Enfield to Hochul: Save Our CHIPS!

Town Board presses to erase proposed cut in state highway aid

[And posted after: Electric buses idled at TCAT]

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by Robert Lynch, March 17, 2024

Town roads don’t fix themselves.  There’s no magic.  Repairs cost money, often more money than cash-strapped towns like Enfield can afford by themselves.  That’s where Albany comes in.  And for municipalities and county governments, the Consolidated Local Street and Highway Improvement Program, better known as “CHIPS,” has in recent years supplied the greatest assistance.

Rockwell Road at Porter Hill. Both Enfield roads are due for renovation this year, CHIPS willing.

But some now warn that CHIPS is on the chopping black.  And the Enfield Town Board wants to keep the ax from falling. 

Prompted by warnings primarily from Republican state lawmakers, the Town Board March 13th unanimously adopted a Resolution urging Governor Kathy Hochul to restore a reported $60 Million statewide cut in the CHIPS program that she’d included in her proposed 2024-25 Executive Budget.  The Resolution also asks that New York State bolster the underlying “base funding” for CHIPS so as to reflect the ever-increasing cost of getting local roads built.

“CHIPS is very important to our Highway Budget,” this writer, Councilperson, Robert Lynch, told the Enfield Board Wednesday as he introduced a Resolution urging restoration of the feared program cuts.  “If the CHIPS money is cut substantially, we’re going to be in budget binds,” he said.

“We can take all the state aid that they will give us,” this Councilperson added.  “And I hope they give us the same this year as last year.”

The CHIPS preservation initiative was one of three lobbying-type resolutions the Enfield Board adopted that night.  Two will go to Albany; a third to the Tompkins County Legislature.

CHIPS provided the Town of Enfield $153,641 during 2023.  That was road repair money Enfield taxpayers didn’t have to come up with themselves.  Combined with three other, lower-funded state programs, CHIPS supplied more than 15 per cent of the Enfield Highway Department’s revenues last year, according to December figures compiled by the Town’s bookkeeper.

And for road repairs alone, the four programs supplied over 56 per cent of the amount Highway Superintendent Barry “Buddy” Rollins proposed to the Town Board, and the Board approved, in his revised, so-called “284” funding agreement of last July.  Those Enfield repairs and improvements cost $434,000 last year.  The Town Board has similarly authorized Rollins to spend $421,000 during the current year.  Porter Hill and Rockwell Roads stand as prime candidates for resurfacing during 2024.

Big Flats State Senator Tom O’Mara, who until the 2022 redistricting represented Enfield, was among the first to sound the alarm bell about the proposed Hochul cuts to CHIPS.

Rallying for CHIPS: Center O’Mara (c) flanked by two Assembly members, with Highway Superintendents looking on, at the Big Flats Highway Garage.

“Unexpectedly, Governor Kathy Hochul has placed the future of state investment in local roads, bridges, and culverts in the crosshairs this year by calling for, as part of her proposed 2024-25 state budget, significant cuts to the state’s investment,” Senator O’Mara wrote in his weekly column to constituents February 26th, a message entitled, “Local Roads are Essential.”

“Most egregiously, the governor is calling for a $60 million cut for the Consolidated Local Street and Highway Improvement Program (CHIPS), the state’s primary source of funding for local roads, bridges, and culverts,” O’Mara wrote.  “Simply put, her proposal cannot move forward.”

O’Mara stands as one of more than 50 New York legislators who’ve pressed hard for the CHIPS funding restoration.  Most are Republicans.  But of course, Republicans don’t control the New York State Legislature.  Democrats hold supermajorities in both houses.

Nonetheless, the majority party has since offered signs of hope.  In her constituent newsletter of Friday, March 15th, our district’s current State Senator, Democrat Lea Webb, detailed the Senate’s “One House Budget,” with its negotiating starting-point scripted by Webb’s fellow Democrats.

Among the many initiatives included in the Senate’s “One-House Budget,” Webb reported leadership has proposed “$160 million in additional support for (CHIPS), for a total of $698.1 Million.”

“By allocating resources to support local governments, the state not only invests in the vitality of individual communities but also strengthens the entire fabric of New York,” Senator Webb stated in her message.

Sen. Lea Webb: Maybe some upper-house support in saving CHIPS.

If the Senate Democrats’ negotiating starting point holds up, it would erase the $60 Million in reported Hochul cuts to CHIPS, and also get base funding at least part way to what O’Mara and other Republicans want.  Republicans want the funding base to rise by $200 Million this year to place its total at $798.1 Million.  According to Webb, Democrats would take it to just under $700M.

The Enfield Town Board’s adopted Resolution, while urging restoration of the Governor’s reported $60 Million cutback, kept total program funding open-ended.

“The Enfield Town Board respectfully requests Governor Hochul and legislative leaders to restore the $60 Million in proposed funding reductions to the CHIPS program in the 2024-2025 New York State Budget and additionally to consider substantial increases in base funding for CHIPS, increases consistent with the recommendations of Senator O’Mara and his legislative colleagues,” the adopted Resolution, introduced by this Town Councilperson, stated.

New York’s final State Budget is due by April first, though often misses the deadline.  Typically, the Governor and legislative leaders of the Senate and Assembly resolve their differences by huddling in closed-door discussions at the Eleventh Hour.  Legislators often adopt funding packages without really knowing all that is in them.

The CHIPS funding initiative wasn’t the only request the Enfield Town Board sent to Albany Wednesday night. By a similarly unanimous vote, the Town Board removed from the table and adopted without much debate a request that the New York Legislature clarify election procedures that confounded—and indeed, angered—many Enfield Fire District voters last fall when they for the first time filled all five seats on the newly-established Board of Fire Commissioners.  Because of statutory ambiguities, the Fire District’s attorney had determined that each voter could cast only one vote in that election, even though five Commissioners positions had to be filled.

Councilperson Jude Lemke, whose reservations about the proposal’s language had delayed its adoption for a month, said linguistic revisions this Councilman had made subsequent to February’s meeting had satisfied her concerns.

“In first-ever Fire District elections, you would be able to cast five votes, but for five different people,” this writer explained concerning his rewritten draft, “so it wouldn’t get into the area of cumulative voting, where you could essentially stuff the ballot box by voting five votes for one of the candidates.”

Enfield will never again navigate the perplexing legal labyrinth that last December left some Enfield Fire District voters feeling that their franchise had been denied.  The ambiguous section of law Enfield encountered only occurs the first time a fire district is formed.  But the Enfield Board chose to prod the Legislature to clarify the law in hopes that others in newly-formed districts would not face confusion similar to what its voters had encountered.

The current Enfield Board of Fire Commissioners’ first meeting, January 9th.

The Enfield Town Board’s third adopted action affects matters closer to home.  The Board passed an endorsement of Trumansburg Mayor Rordan Hart’s letter that requested Tompkins County Government fully fund the Rapid Medical Response (RMR) service.  RMR is the service that will position County vehicles and Emergency Medical Technicians at three points around Tompkins County to answer emergency calls during daytime hours weekdays when rescue squad volunteers might be unavailable.

Grant money will mostly fund the RMR this year.  But County officials have asked municipalities to share in the program’s cost for 2025.  Most recently, they’ve suggested municipalities contribute one-third of the expense.  For Enfield, they estimate the yearly cost at $10,000.

“This Town Board agrees with Mayor Hart’s rationale for full County funding as it would provide ‘the best possible solution’ to assure the RMR service’s long-term viability,” the Enfield Resolution, written by this Councilperson, stated in part.  The Resolution noted that the Board’s latest action reiterated much of the same position the Board had taken last December.

Obligating municipalities to share the cost “would be a grave mistake and would risk the viability of the program,” Mayor Hart wrote fellow town and village leaders.  “Sooner or later, likely sooner, one or more municipalities which already support their own EMS/ambulance services, or pay another agency to provide the service, will decline to contribute to the RMR Program,” the mayor continued.  Then, he warned, burdens could shift to those communities that cannot afford the service, yet desperately need it.

The Enfield Board authorized Supervisor Stephanie Redmond to sign Mayor Hart’s letter on its behalf.  Cost-sharing options will likely arise at a second County-sponsored meeting on the topic, April 11th.

In other business at the Town Board’s March 13th meeting:

  • The Town Board unanimously authorized Highway Superintendent Rollins to pursue purchase of two used dump trucks from the Town of Oswego, trucks to replace older units in his fleet that are wearing out.  Together with a planned pick-up truck purchase, Rollins’ request could draw as much as $180,000 from the Highway Reserve fund.  The Board’s majority saw the potential deal as a good bargain, though this writer, Councilperson Lynch, while favoring the transfer, voiced concerns over the draw-down of reserves, and of the request’s sudden timing.
  • Daniel Woodring, supporter of a proposed SkateGarden skateboard park on Trumansburg’s GrassRoots facilities, presented his request for Enfield to construct a skate park of its own on Town property.  The Town Board took no action, but members will investigate possible locations, including near the park-and-ride lot across from the Town Hall.
  • And Town Clerk Mary Cornell announced that scheduled renovations to the Clerk’s office will force a four-week relocation of her office beginning in early-mid April.  The Town Board voted to cordon-off a portion of the Town Board’s meeting room as a temporary Clerk’s office for the duration of the construction. Cornell also announced that her deputy, her sister, Laura Norman, will resign, effective April first, to return to full-time employment at the Tompkins County Board of Elections.

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Green New Dismay

Plethora of problems idle all TCAT Electric Buses

by Robert Lynch; March 16, 2024

Poor old 103; RIP. (I once rode it.) A decommissioned diesel bus in the “TCAT Cemetery,” Teets & Son Scrap Yard, Enfield.

The electric transit bus may be an innovation whose time has not yet arrived, providing that time will ever come. Judging from this years’ experience at TCAT, that suspicion has quickly become local reality.  What’s come off the assembly line simply hasn’t passed the “smoke test” of day-to-day use.  And what’s just happened underscores the point.

Tompkins Consolidated Area Transit (TCAT) has seven electric buses in its fleet.  All are relatively new.  Each was manufactured by the now-bankrupt firm, Proterra.  And since the night of March 13th, all seven of those buses have been out-of-service, kept idled at the TCAT garage due to problems ranging from failed batteries to worries about structural safety. 

“On Wednesday evening, March 13, staff noticed a serious issue affecting the frame on one of the Proterra buses,” Patty Poist, TCAT’s Manager of Communications and Marketing, stated in a Friday evening email, her statement made in response to this writer’s inquiry. 

Poist continued, “Acting General Manager Matthew Rosenbloom-Jones made the immediate decision to remove all seven Proterra buses from service until further notice. We do not yet know if this is a structural issue that may cause similar problems with the other six buses, but safety is paramount.”

“TCAT will not bring these vehicles back into service until we have been provided a definitive fix from Proterra that fully satisfies TCAT staff as well as our regulatory partners at NYSDOT,” Acting GM Rosenbloom-Jones” was quoted by Poist.

TCAT’s new Acting GM; Matthew Rosenbloom-Jones

What’s happened since Rosenbloom-Jones assumed his interim leadership post at the local transit agency earlier this month bears sharp contrast to the pro-electric futuristic enthusiasm that dominated TCAT’s public statements during the tenure of TCAT’s former General Manager, Scot Vanderpool. TCAT’s leadership was talking then about a total conversion to electrified vehicles, though it would take more than a decade to accomplish.  Green-friendly, plugged-in buses were seen as the future TCAT wanted to take the lead to embrace. 

But the new reality—even before the frame-safety issue arose this week—tempered the comments of Vanderpool’s interim successor at a Monday meeting of the TCAT Riders Advisory and Accessibility Committee.

TCAT will maintain “a mix of electric and diesel (buses) for the indefinite future,” Rosenbloom-Jones told the advisory committee.  In his opinion, as to electrics, “the technology is just not there yet.”

At the time of the March 11th meeting, only two of the seven Proterra buses were then in service.  And one of them was on its electrified last legs.  Rosenbloom-Jones said one of the pair then still on the road may soon be removed “because one of the batteries is beginning to fail.”

In August of last year, Proterra filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy.  News reports then quoted the California company’s officials as stating that the company “intends to continue to operate in the ordinary course of business.”  But of course, that kind of statement from a financially-crippled company goes only as far as it goes.

Electric buses are not cheap.  Each of the seven Proterra units, placed on the road beginning in 2021, cost about $1 Million, when the cost of its charger is added in.

TCAT had Uncle Sam’s help in buying those first seven.  According to reports, the U.S. Department of Transportation awarded the local transit agency $2.3 Million in 2018 to help enable the seven-bus acquisition.  The grant came as part of an $84 Million nationwide appropriation under the federal government’s Low-or No-Emission Grant Program. 

According to personnel at Enfield-based Teets and Son Scrap Metal Recycling, where many an old TCAT bus goes to die, Transportation Department rules required each bus diesel bus de-commissioned under the grant program to be cut-up carefully and dismembered to ensure it would never again be on the road.

“Electric buses are the way to go,” Vanderpool said as recently as last July 10th at an Advisory Committee session.  He then said TCAT still hoped to adhere to its plans to totally electrify by 2035. 

When fully maintained—and bus maintenance has become a chronic problem at the agency—TCAT operates approximately 50 buses in its fleet.

By a November 2023 meeting of the Advisory Committee, Vanderpool began expressing frustration with electric bus maintenance. “It’s been a tough row with parts for these (electric) buses,” the former General Manager admitted.  Vanderpool reported that on one day last summer, State Department of Transportation representatives took five buses out of service because their air conditioning systems were not working.

Scot Vanderpool retired as TCAT’s General Manager March first after more than six years with the transit agency and 40 years serving the transit industry.  Rosenbloom-Jones was appointed acting GM in late February.  He comes to the agency most recently from a transit service in Wisconsin.  Since this January, he had been TCAT’s service development manager.

Happier days for plug-ins: The Earth Day, 2021 electric bus rollout (photo courtesy, Anna Lamb, The Ithaca Voice).

At his first Riders Advisory Committee meeting as Acting GM March 11th, Rosenbloom-Jones referred to electric bus technology as in the “teething” stage.  And when asked if Proterra’s bankruptcy stood as the central problem to electric bus maintenance, the Acting GM said manufacturer Proterra’s difficulties are only part of the problem. 

“Electric buses are more maintenance-prone,” Rosenbloom-Jones told the committee, TCAT’s new hire echoing his predecessor’s admission of last year.   The principal concern?  “There’s a battery life problem,” he said.

Not only that, Rosenbloom-Jones acknowledged.  There’d been an air-compressor failure on one bus.  There have been door problems; sensor problems.  In effect, electric buses are maintenance babies.  “They’re more problems than with traditional buses,” he said.

And as for the chargers needed to keep those green vehicles running, “Sometimes they work; sometimes they don’t,” Rosenbloom-Jones conceded.

As for the electric bus’s future locally, those earlier-lauded timetables are on hold for now.  Full electrification may happen by 2035; but then again, it may not.

“In the wake of our issues with our current fleet and Proterra’s bankruptcy status, we are examining all options on what types of buses we will be purchasing in the future,” Poist stated Friday.  “We will keep the community updated when we do make those decisions.”

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Posted Previously:

State May Snarl Downtown Demo

by Robert Lynch; March 12, 2024

“Why does this whole process take this long?” Guess what? New York State may have it take even longer. Deborah Dawson, with County Facilities Direct Arel LeMaro, at the Downtown Facilities Committee, March 12th

Back in January, the Tompkins County Legislature passed a policy that gave it legal clout to override City of Ithaca concerns and move quickly to demolish buildings on the site of its planned Center of Government.  But while pre-emption may work with City Hall, it doesn’t work so well with New York State.  Albany pulls rank.  And that’s the problem County Government now faces.

“Do we still have the issue of the City in some way requiring us to have a more fleshed-out plan for a building before they’re happy with us tearing these down?” Lansing’s Deborah Dawson asked as the County Legislature’s Downtown Facilities Special Committee convened Tuesday morning, all expecting it to recommend deconstruction of the former Key Bank and Wiggins’ Law Office buildings that stand on the Center of Government site.  And that it did.

But what also occurred was a discussion that many on the committee had not expected.  A state agency, rather than the City of Ithaca, has emerged as the primary obstacle to a quick tear-down.  And it’s all because the two doomed buildings, though relatively new, stand in the DeWitt Park Historic District.

“While these buildings aren’t ‘contributing structures’ in the Historic District, we are in the Historic District, so there are certain rules and regulations that we need to follow as we remove these buildings,” County Administrator Lisa Holmes Tuesday advised the committee.  “So we just want to make sure that we leave ourselves enough time to gather that input and make sure we’re proceeding correctly.”

“These buildings aren’t ‘contributing structures,’ but we are in the Historic District.” Administrator Lisa Holmes

What Holmes knew—but what many legislators did not—was that within the past month the preservation group Historic Ithaca convened a meeting with representatives of the New York State Historic Preservation Office (SHPO; nicknamed “Shippo”), an arm of the State Department of Parks and Recreation.  County Planning Department officials attended the discussion.  And at that meeting, we were told, SHPO’s Regional Director politely laid down the law.  SHPO said that should Tompkins County proceed precipitously with deconstruction, even of these two seemingly non-historic structures, Albany regulators could bring Tompkins County lots of grief.

“They (SHPO) explained to us that they have a role in any kind of funding requests that might go through Congressional earmarks or other types of funding,” Katie Borgella, Tompkins County’s Director of Planning and Sustainability, told the committee.  “Any kind of federal or state permit requirements they need to sign off on,” Borgella continued.  “And they explained that if the buildings were taken down before we understood the nature of those requirements, they wouldn’t be able to commit, which would result in not getting any funding or permitting.”

The Center of Government will cost $40 Million or more.  But it would be built mostly, if not exclusively, with local money, not state or federal aid.  So legislators pressed Borgella as to what true leverage Albany regulators hold.

“Historic” or just a “blackboard for graffiti?” The wall of the former law office.

Borgella said there’d need to be stormwater runoff permits issued for the new building.  And if the County proceeds with plans to build a geothermal system to heat and cool the structure, state agency assistance could help build it.  “Apparently all of these agencies have a form that SHPO has to sign off on, and if they don’t sign off on it, it can mean that the funding or the approvals don’t happen,” the Planning Director explained.

Critics of the Center of Government and of the heavy-handed tactics the County Legislature has used of late might say Tompkins County is getting a taste of its own medicine. 

At its meeting January 16th, the Legislature adopted the so-called “Monroe Balancing Test” in an attempt to provide it pre-emptive power over the City of Ithaca in pressing forward with deconstruction. 

Named after an obscure 1988 New York Court of Appeals decision, the Monroe Balancing Test would, if upheld in this instance, override an Ithaca City requirement that before buildings in an historic district come down, the City’s Landmarks Preservation Commission must review design plans for what would replace them.  Designs for a Center of Government are months, if not a year away.  Tompkins County hasn’t even chosen an architect.

Regulatory concerns aside, the Downtown Facilities Committee Tuesday unanimously recommended the removal of both the former Key Bank and Wiggins Office buildings.  And by a vote of five-to-three, committee members accelerated the deconstruction timetable.  They added language calling for building removal “commencing now with all deliberate speed to be completed by February 2025.”

Both of Enfield’s legislators, Randy Brown and Anne Koreman, voted for deconstruction, but declined to support the speedier timetable.

At previous meetings, the Downtown Facilities Committee had discussed moving deconstruction at a slower pace, one that could have left both buildings standing until almost a year from now.

“We can spend money trying to keep these buildings safe and going and nothing more than a blackboard for graffiti for the next year or so, or we can proceed the way we planned to,” legislator Mike Lane, a long-supporter of speedy demolition, told the meeting.  “We need to get these down.”

“We need to get these (buildings) down.” Mike Lane

Baffling to some, including to those on the committee, is the rationale underlying SHPO’s purported hesitancy.  Both the bank building and the law office were built in the 1960’s, not the 1800’s.  True, they stand within the same block as does DeWitt Park.  Yet they’re hardly “historic” as most people see them.

“Although the buildings are not considered contributing to the local Historic District, that district is defined with a period of time of significance, and that doesn’t mean that the buildings can’t be significant in a different way,” Planning Department staffer Megan McDonald, one of those who attended the meeting with SHPO’s Director, explained.  “And that’s what the State Historic Preservation Office is getting at.”

Some in Ithaca’s preservationist community felt snubbed by Tompkins County’s recent pre-emptive actions.  And the ongoing, underlying tension led legislator Greg Mezey to question Historic Ithaca’s possible ulterior motives in convening the recent session with SHPO.

“Is Historic Ithaca trying to assist us in the process of these, like be a true partner, or be more of a roadblock in the process?” Mezey asked.

Borgella hedged, but leaned toward collegiality.

“I honestly felt like more of a true partner, to me,” the planner answered Mezey.  “But they’re concerned that we don’t fully understand the ramifications of this in terms of funding and permitting.”

Outsiders entering our buildings and telling us what to do? ” I struggle with that.” Committee Chair, Newfield’s Randy Brown

“Katie, if we’ve already taken down the two buildings, do you think SHPO will retaliate against us?” Mike Lane asked, questioning SHPO’s power should Tompkins County simply plow ahead.

“What they said is if we take down the buildings and we don’t need permits or money to do it, but then we do need permits or money to build the new building, that would be considered ‘segmentation,’ and they then wouldn’t be able to sign off on the new building funding or permits,” Borgella replied.

 “Sounds like segmentation to me means retaliation,” Lane quipped.

“I really think we need to have some full and frank conversations with New York State to find out what’s their intent here,” Ithaca legislator Rich John told the committee. “These buildings are ready to go,” he said of the two targeted for deconstruction.  “There is no great historic value here.  I believe in historic preservation.  This isn’t it.  This is just delay.”

“There’s a long history of these state agencies doing nothing for very long periods of time,” John warned.  “And if we’re looking out for the taxpayers here, every year of delay costs a lot of money.”

Delay was not only on Rich John’s mind Tuesday.  It was on Deborah Dawson’s mind as well, and not just because of SHPO’s new-found reservations.  Dawson said she found it hard to believe when County Facilities Director Arel LeMaro presented a time line that stated the soonest a 55,000-square foot Center of Government might be finished would be four years from now.

Rich John: “We need to have some full and frank conversations with New York State. What’s their intent here?”

“Why does this whole process take so long?’ Dawson asked LeMaro.  “I’ve never obviously been involved building anything,” she conceded.  “But 2028?”

“We’re not building a pole barn.  We’re building a four- or five-story building,” Lane commented.

“We can expedite,” the Facilities Director assured Dawson.  But he noted that legislators have demanded “community input,” and that negotiating with various departments about the space they’d occupy also takes time.

And now, apparently, those community conversations will expand to include Historic Ithaca and New York State.

In fact, Albany’s regulators may not even allow deconstruction staff to take interior contents out of the two, hardly-historic structures until they can first investigate and “document its historic nature.”  Truly, SHPO’s bureaucrats don’t see those buildings the way most locals do.  What kind of an heirloom is a 1970’s-era teller’s station?

“I don’t think we can make a blanket assumption that the interior wouldn’t be considered important,” Borgella cautioned.

“We should have known about this a while ago,” Rich John told the committee.  “This is pretty relevant.  And having seen New York State sit on their hands on projects for years, we could be completely thrown off by this.” 

Yes, Deborah Dawson could be looking beyond 2028.

“I struggle with having an outside entity in those buildings telling us what to do with the stuff,” committee chair Randy Brown said.  “I don’t see how another government entity can tell us we can’t do something inside our own buildings.  I struggle with that.”

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Posted Previously:

Ithaca to Gaza: “Have Peace Like Us”

Common Council backs Mideast Cease-Fire during heated, chaotic session

The final vote after three long hours: Nine to two. Council did what Tompkins County couldn’t.

Reporting and Analysis by Robert Lynch, March 7, 2024

Ithaca Common Council gave pro-Palestinian activists most of what they’d asked for Wednesday night.  But it did so in the most turbulent of ways.  And by the time its three-hour meeting had ended, many, including the secretary, were comparing notes to make sure they knew exactly what Council had just done.

City Hall’s undersized meeting chambers were packed to nearly the Fire Marshall’s limit. Even before discussions began, one Alderperson folded his computer and temporarily walked out in anger because of a banner attendees had unfurled.  More than two dozen public commenters spoke.  But far more partisans populated the room, perhaps 60-70 people in all.  Unrestrained, sometimes rude, those in attendance spoke freely and loudly and often out of turn when a Council member’s statement registered the gallery’s approval or displeasure.  Manners were few.  Passions ran high.  Council that night had free-range guests.

Draft language came and went during that night. Wording was amended ad hoc on the floor.  The “weaponized” term of “terrorism” was struck; the word “genocide” plunked back in.  In this reporter’s 54 on-and-off years of covering these types of things, Wednesday’s meeting of Council stood as among the most chaotic.  Maybe it’s what happens when a youthful cadre of idealistic liberals takes the reigns of municipal government a bit too soon and grinds political sausage with the best of intentions.  It wasn’t pretty.

“These children in Palestine will never know what it’s like to play on a playground, to have fun, to swing, to swim, ‘cause they’re always ducking and hiding,” Alderperson Phoebe Brown, Council’s most passionate supporter of the Cease-Fire Resolution, stated near the close of the never-ending debate.  “So I want us to do something to let the world know that Ithaca feels them… Ithaca wants them to have peace like us.”

The Hamas battle cry, some say. It didn’t rest well with one member of Council.

In the end, what passed was a cobbled-together, tempered, six-point Resolution that expressed Common Council’s “statement of support for the U.S. Government to do everything in its power to influence the parties” to achieve “a permanent negotiated bilateral cease-fire” to the Israel-Hamas war.  The Resolution also urged the parties to “codify the right to self-determination of both the Israeli and Palestinian people,” and to “release all civilian hostages held by Hamas.”

Additionally included were calls for work toward a “strong and enduring” Middle East peace, the end of Israel’s indefinite detention of Palestinians held without charge, and the unrestricted access of humanitarian aid into Gaza.

Inserted during the final minutes of debate as a crucial seventh provision was this:  The end to U.S. military funding to the State of Israel.

Council’s much-amended Cease-Fire Resolution passed nine votes to two.  Alderperson David Shapiro (the man who’d walked out) voted against it.  So did Pierre Saint-Perez.  He would have referred the matter to a committee or working group to give it a well-rested and level-headed rewrite.  Who could blame him?

Drama came early, even before the many had trooped to the mics.  As City Hall honored Ithaca’s Youth Council, and as a couple of County legislators tried to explain assessments, demonstrators all the while held up a quilt-sized banner emblazoned with the Hamas battle cry, “From the River to the Sea, Palestine Will be Free.”

“Excuse me, I’d like to jump in here,” Alderperson David Shapiro interrupted.  “I find that sign to be very anti-Semitic.”

As Mayor Robert Cantelmo tried to rule him out of order, but without success, the Third Ward Alderperson plowed forth.

“We have people taking up space here with racist signs,” Shapiro continued, noting the packed room’s fire hazard.  “These are racist signs.  We would not be allowing racist signs (critical) of other religions, of other cultures.  We would not be allowing other people to stand here with ‘All Lives Matter’ signs.  We would not be allowing people to do that here.”

“I find that sign to be anti-Semitic.” Alderperson David Shapiro (before he walked out.)

“We object to things that are hateful,” Shapiro went on.  And to attendees, he alleged, “You’re probably learning from some of these professors in town who are saying all these hateful things to our kids…. We should not be conducting business in here with these racist things being placed in front of us.”

The banner remained.  But for a time, Shapiro did not.  After his 90-second outburst, the Council member quietly folded his laptop and exited the room.  He returned about 30-minutes later, cooler, but with the banner and Palestinian flag still where they were before.

Those who addressed Common Council Wednesday were many of the same who’d pleaded unsuccessfully to the Tompkins County Legislature at a trio of meetings in January and February to adopt cease-fire supportive resolutions which at their four corners were much the same as what Council considered.  Though the County’s Resolution obtained plurality support from members attending the Legislature February 6th, it fell one member short of an eight-vote majority.  It has never since gained reconsideration.

As at the Legislature, those speaking to Common Council Wednesday represented a largely-unbridged generational divide.  Most were either very young or very gray, with few in-between.

Freshman Alderperson Kayla Matos had lured Wednesday’s standing-room-only crowd to Council Chambers.  She’d filed her cease-fire Resolution the previous Friday.  Matos and First Ward ally Phoebe Brown hail from the “Solidarity” wing of progressive Democrats, and they two-teamed what was first put onto the floor. 

Kayla Matos reading her Resolution into the record. It would later be gutted by amendment.

Matos’ Resolution was the only version on the night’s agenda.  Its 16-paragraph justification of a cease-fire skewed critical to Israel and friendly to Palestine. It accused President Biden of remaining “supportive of (Israel’s) strategy of warfare and besiegement” in Gaza and alleged that Israel “has bombed Palestinian civilians and infrastructure indiscriminately.”  It spoke of Israeli “genocide,” but offered next to nothing critical of Hamas.  It carried strong language.  Most of Matos’ Resolution did not survive the night.

“I feel a little bit dissuaded,” Cornell-student Alderperson Patrick Kuehl spoke up after Matos moved her Resolution and Brown had seconded it. At the last Council session, Kuehl maintained, members had agreed to work together on a cease-fire Resolution “that spoke from Ithaca to its core,” he said. And “that wasn’t really accomplished” by what Matos had offered.

What Kuehl did next was to offer an “amendment,” in truth, a substitute Resolution, crafted behind the scenes during the previous 24-48 hours.  It stripped away all that Matos and Brown had offered, and exchanged it for a crisper version, one that discarded many of the original accusations of specific Israeli misdeeds and bent over backwards to commend President Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris for their efforts to bring peace to the conflict.

After arduous debate and a slew of additional amendments Kuehl’s substitute passed  9:2 and replaced Matos’ original. 

Among the two dozen who offered their views. Alderperson Shapiro (back in the session) looks on.

Far more neutral in its assessment, the Kuehl draft, while acknowledging the “catastrophic loss of life” in Gaza and the deaths of more than 30,000 in the territory, also took note of Hamas’ October 7th attack on Israel and the 1,139 deaths it had caused.  Moreover, Kuehl devoted three paragraphs to commending President Biden for having “condemned the Netanyahu government’s response” to the Hamas attacks, and for Vice President Harris’ call for “an immediate ceasefire” and for her appeal for the Netanyahu government to do more to increase the flow of humanitarian aid.

The audience did not greet praise for the Biden Administration kindly.  And neither did Alderpersons Brown or Matos.

“Harris and Biden did not ask for a cease-fire,” Brown asserted, “so to even use that language here  is very deceiving.”

The Administration’s call was for only a temporary cease-fire, not a permanent one, Matos clarified. “It is extremely watered-down,” Matos said of Kuehl’s substitute.  “This does not reflect the tragedies that the people are going through.”

Only Matos and Brown opposed replacing Matos’ version with Kuehl’s facially-neutral compromise.  Members would go on to retain Matos’ original title, rather than Kuehl’s more Biden-deferential compromise.  And on Alderperson Tiffany Kumar’s initiative, passed 7:4, Council deleted all references to “terrorist” in the final adopted version.

Alderperson Saint-Perez questioned the need for linguistic change as applied to Hamas, an “internationally recognized” terrorist group, he said.

“I think we can call it wrong.  I think we can call it terrible,” Kumar responded. “But I think that the use of the word ‘terrorist,’ regardless of what it technically means, the dictionary definition of it is, has been weaponized against all brown people, including people who look like me and my family.”  Kumar is Asian.

The only remaining substantive change, moved by Matos and adopted narrowly, added back the original Resolution’s seemingly out-of-place clause that referenced South Africa’s allegation before the International Court of Justice at the Hague that “acts and omissions by Israel… are genocidal in character.”

Amending a document “ad-hoc” in the middle of a meeting “is a terrible way to craft policy,” Saint-Perez observed.  “This is a messy process that I believe will lead us to a final product that doesn’t reflect the needs and beliefs of our community… and just is not coherent at achieving the goals that we wanted to achieve.” He called the night’s legislating “dysfunctional.”

Tiffany Kumar” The word “terrorist” has been weaponized.

Saint-Perez would have preferred delay and committee review, as well as a broader approach that draws in other world conflicts, not just Gaza.  His argument lost.  The majority craved action… and action that night.

“As we sit here this very night, there are children starving; there are grandmothers dying,” Brown reminded colleagues, pleading passionately for a prompt vote.  “So if we sit here and discuss this all night long—‘cause I’ll be up ‘til four in the morning; it’s fine with me, because this is a serious matter.”

“We’re all going to get up from here’ go home to our comfy house; kiss our cat, kiss our dog; whatever we do when we get home,” Brown, wound up and animated, continued.  “We are going to leave here all right, tonight; not those babies, not those hostages.  So whatever we do tonight, let’s make a stand for them all.”

Council didn’t stay up until Four AM.  It just sometimes felt that way.  In the end, Council accomplished what the Tompkins County Legislature could not do.  A Cease-Fire Resolution, no matter how strong, no matter how weak, is on the City of Ithaca’s record and is on its way to Washington, the first known municipal resolution of its kind locally.  Others may follow, but Ithaca went first… for whatever good it does.  Maybe none at all.

But we who took notes Wednesday night had a workout.  We watched the new Common Council grind meat its own way.

###

Wild River or Benign Brook?

Regulators prod Enfield to face a flood that may never come

A supposed flood hazard looms just beyond the dead end; Lilly Drive at Enfield Creek, Sandy Creek Mobile Home Park

by Robert Lynch; March 3, 2024

Over 1,500 communities in New York State participate in the National Flood Insurance Program (NFIP), Enfield Town Board members were told at their February meeting.  Enfield is among only nine that do not.  But presumably, not for much longer.  State Government won’t allow our town to remain a lonely outlier, an NFIP non-participant, as it has been for decades, even though flood risks here arguably remain minimal.

“This is a voluntary program at the federal level, but in New York State participation isn’t exactly voluntary,” Brienna Wirley, a regional representative for the state’s Department of Environmental Conservation (DEC) Flood Plain Management Program, advised the Town Board February 14th.  Environmental Conservation Law “actually designates and requires that local communities that have identified flood risk are required to participate in the (NFIP),” she said.

No, Enfield Creek hasn’t changed.  Nor have regulators altered the law.  The only thing that’s different now is Uncle Sam’s eyesight. 

“You never had maps before.  You have maps now,” Thomas Song of the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) told the February Town Board meeting.  “Regardless of whether you join the NFIP or not, the Town of Enfield was mapped-in.”

Song: “You never had maps before. You have maps now.”

For the first time, FEMA has included the Town of Enfield in its flood plain mapping program.  And with the new maps come new requirements, although they’ll only impact a few.   FEMA mandates that people who live in the newly-identified Enfield Creek flood plain and who have federally-backed mortgages buy flood insurance.  And to join the NFIP so that residents can purchase the insurance at federally-subsidized rates, the Town of Enfield must enact new laws to tighten development in flood-prone places.

Only about 20 homes stand in the Enfield Creek’s flood plain, as newly-mapped by FEMA. The agency’s preliminary maps show many of those homes as single-wide trailers lined up side-by-side at the western ends of Lilly and Heron Drives in the Sandy Creek Mobile Home Park.  Flood maps also include homes east of Enfield Creek where Enfield Center Road crosses it.

FEMA’s preliminary Flood Map at Sandy Creek Park, Miller’s Corners and south. (The “Flood Hazard Area” is in blue; the “Floodway” is striped.)

Wirley said the DEC hasn’t the money to notify the affected residents itself.  So the Town of Enfield will do so instead.  Board members in recent days authorized letters go out to affected residents, informing them of a further Town Board discussion of the flood maps at its next meeting, March 13th. 

From what was told the Town Board in February, federal officials had never thought of Enfield as having a serious enough flood risk to warrant mapping.  When federal authorities last compiled maps in the 1980’s, Enfield got overlooked.  But when the agency switched to mapping on a countywide basis, Enfield got roped in.  Now the Town and its handful of impacted residents must address the flood risk problem.

“If they have a mortgage, and that mortgage has any kind of federal backing, their lender will come to them and require that they buy flood insurance,” Song cautioned the Town Board. 

And as for the Town, Song advised, “If you are not a participant in the NFIP, federally-backed insurance will not be made available to those folks.” 

Flood insurance would still be available from other providers, Song acknowledged.  But he implied that policies not backed by federal subsidies carry higher premiums and are harder to obtain.

Yet, according to the state conservation representative attending that night, Enfield’s opting-out of NFIP really isn’t an option, nor is ignoring the tougher flood plain management practices that the DEC dictates.

“Even if a community was choosing not to participate, you would still be obligated to enforce the building code within your community which has all of these requirements for structures included,” Wirley said.  “The community is required to regulate all development within the FEMA-identified flood hazard areas, otherwise known as the 100-year flood plain.”

One of those at risk of a 100-year flood (they say); 584 Enfield Center Road E.

The construction mandates, outlined in Section R322 of the New York State Building Code, set strict limitations on how anything new or a “substantial improvement” to an existing structure can be built in a flood plain.  A home could be built on “posts, piles, or piers,” Wirley said.  A first-floor foundation could be laid up, but then used for parking only.  State regs prohibit below-ground basements in flood zones.  Crawl spaces strike a fine line on which the rules sometimes conflict.  The ground floor of any livable space would need to rise at least two feet above any “100-year” flood line.

And in the most-restrictive area, the “floodway,” you likely couldn’t build much of anything, absent securing what Wirley described as a “no-rise or encroachment review,” signed-off by a state engineer.

And once a town adopts its more restrictive ordinance,” Wirley said, it needs to enforce it.

“Isn’t this essentially back-handed zoning?” this Councilperson, Robert Lynch, asked Song and Wirley after more than half-an-hour of back and forth.

“I don’t how to answer that question,” a seemingly blindsided Thomas Song replied.  “The federal government has no jurisdiction over local land use decisions, so we’re not part of your zoning process,” he explained.  (Of course, Enfield has no zoning.)  “What we’re showing is where your flood hazards are, and there are requirements, so I guess you could be right.”

“To put a basement in an area that would be inundated with water would just be asking for trouble,” the FEMA representative insisted.  “It would create an unsafe living environment for the inhabitants.”

How dangerous does it look? Enfield Creek near Enfield Center Road E.

At times during the meeting, the flood insurance team of two sounded like they hadn’t gotten onto the same page beforehand.  The DEC’s Wirley stated the law demanded Enfield join the NFIP, then discussed community consequences should it not do so, consequences like the additional expense of repairing or rebuilding flooded structures and the costs and risks imposed upon first responders performing flood rescues.  Does Enfield really have a choice but to comply?  It arguably remains a gray area.

Section 36-105 of Environmental Conservation Law provides a bit of clarity.  It states that a government like Enfield, newly-notified as being flood-prone, “shall promptly, within the time frames required by the national flood insurance program, apply for and complete all requirements for participation in the (NFIP).”

But what about penalties?  Section 36-109 of the same law states only that a jurisdiction’s failure to participate may bring to it sanctions limited to its ineligibility for federal flood disaster aid, ineligibility for “federally provided loans or federally-guaranteed financing,” and that its residents would be denied NFIP insurance.  No mention is made of the town being fined or its Board members hauled off to jail.

Nothing resulting from the new FEMA maps requires those living outside Enfield’s limited flood zone to buy flood insurance nor mandates that those living within the zone buy policies if they don’t have a mortgage.  State law considers a “federally-backed” mortgage broadly, including a mortgage written by any institution backed by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC).  So just about any mortgage held by any bank would trigger the flood insurance mandate.

But stepping back serves a purpose here.  Thomas Song and Brienna Wirley talked mostly like the Susquehanna River was slithering through Enfield, rather than a country stream that where it sidles past the trailers at Sandy Creek Park carries little more water than a farmer’s ditch.  Is everyone making much ado about nothing—or at least, about very little?

The flood plain of Enfield Creek is narrow.  True, at one point, the “100-year” flood plain would cover much of the field northeast of Miller’s Corners.  But interestingly—and for New York State, conveniently—the flood study downstream terminates before Enfield Creek reaches Robert Treman State Park.

Moreover, as this Councilperson brought to everyone’s attention, FEMA considered only Enfield Creek; not “Five Mile Creek” that flows under NY-79 at the bridge west of Millers Corners, nor the creek that passes under Route 327 near the Trumbulls Corners Road  intersection.  Fish Creek escapes attention.  So does the stream that flooded a decade ago and washed out the Bostwick Road culvert at the “School House Dip” east of Cole Grove.

“Is it too restrictive, or is this not restrictive enough?” this Councilperson asked Thomas Song, observing the arbitrariness in what had been presented us.  As to the “School House Dip” flood, I remarked, “The culvert had to be replaced, and there is a house right in the area, and I saw water going right across that lawn.”

“I saw water going right across that lawn.” The creek at “School House Dip” that washed out the culvert in 2013, yet now escapes FEMA’s attention.

Thomas Song hedged.  He said creeks were chosen based on conversations maybe five years ago with Town officials, leaders presumably long gone.

Song said the Bostwick creek may have been too small to consider.  But he added, “If this area is known for flooding. I think it would behoove the community to make sure that any permits for development in this particular area would meet a higher standard.”

Song did assure the Board that if Enfield joined the NFIP, any property owner, and not just those in a designated flood zone, could purchase federally-backed flood insurance and receive benefits in the event of a flood.

And, then again, there’s the issue of a 100-year flood

“We’re talking once in 100 years,” this Councilperson told the FEMA and DEC invitees, eager himself to put the flood fears that at times approached apocalyptic proportions into proper perspective.

“No sir; and the terminology is terrible,” Thomas Song answered this writer, in what one could argue skewed statistics to promote a desired outcome.

“The one per cent or the 100-year flood, it does not have to be a single event,” Song sought to qualify.  “It’s like having a bag of 100 marbles; 99 of them are white, one of them is red.  And every time you have a storm, you stick your hand in and you pull a marble out, and you have a one per cent chance of getting that red marble.  But if you did, you still throw it back in the bag, and that next storm you can pull it out again.”

Mind you, the U.S. Geological Survey doesn’t define a “100-year flood” quite that way.  If that one-per cent chance occurred every time it rained, a flood of once-per-century magnitude would demand redefinition to a status of far greater frequency.  Brienna Wirley put the percentage more accurately.

“If you have a 30-year mortgage on your house, there’s a 26 per cent chance of that structure flooding during that 30-year period,” Wirley clarified.

Yes, but also a 74 per cent chance that it won’t flood.  Once knowing the numbers, is the risk really worth the bother and expense of building a creekside home on stilts?  Maybe to those with the money, it is.  Just remember, we’re talking flood insurance here.  And insurance companies love to err on caution’s side.

The flood maps Thomas Song presented Enfield’s Town Board February 14th are not yet final, though there’s little doubt FEMA will adopt them largely as they now stand, probably this summer.  Once the maps get approved, individual property owners can raise specific objections.  A 90-day comment period that began in late-January is primarily to invite municipal input, if any.

Enfield Creek north of the Enfield Center Road bridge.

And although this Councilperson urged Enfield to brace for its compulsory inclusion in the NFIP and to encourage its Planning Board to start work on draft regulations, the FEMA and DEC representatives attending that night urged the Town to hold off adopting a specific ordinance until the maps become final, as boundaries might yet change, and if they did, the ordinance’s particulars would need to change too.

But “thinking like a banker,” I interjected, might lenders demand that those in the preliminarily-charted flood zone purchase flood insurance now, insurance Enfield’s lack of enabling legislation doesn’t allow them to buy?

“I can’t speak on behalf of the lenders,” Song qualified, “I don’t know if they have standing to do that?”

“But the banker has standing to say ‘no loan,” I rebutted.

And with that remark, Town Supervisor Stephanie Redmond hustled us off to the agenda’s next topic.  We’ll revisit flood insurance March 13th.

###

$37K Bonding Gap to fill, Fire Commissioners told

by Robert Lynch; March 6, 2024

An already-tight Enfield Fire District budget got a whole lot tighter Tuesday, as Chairman Greg Stevenson advised the Enfield Board of Fire Commissioners of some self-described “bad news.”  He said the $830,000 in bonding that voters approved last Halloween to finance the cost of a new pumper engine will not be enough in cover the interest payments that have accrued between when the truck was bought last year and when its bonding will likely kick-in next month.

Enfield’s Board of Fire Commissioners, meeting March 5th.

“It was clearly an error,” Stevenson told the Board.  “We will have to figure out where the rest will come from.”

Whoever stands to blame—whether it was the Fire District’s former counsel, Brad Pinsky; or the group of former Commissioners appointed by the Town Board last August, but now largely replaced—Stevenson would not say.  After the meeting, the chairman made clear he’s not blaming anyone.  It’s more important, he said, to fix the problem.

“Take our budget out and try to find out where you can find $37,000,” Stevenson instructed the Commission’s four other members.  Commissioners will reconvene March 19th and try to find places to cut.

Last year, the Enfield Volunteer Fire Company (EVFC), the non-profit corporation formerly overseen by the Town Board—but now by the Board of Fire Commissioners—purchased a new $825,000 pumper engine to replace a 20-year old unit, subsequently sold.  In the course of transferring governance to the newly-formed Enfield Fire District, former Fire District lawyer Brad Pinsky wrote, and voters subsequently approved in a close, October referendum, the pumper truck’s bonding. 

The Bonding Resolution adopted for the pumper authorized financing of up to $830,000.  It provided only a $5,000 cushion.

But the EVFC had already secured a bank loan for the truck, a loan that would be retired only when the bonds are purchased, but not before.  The interest clock continues to run on the bank loan.  And Stevenson reported Tuesday that $41,961.79 in interest is expected to accrue by the time bonds would likely be purchased April first. With principal and interest, the new truck now costs $866,961.

“There’s a $36,961.79 shortage due to failure to put the right amount in the Bond Resolution,” Stevenson stated.

State law will not permit a bond to be purchased for more than what voters authorized.  There was no talk at Tuesday’s meeting of asking Enfield voters to amend the bonding authorization through a subsequent referendum.

Nonetheless, much of what last year’s Town-appointed interim Board originally proposed has since been undone by the current, elected Board that took over in January.  Only two of the Board’s current five members are hold-overs.

The interest problem-boy; Engine 602; the new pumper

Whereas, the appointed Board had requested and received voter authorization to bond the pumper for 20 years, the new Board in late January signaled it would approve bonding for no longer than 7-10 years.  Moreover, the new Commissioners declined to bond a second EVFC fire truck that’s already well-through its ongoing bank loan.

Both changes in position came at the advice of the Fire District’s new lawyer, Mark Butler, Pinsky’s successor.  Butler advised Commissioners they could rescind the previous Board’s initial borrowing plans, including bonding the lower-priced 2020 tanker truck  at the voter-authorized $220,000.

Pinsky had written the pumper’s and the tanker’s bonding authorizations as separate voter propositions.  Each was approved separately, though during the same referendum.  Because of that separation, however, Stevenson informed the Board, the Fire District could not draw on the unexpended tanker bonding to shore-up the shortfall now encountered on the pumper.

“Had they been in the same resolution, it could be (combined),” Stevenson lamented.

The total 2024 Enfield Fire District Budget, as authorized by the former Board of Commissioners, totals $483,000.  There’s little room to cut.  The current Board has already planned to draw upon the budget to make one of three remaining annual bank loan payments on the tanker. Stevenson concluded that vehicle maintenance is one budget line that cannotr be reduced.

Ironically, one area that may be cut is for legal services.  Mark Butler has estimated his fees will be less than what former counsel Pinsky had expected to charge.  Members talked Tuesday of subtracting $15,000 from the legal line.

Fire Commissioners had been expected at Tuesday’s meeting to finalize bonding plans for the pumper truck.  But on attorney Butler’s recommendation, the Board delayed announcing bonding details or making decisions.  Interest rates are falling, Stevenson told his colleagues.  A 4.6 per cent interest rate that the likely bonding bank had quoted Butler in February may drop later this month, he said.  Therefore, the attorney had urged delay.

“He anticipates it will be lower than 4.6,” Stevenson quoted the attorney’s assumption as to the future interest rate.

When it addresses closing the interest-related funding gap on March 19th, Fire Commissioners will likely also authorize fire truck bonding and plan for an April first bond transaction.

###

Posted Previously:

NY Redrawn Maps keep Tompkins within NY-19; challenge unlikely

Not much change for us. And we still cling by a thread. The slightly-altered (bright purple) 19th Congressional District, as New York Legislative Democrats proposed it, Feb. 27. The Independent Redistricting Commission’s lines are in black.

by Robert Lynch; February 27, 2024; latest update, February 29, 2024

With fast legislative action, and with Governor Kathy Hochul’s quick concurrence, Albany lawmakers Wednesday put a likely legislative end to the task of redistricting Congressional seats for this November and for the remainder of the decade.  And it appears ever more likely that Republicans will simply let matters stand.

By a vote of 45 to 17 in the State Senate and 115 to 33 in the Assembly, the Legislature, given the power of its Democratic supermajorities, ratified the redrawn district lines unveiled just one day earlier.  The new maps’ release followed Monday’s rejection by legislators of the compromise maps submitted February 15th by the bipartisan Independent Redistricting Commission.

Governor Hochul gave the revised maps her approval late Wednesday, but provided no press release on her official website to explain her support.

Meanwhile, according to one Republican point-person in the redistricting debate, the GOP will not repeat its successful 2022 attempt to contest the legislative maps in court.

“No challenge,” former New York Representative John Faso, a key player in the 2022 GOP-led litigation, wrote in a text message Wednesday to The Hill, a Congressionally-focused news site. “These maps are not materially different from those prepared by the special master as a result of our court victory against the [Democratic] gerrymander,” Faso texted.

Senator Anthony Palumbo: “The voters chose a commission to make this decision. That’s not what we have here.”

Final Senate and Assembly action Wednesday paled by comparison to the Republican ruckus raised Monday when Democrats voted down the Independent Redistricting Commission’s (IRC) submission.  Indeed, three Republican Senators; Bill Weber of Rockland County Alexis Weik of Long Island, and Mark Walczyk of the Watertown area, failed to join other Republicans in their opposition.  About a dozen Assembly Republicans also crossed over to support the new maps.

“The voters chose a commission to make this decision.  That’s not what we have here,” Suffolk County Republican Senator Anthony Palumbo said in a final foray to stop his upper house’s adoption of the Democrat-engineered adjustments approved Wednesday.  “For these reasons, I’ll be voting no.”

A couple of Republicans in the Assembly were equally vocal before their final vote.

“It could look to the residents of New York State that we took 10-15 million dollars of residents’ money, put it into the IRC, put it into redistricting, thumbed our nose at them, and said  no, no, no… it doesn’t matter that we went through the whole process, we just don’t like what they came up with, so we’ll make up our own,” Long Island Assemblymember Michael Durso chided Democrats.

Assemblymember Durso: Democrats just don’t like what the IRC came up with.

Final debate in the Assembly consumed only about a half-hour Wednesday.  Senators took slightly less time than that.  Senator Andrew Lanza tried in vain to pin down Deputy Majority Leader Michael Gianaris on how long the Democrats had kept the revised districting on their hard drives or on paper before releasing them Tuesday.  He also had no luck questioning Gianaris on whether Congressional Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries had played a role in the process. 

Gianaris insisted the new maps did not exist before majority Democrats rejected the IRC’s maps Monday. 

As for leader Jeffries, The New York Times Wednesday quoted the New York City Congressional leader as commending the latest districting adjustments. 

“This is a much fairer map for the people of the state of New York,” Jeffries told The Times prior to the State Legislature’s vote.  “This is a much fairer map for the people of the State of New York,”

[The Original story, filed February 27th, upon the legislative maps’ release, follows]

****

Face it, being a little bit gerrymandered is akin to being a little bit pregnant.  And if that’s the case, the “tinkering” New York legislative Democrats have done to commission-drawn Congressional redistricting, maps these final days of February is no better than had they thrown those commission maps into the trash and started afresh—just like they tried to do two years ago.

But that’s the purist way of thinking.  Political pragmatism may tell us something else again.

Tuesday afternoon, one day after Democrats in the State Senate and Assembly wielded their super-majority muscle to reject the compromise Congressional redistricting maps released February 15th by the state’s Independent Redistricting Commission (IRC), legislative Democrats released maps of their own.

As one of their key changes, the legislative maps would alter the geographical composition of the 19th Congressional District, yet continue to retain Tompkins County within it.  Most changes to NY-19 would be at the district’s eastern end, purportedly engineered to give Republican incumbent Marc Molinaro a trougher time in seeking reelection.

As drawn by both the IRC and legislative Democrats, the 19th District would continue to stretch from the Town of Enfield’s western border east, through Binghamton, to the Massachusetts state line.

The Senate Supermajority’s point-person, challenging the IRC’s maps

“I think there are numerous problems with the maps that were sent to us that run afoul of the constitutional guidelines that exist in our state constitution,” Senator Michael Gianaris, Deputy Majority Leader and the Democrats’ unquestioned point-person in opposition to the IRC maps, said during floor debate Monday.  “The maps should not be drawn specifically to protect incumbents,” Gianaris asserted.  “It was clear that the intention of the map is simply to protect incumbents of both parties.”

Arguably, Gianaris had a point about incumbent protection.  (And some argue the IRC specifically sought to protect Molinaro.)  But in truth, were his handful of grievances sufficient and blatant enough to warrant legislators derailing a carefully-crafted process designed to remove redistricting from partisan pressure, an effort enshrined in a decade-old amendment to the New York Constitution?  The Deputy Majority leader believes they are.  Minority Republicans maintain they were not.

“You can sit here and point out what you don’t like about these maps, but this is the process that the people of New York State chose,” Senator George Borello, a Republican from the western Southern Tier, fired back during the debate. 

“Because the reality is we don’t really care what the people think; we care what the political outcome is in the end, and that’s what this is about” Borello, a Republican, portrayed as Democrats’ view of the electorate.

Senator Borello: Democrats don’t really care what people think; they care about the political outcome.

“We are once again going to undermine this process, to say we don’t trust you, the people that brought us here, the people that vote for us,” Borello continued,  “We don’t trust you to do the right thing.  We’re going to tell you what your will is.  That’s wrong.  That’s why I am supporting these maps.”

Only through self-professed “cooperation and compromise.”—read into that political horse-trading—were most of the ten members of the Independent redistricting Commission able to agree on the compromise Congressional maps they handed up two weeks ago.  The IRC was (and is) evenly divided between the parties.  The IRC’s this year’s submission won the approval from nine of its members.  Commission chair Ken Jenkins said at the time that members worked cooperatively and collaboratively to resolve their disagreements.

Yet still, anything that breathes a wisp of bipartisanship falls short of satisfying partisan Democrats who hold firm control of both Senate and Assembly.  Monday, each house voted down the IRC’s maps on largely party-line votes.

The State Senate rejected the IRC maps, 40 votes to 17.  The Assembly then similarly voted them down, 99 votes to 47.  State Senator Lea Webb and Assemblymember Anna Kelles, both Democrats voted with their majority party.

Upstate, the Democrats’ drafting efforts clearly have twin goals, both of them partisan and both lying close to home:  First, Democrats want to ease the path for their party’s presumptive Congressional nominee, Josh Riley, in his effort to oust NY-19 incumbent Molinaro.  And secondly, they seek to preserve the IRC’s adjustment in the Syracuse-based 22nd Congressional District and thwart the re-election bid of another, one-term GOP incumbent, Brandon Williams.

The Independent Redistricting Commission proposed—and legislative Democrats would continue—the shift of the cities of Cortland and Auburn into Williams’ 22nd District.  The migration of Cortland to NY-22 cuts Cortland County in half.  And the retention of Cortland County’s southern towns within the 19th District is all that connects Tompkins County to the rest of the 19th’s sprawling geography. 

To look at it, Tompkins County sticks out like a sore thumb.  But of course, legislative Democrats count on Tompkins County’s overwhelming liberal base to counter-weight the 19th District’s otherwise red tinge in their efforts to oust Republican Molinaro.

Torpedoing the IRC’s Congressional maps wasn’t the only matter the State Senate took up Monday.  In fact, it spent a much longer share of its session debating a procedural bill that would make it much harder for Republicans to pick a favorite court should they choose to challenge the Democrats’ maps similar to what they did two years ago.

Senator Skoufis: The parties “reverse-engineer” these things; find a judge first, then the plaintiff.

By another party-line vote of 39 to 18, the Senate approved a bill that would limit redistricting challenges to just four State Supreme Court venues in the state; courts in Albany, Buffalo, Westchester County and Manhattan.  Not coincidentally, most of the judges in those four venues are fellow-Democrats.

When GOP petitioners launched a successful challenge to Democratic-gerrymandered Congressional maps in 2022, they chose a Republican state judge in Steuben County who threw out what Democrats had attempted and appointed a special master to draw district lines to where they currently stand.  The New York Court of Appeals allowed those lines to stand for just one election cycle, but the lesson was never lost that where you find a judge can dictate your lawsuit’s outcome.

“What happens is that party officials, they reverse-engineer these things and they look for a plaintiff” after they pick the judge, Senator James Skoufis, a Democrat, said in support of confining redistricting venue to specific courts.  “If we’re being honest here, if we’re being transparent, we all know in this chamber how these lawsuits work.”

Republican James Tedisco took the opposite view. The Saratoga County lawmaker said it’s all about exploiting partisan control.

“It seems that a supermajority isn’t good enough for you, Tedisco chided Democrats.  “This is the ultimate… judiciary and judge and court shopping,” he said, since plaintiffs under the majority’s scheme could only file suit where Democrats sit on the bench.  “There’s a variety of things you can do to win elections.  To cheat with our judiciary is not one of the better things, I think.”

Senator Tedisco to Democrats: “A supermajority isn’t good enough for you.”

Prior to Monday’s rejection of the IRC’s maps and Tuesday’s substitute etchings of their own, Democrats in the know had promised “tinkering” with the Commission’s proposal, but few had predicted any full-frontal attack as was attempted two years ago by the Legislature, a gerrymandering attempt that only  the Court of Appeals thwarted. 

Now that the dust is settling, some within the party of FDR express disappointment that their fellow party members in Albany had not proven more aggressive this week.  

“It’s hard not to look at these proposed maps and think, what was the point of all this?” Evan Roth Smith, a Democratic consultant who works on House races in New York told The New York Times Tuesday.

Roth Smith cited states where Republicans wield the gerrymander pen more shamelessly.  “When we find ourselves in the same position, we wuss out… It’s a shame,” Roth Smith told the paper.

Aside from preserving the IRC’s bluer hue to the Syracuse-based Brandon Williams district and enhancing Josh Riley’s prospects for beating Molinaro, legislative Democrats tinkered with a few districts on Long Island, most notably making it easier for newly-elected Congressman Tom Suozzi, the disgraced George Santos’ successor, to retain his seat for Democrats this November.  Media reports say some in other downstate districts view the Legislature’s cautious approach as opportunity lost.

With Suozzi’s recent election, New York now sends 16 Democrats and 10 Republicans to Congress.  Political handicappers predict the outcome of Tuesday’s tinkering could produce 18 safe Democratic seats, six similarly safe for Republicans, and two races too close to call.

“The map may be imperfect for Democrats, but it does give them a decent foundation to win back the House,” former downstate Congressman Steve Israel, a key Democratic operative, told The Times.

Another observer viewed what Democrats had done as a “mild/moderate gerrymander.”

Indeed, though it’s too soon to tell, the limited reach legislative Democrats have now taken could stave off any Republican-initiated lawsuit this year, unlike in 2022.

Dryden Democrat Mike Lane, commenting on the floor of the Tompkins County Legislature February 20th, one week before Albany lawmakers put these latest revisions on the table, called the IRC’s boundaries for the 19th District “the most ridiculous” of any in New York State.  He faulted the IRC for connecting Tompkins County to the district’s remainder by only “a small neck” of land.

Yet Lane will undoubtedly find little solace in the most recent adjustments his own party has just made.  The “small neck” remains.  The district’s gerrymandered shape proves evident.

“The redistricting games that are played; I don’t care which state, which party; they’re not a good thing,” Mike Lane said to the County Legislature that night. “I think Tompkins County got mistreated again in this redistricting process,” he complained.

But on the floor of the State Senate six days later, Republican Jack Martins put his trust in that ten-member bipartisan commission that he said did the right thing, even if lines should occasionally veer helter-skelter.

“These lines aren’t drawn haphazardly,” Martins asserted.  “You don’t have ten people just sitting around a table with magic markers and pens trying to draw these maps.  These maps are drawn meticulously.  They’re drawn in conformance with law.  They’re drawn with all the best intentions.”

Republican Martins: “You don’t have 10 people sitting around a table with magic markers.”

But the lines have been altered, nonetheless, and at Democrats’ insistence.  And it’s occurred even though the impact here in Tompkins County will prove minimal.  The Democrats’ lines and the IRC’s lines remain the same for us.  Even should a GOP court challenge succeed, we’d still have Marc Molinaro as our Congressman, and Josh Riley would most likely be his November opponent.  Those NY-22 district lines to our northeast will probably remain the same as well.

One tantalizing tidbit has emerged amidst the media buzz concerning redistricting as it impacts our own 19th District.  Nicholas Fandos of the New York Times, working his sources, reported Tuesday that Josh Riley had flirted with giving up on running against Molinaro and considered competing in the more blue-friendly redrawn 22nd District instead, had the IRC’s draft maps been accepted without change. 

Having run and lost in the 19th two years ago and having raised tons of cash for a Molinaro rematch since then, Riley’s exodus would have surprised and disappointed many diehard Democrats.  But if district lines hold—as it appears ever-more-likely they will—Riley’s prospective move north now appears as a back-up plan never in need of execution.

A little bit of gerrymandering is sometimes all that’s needed.

###

Previously posted:

Legislator urges Tompkins revisit local minimum wage

I was “unpleasantly surprised” by the wage and wealth discrepancies. Maybe we should consider something. Legislator Dawson (l), with colleague Amanda Champion, February 20th.

by Robert Lynch; February 21, 2024

Tuesday was Deborah Dawson’s birthday.  Her colleagues on the Tompkins County Legislature sung her “Happy Birthday” at one playful point in their otherwise hum-drum two-hour meeting.  Then, near meeting’s end, Dawson shook the beehive of controversy.  Perhaps casting a wish before blowing out her imaginary cake’s candles, the Lansing Democrat urged Tompkins County to revisit the possibility of setting a local minimum wage, one higher than that for any other community in New York State.

“In the last week or so, the Workers’ Center issued some information indicating that the level of wage and wealth inequality in Tompkins County is among the highest in the state,” Dawson stated spontaneously.  “Which led me to consider the Workers’ Center suggested that one solution to this problem could be to establish a countywide minimum wage that was equivalent to the determined Living Wage.”

The minimum wage that New York State sets for upstate employees is now $15 an hour, newly-raised in January.  The hourly “Living Wage,” estimated locally by Alternatives Federal Credit Union (AFCU), and at least until now left unchallenged by decision-makers, is $18.45.  Were Tompkins County to go-it-alone and set its own, higher minimum at AFCU’s supposed benchmark, low-wage workers across Tompkins County would see a 23 per cent increase in their pay.  And those who employ those workers would shoulder a 23 per cent extra burden to pay them.

“Living Wage” calculator for three decades; AFCU.

“I don’t know if that’s within our purview,” Dawson wondered aloud.  “I don’t know if that’s something we’ve considered.  I don’t know what impact that would have on local businesses,” she added.  “But if we really are concerned with leading by example and adhering to Living Wage recommendations, I would support that (namely, the higher wage).  I think that’s something we might want to investigate.”

Deborah Dawson joined the County Legislature in 2018, as did several of her liberal colleagues.  Still others have come onboard later.  So institutional memory can often run thin.  Yet now would not be the first time that local worker activists have demanded Tompkins County raise its minimum wage above what New York State otherwise requires.

In late 2015, the County Legislature considered a county-wide minimum wage at the then-calculated higher Living Wage rate of $14.34 per hour.  At the time, the statewide minimum was only $8.75.  The matter got no further than the Tompkins County Council of Governments (TCCOG), which rejected the idea in a divided vote.  The County Legislature, rather than setting a higher local wage, opted instead to urge then-Governor Cuomo to embrace a $15 per hour statewide minimum.

Living wage advocates petitioned County lawmakers again two years later, but also without success.  The minutes from a June legislative committee meeting that year reported Dawson as having spoken in favor of the higher Living Wage, though as a private resident.

“I don’t even know if it’s something realistically we can do,” said Dawson during this more recent discussion Tuesday, “but I think given how unpleasantly surprised I was by the findings of the report, we really ought to be considering whether there’s something we should be doing.”

Some could brush off Deborah Dawson’s urging as a random, throw-away remark and relegate its immediate, in-the-room responses to little more than an easily-discarded footnote to a routinely-adopted resolution that elevated a few County Government salaries to meet the new Living Wage standard.  But experience proves that this is how initiatives germinate in downtown’s Legislative garden.  And as soon as Dawson’s words were spoken, not one, but multiple committee chairpersons were found jockeying to take the lead on making the Living Wage crusade their committee’s own.

“Happy to put it on the agenda at some point and pull the right people together for what I’m sure will be a vigorous and spirited discussion on the topic,” Housing and Economic Development Committee Chair Greg Mezey volunteered.  “I’m sure it would entail multiple meetings and multiple presentations,” he assured everyone.

Workforce Diversity and Inclusion Committee Chair Veronica Pillar would rather the topic land in her lap.  And the Budget, Capital, and Personnel Committee, on which Dawson sits, was another potential destination.  Members sounded open to multi-committee collaboration.  What that interest speaks to is enthusiasm, at least on the County Legislature’s Left flank.  Committees take the issue up; activists flood the gallery; the sausage grinding begins; and something cobbled together invariably finds itself on the agenda.

If Tompkins County were to supplant New York State’s $15 minimum wage with its own $18.45 per hour AFCU standard, Tompkins County would require employers to pay more than even those in New York City and on Long Island do, where the hourly rate is currently $16, and set to rise to $17 by 2026.  Upstate minimum wages will climb to $16 by 2026.  All these rates lie below the Living Wage suggested locally.

No one spoke directly against a higher local minimum wage during Tuesday’s seven-minute impromptu discussion.  Republicans remained mum. But Dryden’s Mike Lane came closest to tossing a bit of cold water.  Records show Lane spoke out against setting a Living Wage minimum at that TCCOG meeting in 2015.  And Tuesday, he voiced caution once again.

“We’ve always been an area with low wages and high cost of living in Tompkins County,” Lane acknowledged.  “So what they’re saying is not surprising,” he admitted.  “But to try to have us as Tompkins County have a local law requiring all employers to have a Living Wage as the minimum wage; first of all… I’d be very surprised if we have any authority to do that.”

“I’d be surprised if we have any authority to do that.” Dryden’s Lane addressing the prospect of a local minimum wage.

To Lane’s point, the legislator may have recalled that during the 2015 discussions, advocates conceded they’d need to seek Home Rule legislation through the State Senate and Assembly to elevate the local minimum wage above what Albany then mandated.

“And if you’re going to do this,” Lane said Tuesday of prospects for a local minimum wage, “I think you probably need some kind of a task force looking at it because the ramifications of this and how it would affect our employers out there from not-for-profits to regular small businesses could be very large.”

“And does that mean our businesses start leaving Tompkins County?” Lane then asked.

The fear of business exodus to Tompkins County’s neighbors became a prime argument against the local Living Wage initiative a decade ago.  Indeed, in 2015, the City and Town of Ithaca had rejected Living Wage laws of their own in fear Ithaca businesses would move to rural towns just to get beyond the law’s reach.

What Tuesday’s meeting missed most to liven it up was Mike Sigler.  The Lansing Republican, excused from the session for unexplained reasons—perhaps he was away pursuing his campaign for State Senate—would have, no doubt, confronted Deborah Dawson head-on, as he often does on such occasions.  One can only draw upon a December 2015 legislative minimum wage debate to envision what Sigler might have said.

Not present. But had he been. Mike Sigler (from a past meeting)

“If the minimum wage was passed locally at (the then-proposed $15),” the December 1, 2015 minutes quote Sigler, “the big businesses would benefit the most and the small businesses would be most negatively impacted.”   Sigler’s quotation continued, “[W]hile the intentions are good there will be many unintended consequences that will not be good.”

Alternatives Federal Credit Union, using a multiple-source of data, has estimated local “Living Wage” incomes since 1994.  Its criteria consider local expenses for housing, food, health insurance, clothing and even entertainment.  Leaders have never seriously questioned the credit union’s metrics, until maybe now.

“How did we decide that we were going to use Alternatives Federal Credit Union as the basis for this?” Newfield-Enfield legislator Randy Brown asked Tuesday.

Inertia seems to be the answer.  Mike Lane recalled that the AFCU standard arose from a blue-ribbon committee’s study under a prior County Administrator.  It was a panel comprised of non-profit representatives, people from the Chamber of Commerce, and others.  Charged with setting a Living Wage for the County’s own workforce and contractors, the committee chose the credit union’s formula.

Should we continue with the Alternatives’ standard?  “We don’t have to,” Lane told Brown.  “We could do something different,” he said.  “But at this point, this is what we’re doing.”

Why do we use AFCU as the basis?” Randy Brown, questioning why inertia rules.

AFCU released its new $18.45 Living Wage calculation in November. Using slightly-modified methodology resulting from a new, heightened tie-in with Cornell’s School of Industrial and Labor Relations, AFCU said the Living Wage rose from $16.61 for the prior year.  In its eight-page report documenting its estimate, AFCU said it took “nine basic needs categories” into account, placing childcare expense into a separate, additional category.

“In 2022-23, workers’ wages in Tompkins County have not kept up with the rising cost of living,” the AFCU study concluded.  “Out of approximately 48,020 wage earners (i.e., excluding the self-employed) living in Tompkins County, we estimate that 38% earn hourly wages below $18.45,” the report stated.  “This means that just under 18,000 workers earn less than the County’s 2023 living wage estimate.”  The report also detailed alleged racial and gender inequities.

Legislator Rich John asked whether AFCU’s methods for reaching its estimate have gotten a fresh vetting.  County Administrator Lisa Holmes conceded that no one in her office has studied the credit union’s methods since their adoption many years ago.

“I think going forward we probably should have somebody at the County looking at the methodology just to say this makes since,” John responded.

Holmes informed the Legislature that Tuesday’s adoption of the AFCU revised Living Wage for County employees would have minimal impact.  The rise would affect only a few seasonal workers and information aides.

###

Posted Previously:

Tompkins to stay in a “redder” NY-19, Commission says

Ready to vote? Eight of the 10 members of the New York State Independent Redistricting Commission captured by camera, Feb. 15

by Robert Lynch, February 15, 2024

Tompkins County Democrats, who’d hoped their super-blue bastion would finally wrest itself from Republican dominance and become the southern anchor of a more progressive-friendly Congressional district, found disappointment Thursday when the bipartisan New York State Independent Redistricting Commission (IRC) released, adopted, and sent to the New York Legislature its revised district lines to cover this November’s election and likely those for the rest of this decade.

How the IRC would carve up Congressional Districts

The Commission, by a vote of nine-to-one, its members evenly-divided between the two parties, voted to keep all of Tompkins County within the sprawling, eastern southern tier 19th Congressional District, the district narrowly won two years ago by Republican Congressman Marc Molinaro.  The Commission changed NY-19 only at the edges—literally—but the revisions it’s made by some accounts could make it harder for the presumptive Democratic nominee, Josh Riley, to beat Molinaro this November.

Neither Riley nor Molinaro had commented on their websites about the Commission’s recommendations, as of Thursday evening.

“The process was not without its challenges, but I am proud to say that we have worked cooperatively and collaboratively to address those challenges, and so will be voting on a single consensus plan today,” Ken Jenkins, a Democrat and Chairman of the IRC said.  “This vote is ultimately a victory for the commission process and for democratic—small “d”—democratic participation in the State of New York.”

“We came into existence to solve these kinds of problems, Charles Nesbitt, Republican co-Chair of the Commission, said.  And their solution, Nesbitt added, can only happen “through cooperation and compromise.”

“The process has met both of these challenges, “Nesbitt said.  “And we are here today with a map that we have agreed to and sent to the Legislature.”

The process was not without its challenges;” IRC Chair Ken Jenkins.

But what the New York State Senate and Assembly do with that map handed them Thursday remains an open question.  Democrats hold supermajorities in both legislative chambers.  Two years ago, when a somewhat different Commission scenario played out—taking the form of a partisan deadlock on the Commission with two, partisan-competing maps handed up—legislators played the gerrymander game.  They drew their own maps bound to favor Democratic victories in otherwise swing districts and “packed” Republicans into ruby-red enclaves like Elyse Stefanik’s in the North Country and the western southern tier district long held by former Congressman Tom Reed.

But the Court of Appeals struck down the Democrats’ gerrymandering.  A court-appointed special master drew the more politically-competitive maps that we now have.  And because of that judicially-directed artwork, voters in 2022 elected Marc Molinaro in NY-19 and Republican Brandon Williams to our north in the Syracuse-centered 22nd District.

When a more liberally-tilted Court of Appeals last December concluded that the special master’s maps were good for only one election cycle, the Court charged the Commission to return to work.  It did.  But this time, Commissioners did not deadlock.  So the New York Legislature faces different circumstances now than it did two years ago.  What’s more, lawmakers stand in recess, not scheduled to return to work until about February 26th.  That would be one day before candidates begin circulating party designating petitions. 

“The redistricting process in New York is already two years behind schedule and we’re up against deadlines,” Jeffrey Wice, senior fellow at New York Law School’s New York Census and Redistricting Institute, told the downstate-based website City & State. “I don’t think anybody has the will to really fight this thing out and then get back in court over again and prolong the process any further.”

The only way was through cooperation and compromise; Charles Nesbitt (l) with Chairman Jenkins.

Two years ago, Senate Deputy Leader Michael Gianaris proved to be gerrymandering’s wildest cheerleader in the upper house.  Before the Commission’s vote, Gianaris sounded less ready this time for a fight, with no pre-prepared plan in the works. “I trust that our team can turn around a map quickly if necessary, but don’t know if it will be,” was all that Gianaris would tell City & State’s Rebecca Lewis.

Yet at least one Albany Democrat is bracing for battle.  He’s State Senator James Skoufis, the lawmaker who most recently enraged upstate Republicans by leading the drive to move local elections to even-numbered years.  Skoufis did not mince words.  “These maps are a disgrace and ought to be rejected by the Legislature,” the Hudson Valley Democrat said.

While Tompkins County would remain within Molinaro’s 19th Congressional District should the Redistricting Commission’s maps be adopted, some of our county’s immediate neighbors would find themselves transplanted into different districts.  Cortland County, now wholly within NY-19, would be sliced east-to-west.  Southern towns would stay within the Molinaro District; those to the north, including the City of Cortland, would join Brandon Williams’ 22nd District.  Southern Cayuga County, including Auburn, would be plucked out of Republican Claudia Tenney’s 24th District and merged into Williams’ as well.

How the new NY-19 would shape up. The turquoise boundary is us; note the new NY-22 to the north.

Tioga County, currently totally within the 19th District, would move in total to the western southern tier 23rd District, where Republican Nick Langworthy represents many of Tom Reed’s former constituents.  Schuyler County, like Cortland, would be chopped across the middle.  The Town of Hector and other northern towns in that county would slide from Langworthy’s district to Tenney’s.

Many of the adjustments to the 19th District happen to the east.  Tompkins County would still remain the 19th’s westernmost anchor, and Binghamton and Broome County would remain within its bounds.  But the 19th would expand to include all of Otsego County, plus Schoharie County, and portions of Orange County in the Catskill region.  The IRC’s plans would continue to stretch the district east to the Massachusetts state line.

The adjustments to our district’s eastern fringe could be the product of that “cooperation” and “compromise” that Commissioners Jenkins and Nesbitt talked about.  Republicans may achieve gains for Molinaro.  Yet Democrats may secure benefits for their party’s freshman Congressman in a district to the southeast of ours, Representative Pat Ryan.

Endangered? Maybe. Brandon Williams

But the big prize for Democrats may be that Syracuse-based 22nd District, that Republican Brandon Williams won two years ago by the narrowest of margins and which Democrats would dearly love to flip this time.  Democrats won’t have Ithaca to add to the 22nd to make it more progressive-friendly.  But the IRC’s plan would give them Cortland and Auburn.

The Cook Political Report has rated Williams’ 22nd District a toss-up, and Commission tinkering has probably tipped the scales toward Democrats a bit further.

Grant Reeher, director of the Campbell Public Affairs Institute at Syracuse University, told WRVO Radio that the 22nd Congressional District has gotten more Democratic friendly.  But he notes that the district was already Democratic friendly and doesn’t view the new congressional lines as a game changer.

Meanwhile, Brandon Williams is taking things in stride. “I find myself in my 5th congressional race in just two-years,” the generally Trump-loyal Republican said in a statement. “Changing lines won’t change minds—voters want common sense and relief from Progressive fantasies.”

[Expect more to be posted as this story develops.]

###

Posted Previously:

Three strikes and out

Cease-fire supporters fall a vote short of victory amidst legislative agony

by Robert Lynch; February 10, 2024

“Globally is impacting locally.  This is our chance to do something,”

Legislator Greg Mezey (D-Dryden)

 “(Constituents ask), What in heck are you doing talking about foreign policy?”

Legislator Lee Shurtleff (R-Groton)

“There is no queer liberation without Palestinian liberation.” Rowan Keller-Smith, one of 38 speakers who supported the Gaza Cease Fire Resolution before the Tompkins County Legislature, February 6th.

Pro-Palestinian partisans were dealt a decisive blow this week.  No, it didn’t happen on the urban battlefields of the Gaza Strip.  Defeat came instead within the comfortable confines of Tompkins County Legislative Chambers.  For those committed activists who’d so passionately pressed their insurgency under the vaulted ceilings of the Gov. Daniel D. Tompkins Building, Tuesday may have marked the final setback and hastened their admission of defeat—maybe.

As they now have done for three meetings in a row, advocates for a Gaza Cease-Fire Resolution journeyed this past Tuesday to Legislative Chambers.  They grabbed every chair, stood in the doorways, and trooped one-by-one to the nearest microphone to implore the County Legislature to do something; make an effort—one perhaps persuasive; more likely merely symbolic—to urge the quieting of conflict in the Middle East. 

“The call that goes up for a cease-fire comes from the human heart,” Ithacan Claire Grady told lawmakers this latest Tuesday night, her comments typical among those who spoke.  “Killing civilians is never OK; not one thousand, not ten thousand, not 30 thousand.  And when it is being done in your name, you have a responsibility to take steps to stop it.”

Activist Claire Grady: “Not 1,000… not 30,000… Killing civilians is never OK.”

Activists insisted that those seated before them at mahogany desks should lean on Congress, President Biden, Prime Minister Netanyahu, and maybe just about anybody else with an ear to listen, to support an end to the Israeli-Hamas War, and to end the war now whether Israel wants to or not.

At this latest meeting, unlike at the last two sessions, proponents of peace had something to chew on.  Four legislative Democrats, including Ulysses-Enfield’s Anne Koreman, had drafted a 12-paragraph, two-page “Urgent Humanitarian and Local Imperatives” initiative and put it on the evening’s agenda.  The measure’s bullet points called for support of an Israel-Hamas cease-fire, the release of all civilian hostages by Hamas, and the “initiation of an international peace process to negotiate a two-state solution” in hopes of a lasting peace.

The resolution came close to passing, yet it didn’t. 

Some thirty-eight public speakers took to the mics that night.  Public comment consumed nearly two opening hours of the Legislature’s session.  Lawmakers then followed with nearly an hour’s worth of trading words of their own.  But when the clerk called the roll, the Koreman-backed Resolution lost by a single vote.

The Resolution secured a plurality, but not a majority.  Seven voted in its favor; six opposed it.  Lansing’s Deborah Dawson didn’t make the meeting, so affirmation never reached the eight-vote threshold. 

Resolution co-author Pillar: “This is about life versus death…”

Though Dawson at a future session could seek reconsideration of what got voted down, she’s unlikely to do so.  The Lansing Democrat has criticized like initiatives on prior occasions.  She’s viewed the effort as ineffective posturing with words certain to fall on deaf ears.

“This is about life versus death and destruction,” Veronica Pillar, one of the three who assisted Koreman, spoke of the proposal she’d helped write. “Our constituents are not ignorant or deluded,” Pillar continued.  “They know that we don’t directly change foreign policy.  What they also know is that our statements ring louder than their statements.”

“Globally is impacting locally,” Resolution co-author Greg Mezey argued in defense of the Legislature’s weighing in on a war far away.  “This is our chance to do something.”

“How anybody can think that taking a stand against—standing up for what’s right for humanity is not our place, I don’t understand that.”

Mezey spoke the longest; argued the hardest in favor of the measure that failed.  He said he, Koreman, Pillar, and Travis Brooks had tried to make their submission even-handed; to deliberately moderate the more Palestinian-favoring, Israeli-critical position taken in a mid-December model document handed up by the Tompkins County Human Rights Commission.  The Commission’s call had ignited the discussion that drew Palestine’s supporters to Legislature meetings beginning in early-January.

Legislator Mezey: “Challenge us to do the right thing.”

The Resolution is “very unbiased” and “a good place for us to start,” former Legislature Chair Shawna Black, one of the measure’s eventual seven supporters, stated.  Black quoted a 12-year old Palestinian boy, who’d lived locally two years ago, but who’d sent her a post card urging that America should stop sending weapons to the conflict.

“I’m just asking my colleagues to think about our constituents,” Koreman commented.  “You might not think it’s your job, but they’re asking us to do this.”

Well, maybe.  Koreman’s assessment bases itself more on optics than a formal head count.  To be sure, each of the 38 who turned out and spoke at the meeting that night supported a cease-fire and the Resolution endorsing it.  But legislators also had received up to 700 letters and emails.  And most of the writers, we’re told, had urged the Legislature not to get involved.  Mezey sought to discount many of the written submissions, finding their pleadings repetitive and formulaic.  He also said the objections had subsided once he and his three partners had toned-down the Human Rights Commission’s more partisan proposal.

“A Resolution like this will never make our constituents happy,” Mike Lane, the Legislature’s longest-serving member, opined.  “It will make some constituents happy.  It will make other constituents very unhappy.” Lane wondered aloud whether pro-Israeli speakers, present at earlier sessions but not lately, had felt “intimidated” to stay away by the hostile reception given them by Israel’s critics seated amongst them.

Dryden’s Lane: “A Resolution like this will never make our constituents happy.”

“I think that the best thing to do here is nothing, frankly,” Lane concluded, “because I don’t think this Resolution speaks to the majority of the people.”

Legislator Mike Sigler felt Mike Lane’s fears fell a little too close for comfort.

“Something else somebody said that concerned me was that they said they would ‘remember you in the street,’” Sigler recalled.  “I’m not exactly sure how to take that.”

Sigler, a Republican now running for State Senate, also took issue with those he’d heard talking about Hamas “in colorful terms, in positive terms… as if those folks didn’t bear any responsibility for what happened.”

“I think cease-fire has been marketed as a word that’s very symbolic in this debate,” Sigler asserted.  Sigler’s starting-point toward peace would be straightforward for Hamas:  “Release the hostages; Step One.  Do it today.  That’s already a war crime from the jump… release them!”

Just about every legislator addressed the Cease-Fire Resolution last Tuesday.  Ithaca’s Rich John reprised his opinion, stated days earlier in a committee meeting, that resolving foreign policy lies beyond his own skill set.

Sigler: “Remember you in the street?” How do I take that?

“We have none of the authority (that we) bring to a local issue on something like this,” John told colleagues and spectators.  “We have no better judgement than those of you in this room,” he added.  “I can’t tell you that this is the right course of action.”

Newfield’s Randy Brown insisted that regardless of how locals vote, Biden and Israel will do what they please, and the war will not end.  Brown urged everyone to drop the recent time-wasting discussions, and get back to what local legislators were elected to do.

“Two-and-a-half hours we just spent on this; and the two hours before and the two hours before, and all the emails; I get the frustration and the helplessness of the people,” Brown acknowledged.  “So my issue is local:  Let’s spend two hours on homelessness.  Let’s spend two hours on youth mental health, on youth programming; let’s focus on youth stuff.” 

And to those in the gallery, our local legislator had some advice: “Help your neighbor and spend time on that.”  Knock on a door; plow out a driveway, because, Brown said, “Nothing we do in this Resolution is going to help.”

From Brown’s cross-county district, Republican Lee Shurtleff, agreed.

“I’m not sure I can have a strong impact on changing foreign policy,” Shurtleff conceded.  But repetitive, drawn-out discussions over a distant war, he said, have distracted him and others from local concerns like EMS coverage, food insecurity, airport revitalization, and an unresolved contract with corrections officers.

“I think there’s a lot here that we haven’t paid attention to for the last two or three months,” Shurtleff argued.  “And I’m also listening to the constituents stopping me on the street and saying, ‘What in heck are you doing talking about foreign policy?’ And I have a lot of them asking me that question.”

Greg Mezey got the last word in before the vote.  Nearly three hours into a meeting where this single topic dominated, Mezey’s passion rose to a near-boil.

Groton’s Shurtleff: “Talking about foreign policy?” When the airport needs help and corrections officers lack a contract?

To Mike Lane:  “Some people are going to be upset by some of us voting on the right side of history, and I’m OK with that.”  (The gallery applauded.)

To Lee Shurtleff:  “This is not comfortable.  This is uncomfortable, and this job should be uncomfortable because every day should challenge us to do the right thing.  Right now, this is what’s in front of us.  We have the opportunity to do the right thing.”

To Randy Brown: “Tomorrow, gosh, I sure hope it’s homelessness; then I hope it’s child care; I hope it’s economic development, food security and all the other topics that we have to address.  And I hope we give it as much time and we hear little to no complaint about the time we spend creating those subjects, because it’s equally as important.”

And to All: “So don’t have any shame. You’ve got to go to sleep at night.  You have to sit with how you’re going to vote, and I respect that.”

Even had it secured Dawson’s unlikely endorsement, the Mezey-Koreman-Pillar-and-Brooks Resolution, passing by one vote or two, would never have commanded much persuasive power beyond the Tompkins County line. It might have quieted a conscience or two, but done little else.  Face it; a recommendation that just squeaks by bears the consistency of oatmeal.

The Tompkins County Legislature reconvenes February 20th.  Will the pro-Palestinian crowds return?  Will their passion punch through?  Will something revised be put onto the floor?  Or will this just all die now?  Principle has a way of outweighing pragmatism, of course.  And for some, hope always springs eternal.

###

Allegiance’s Last Call at City Hall

Analysis & Commentary by Robert Lynch; February 8, 2024

The Pledge of Allegiance died at Ithaca’s Common Council Wednesday night.  I was there only hours before it took its final breath.  No doubt, a few in the room had wished I’d not been there.  They’d rather I’d declined to provide patriotic reverence any final comfort.  To a few of the City of Ithaca  leaders whom voters recently elected, it would have been far better that words of  national pride and loyalty had departed quietly; expired in the darkness without friends around and absent any fitting eulogy.

Alderperson Pierre Saint-Perez joining this Councilperson in the Pledge of Allegiance, Ithaca Common Council, Feb. 7th (Grainy photo courtesy of City Hall)

Had I not chosen to attend, my detractors would have gotten their wish.  I’m glad that I was there, that I led in what was likely the Pledge of Allegiance’s final recitation at City Hall.  I only regret that no one else—like someone who actually lived in the City—had stepped up first and beat me to the punch.

We’re told Common Council meetings haven’t employed the Pledge of Allegiance for a while now.  It’s supposed to be recited, yet conveniently always gets overlooked.  No one seems to care.  To wedge-in what I needed to say, I employed privilege-of-the-floor as my chosen—and my only—procedural tool.  Twelve people spoke to Council before I did.  The others had other things to talk about.  I had but one topic.  It mattered most:

“Good Evening.  Robert Lynch; I’m a Councilperson in the Town of Enfield.  I appreciate being at your meeting tonight.  I would like to start by inviting anybody in this room who is willing and able to stand for the Pledge of Allegiance:

[I stood up, put hand on heart, and pledged allegiance to the Flag positioned at the front of the room.  Approximately half of Common Council, including Mayor Robert Cantelmo, joined me in the recitation.  The others remained seated.  Five or six persons in the visitors’ gallery behind me also joined and recited the words.  I returned to my speaker’s chair and continued my message:]

“And I said that.  Some people may say, ‘Oh, that’s performative.’  No, it’s not.  It’s demonstrative.  It demonstrates how short the Pledge of Allegiance is and also how important it is to some people in this community who care about tradition, who care about patriotism, and care about setting a good example for the county seat of  Tompkins County. 

“This is the Number One municipality in this county, and it does set a standard.  Tompkins County Government, they start the meetings with the Pledge of Allegiance.  I attended my first Common Council meeting back in 1970, as a reporter.  And we always started the meeting with the Pledge of Allegiance.  It gives a good framework to the meeting, and it makes a good point.  And I hope when you consider revising your agenda in the course of setting your new Rules of Procedure tonight that you consider keeping the Pledge a part of it….”

A few persons behind me in the gallery clapped as I concluded.  I sensed some reluctance to their revealing their true beliefs.  And all the time I sat in Council Chambers that night, a sensed a pungent aroma of political discomfort pervading the place, at least it did for me.  This is not Enfield, I thought.  This is not our Town Board, not even during some of our worst moments.  This may not even be the United States of America.  This, to me, is somewhere else, a foreign land not my home; certainly not the Ithaca I’d grown to love for now a half-century; a town liberal; yet still sane.   Is this the new reality that Ithaca and its City government has now become?   If so, somebody, please change it.

A portion of Common Council’s revised agendas; notice what got cut out.

I excused myself to attend a meeting back in Enfield, one for which I was already a half-hour late.  But when I returned home from that Planning Board session, I captured Common Council’s closing minutes on City Hall’s web stream. The decision I cared most about I found far too predictable.  Indeed it was worse than I had feared.

Nearing the end of its clogged, four-hour agenda, Common Council took a mere twenty seconds a to cast aside the Pledge of Allegiance with amazing dispatch and profound disregard.  As it did, City lawmakers also ushered in new, sweeping Rules of Procedure, and did so without a wisp of critical analysis or reasoned dissent.  If you hadn’t known what was happening, you would have missed its true impact.  First, one Alderperson moved; another seconded; zero discussion; and a unanimous vote. And with that, the Pledge of Allegiance was gone… and a whole lot of other things changed too.

True, Common Council hammered out many of the procedural nuts and bolts at a laborious working session two weeks earlier.  When they did, members toyed with finding a fitting substitute for the Pledge.  They couldn’t find one, and so they simply gave up.

The meeting’s video replay shows Alderpersons Margaret Fabrizio, Patrick Kuehl, Clyde Lederman, and Pierre Saint-Perez joining Mayor Cantelmo and me in honoring Old Glory.  That’s it.  Members Phoebe Brown, Kayla Matos, Tiffany Kumar, Ducson Nguyen, and David Shapiro remained in their seats.  Kris Haines-Sharp, though mostly off-camera, appeared to be seated as well.  

Mayor Cantelmo with Alderpersons Matos, Brown and Haines-Sharp (off camera) joining the unanimous vote to kill the Pledge.

No other members of the public spoke to the Pledge of Allegiance that night.  But after public comments had ended, three members of Council took their turns.  They included both of Council’s African-American members, Phoebe Brown and Kayla Matos.  They spoke to me, though in my absence. Their words were not kind:

Phoebe Brown:  “(To) the Gentleman from the Town of Enfield:  How dare you!  How dare you.  I think of myself as a 6-year old, 5-year old going to school, saying the Pledge of Allegiance, and it had been built in me that this was something that I’d do that I would start to cry, saying the Pledge of Allegiance, until I became older and understood what was being done to me, what was happening to me, that I was being forced to believe in something that didn’t say nothing about me.  When I walked out of my school and back into my house and the conditions that we lived in with something that tells us how much they care for us and how much—what the Pledge of Allegiance… what it’s done to people who look like me; come on:  How dare you; How dare you.  You give people a chance to say what works for them.”

Kayla Matos: “I would like to address the Council member from Enfield as to how it is—how not saying or reciting the Pledge of Allegiance is unpatriotic.  Personally, being a person of color and being with the (unintelligible) systems that has literally destroyed and stoked down my people, I don’t think that it is fair to say that our country has devoted themselves… or any of their policies to people of color who have literally built the country that we are on.  That’s why we’re having conversations now about reparations and things.  And also talking about traditions; this country is also built on traditions that aren’t working (unintelligible) for my people of color.  The reason I ran for the seat and I won this seat was because I’m trying to be a voice and an advocate  for those people, that I’m trying to tear down these systems that don’t work  for these people and rebuild them.  And the best way to do that is politically in the government.”

Tiffany Kumar (a Cornell student): “On the subject of patriotism: Dr. Martin Luther King, himself, who said in the Letter from the Birmingham Jail; he argued that we have a patriotic duty to stand in opposition to oppressive institutions and policies, especially ones that are created in times when not everybody had an equal say in them.  But that is the best way to honor the laws and traditions we have in this country that are democratic and just, like Black History Month.”

Tiffany Kumar (c): “Dr. King said ‘We have a patriotic duty to stand in opposition….'”

I will leave it to others to categorize the agendas, parse the logic, and ascertain the motivations underpinning the objections expressed by my three Common Council critics that night.  Yet I find it hard to equate perceived grievance or progressive guilt with disavowing the banner of the nation that accords us the freedom to right our society’s wrongs and lift up those oppressed.

Moreover, I never recall the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. having refused to pledge to the flag.  And I believe our nation’s highest-currently elected African-American leader, Vice President Kamala Harris, still places hand over heart.  So rejecting the nation’s symbol because of our country’s flawed past and imperfect present, for me, fails to register.  Beyond that, others may judge.

But win or lose, I did something good Wednesday night.  I challenged group-think.  I held open for public examination a lockstep, politically-fashionable ultra-liberal ideology and placed it in contrast with the traditional, mainstream patriotic values that I find most people embrace, except, perhaps, in the bowels of Ithaca.  Had I not been in Council Chambers, nobody would have heard my point of view, nor Phoebe Brown’s, for that matter. 

When personal opinions go unchallenged, one never learns, one never grows.  Ithaca politics, I fear, has traveled to Berkeley and maybe beyond.  I harbored no illusions Wednesday night.  Common Council was going to expel the Pledge of Allegiance from its meetings.  But the random applause a few people provided informs me that Council’s view is not everyone’s view. 

Ithaca, you’re more or less on your own, now.  I likely won’t revisit another Common Council meeting for a while.  I did what was needed, but I find the air down there not to my liking.  I’ll stay in Enfield, instead.  Yes, we in Enfield may say the Pledge of Allegiance only by request.  But at least we have it at the ready.  I intend to use it, more so now because Ithaca no longer does.

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