouts?” Allinger acknowledged.  “And it’s because of the infrastructure.  So the infrastructure’s clearly needed.  Nobody’s going to argue that.  But what can we do as a town to support the people that are going to be affected by these poles going up in their yard, even though they have the easements?”

Somebody, most likely a NYSEG representative and most likely at that Montour Falls public hearing (for which the official record is bare) described for Newfield’s Ann Brown the FLAIR right-of-way as just “Billy Goat Country.” For those who tossed that comment around the room November 20, it didn’t sit well.

“And I took offense to that, because Newfield’s not Billy Goat Country,” Ann Brown protested.  “We are prospering; we have seen real estate come in, new houses being built.  On my road alone, there are two new businesses.”

“It’s important that it’s not Billy Goat Country,” Cynthia Henderson concurred.  “Really, it is beautiful out here, and I love my neighbors. “

Sunny View Drive’s Carolyn Clark added, “But we’re not a Billy Goat trail, with people coming from all other parts of the world to a very beautiful place.  We want to keep it that way.”

Whether or not Billy goats wander that 21-mile, 100-foot wide right-of-way west from the Coddington Substation on Ithaca’s East King Road to Montour Falls remains an open question.  But that a lot of angry people live along that corridor too remains far more certain.  In Enfield, it’s only a residence or two, plus Rich Teeter’s Teets and Son scrap yard that intrude close to the lines.  But in Newfield, many more live within sight of them.  People have grown accustomed to what’s there now.  They fear what lies ahead.

“So, where are they gonna put this monstrous power pole?  James Martin, owner of land he hopes to build upon at 306 Millard Hill Road, asked.  “What is it going to do to our, our view of, you know, city lights, our coming out and looking at stars?” Martin continued to question, “And you’re considering people coming to camp with us, you know, building a house. Where we want to put our home is, could be greatly impacted, and maybe not even possible should that large power pole exist.”

And, of course, there’s always a second shoe that could drop.  What if once NYSEG built the higher, more hefty line, it added a second trio of wires or another string of those ugly metal monopoles?  What if the visual blight and the electromagnetic danger were compounded?  That question came up in Enfield.

“Could it put additional poles to either side of that that’s being proposed now to increase the carrying capacity in that right-of-way?” this Councilperson asked NYSEG’s Timerman at the November 12 meeting.

“Potentially?” Timerman responded hesitantly, apparently caught off guard.  “This is my project.  I can’t say in the future.  Maybe?”

And that perceived evasiveness; that “never-mind, we’re NYSEG” attitude bothers more than just one of us.

“I love my property. I love where I live. I pinch myself every day that this is like a vacation home with my views,” Margaret Hamburg of Douglas Road told the Newfield meeting.  Of the monopoles, she evaluated, “It’s gonna, it’s very devastating for us, 100%.”

And of how this has all come down, Hamburg’s opinion:  “I think it’s been very sneaky on NYSEG.  It’s been, it’s been backdoor.”

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