Double-Down on Downtown

Lawmakers stick with a close-to-the-Courthouse Center of Government, yet split on size and cost

Reporting and Analysis by Robert Lynch; March 9, 2026

“It’s striking to me that we could buy a house for each person that’s going to be working in this building for the cost of this project.”

Tompkins Co. legislator Judith Hubbard; Center of Government discussion, March 3.

A newly-sworn and radically overhauled Tompkins County Legislature took its first turn these recent days toward changing course in building a downtown-based, ever-more-expensive Center of Government.  The Legislature didn’t alter that course.  Members failed in their attempts to do so, yet still took forever that night to acknowledge their deadlock.

What legislators circled back to at their March 3 meeting, but only after nearly three hours of endless, exhaustive debate, was the default reaffirmation of a June 2025 resolution that commits county government and us taxpayers to construct the Courthouse-adjacent building.  Last year’s blueprint may prove outdated, however.  Price increases and revised operational demands may render last year’s design concept either ill-advised or impossible to build.

The marathon meeting’s most telling take-away, however, may involve those paths no longer considered.

Lawmakers last Tuesday signaled zero interest in replacing their preferred downtown vision with something else, someplace maybe cheaper.  Virtually ignored were frugal alternatives like vacant office space at Harold’s Square on the Commons, the modern, minimally-occupied buildings at the Cornell Business Park near the airport, or the now-deserted retail wasteland that once comprised at the Shops at Ithaca Mall.

Back on June 3, by a nine-to-four vote, the Legislature approved a resolution expressing intent to fund “up to $50 million… for the development of the Center of Government (COG) project to be located on the 300 block of North Tioga Street.” That was the last significant public direction given architects and administrators.  The resolution called for a new building of 45,000 to 48,000 square feet.

Yet by the time Holt Architects presented their schematic drawings to the public last December 8,what had emerged was a 59,000-square foot, four-story edifice for the corner of Buffalo and Tioga Streets, a structure significantly larger and more costly than the building conceived and authorized six months earlier.

“There was a vision that was set,” County Administrator Korsah Akumfi sought to explain to quizzical legislators at this more recent March meeting. “So the size and scope of the building has increased over time based on that vision,” Akumfi continued. “That’s the reason why there’s been some degree of cost increases and size expansion.”

It may be Administrator Akumfi’s way of explaining away the unexplainable; of justifying why rules that were set were not later followed.  Korsah Akumfi wants a new, fully-sized Downtown Center of Government.  He wants to make the vision reality.

“So can we build a 48,000 square foot building for $50 Million?”  Iris Packman, who only joined the Legislature in January, asked project planners.

“I can’t do that math in my head,” Holt Architects’ lead designer Quay Thompson answered.  (True, he should have anticipated Packman’s question.) 

“I think that even Holt sort of put  this a little bit naïve number of 48,000 square feet and $50 Million on the table; like that’s on my shoulders,” Thompson admitted, somewhat sheepishly.  “As we got in deeper in the real moment, it wasn’t a 48,000-square foot building to solve the problem,” the architect explained.  “So the problem that we were trying to solve that we thought was a 48,000 square foot building and a $50 Million budget turned out to be a 57,000-square foot building and a $60 Million budget.

Over the course of the fall and early-winter, a County-sponsored webpage that tracks the project had quietly crept the project’s price tag upwards to its presently-estimated $64 Million.

Still, it could have been worse, much worse.  “I don’t want to freak people out,” Thompson revealed, perhaps publicly for the first time, “but the first estimate we got back was like $74 Million, and we weren’t going to present that building to you,” the architect assured.  Extras, he said, were cut.

As with so much of the Center of Government’s tortured travels these past months—indeed, past years—the public becomes the last to know of what’s being decided.  The March 3 meeting proved no exception.

The night’s agenda had listed only a “Special Topical Presentation and/or Discussion;” on the project, namely the County Administrator’s “Center of Government Project Update.” A multi-page compilation of PowerPoint slides was included in the agenda packet posted online about a week earlier, yet no resolutions listed nor indications given that action that night would be taken.

Yet midway through the marathon discussion, Legislature Chair Shawna Black sprung two competing resolutions on colleagues.  By their reactions, legislators knew they’d be asked to vote.  It was only those of us on the outside that hadn’t a clue.

This past January, the Legislature’s membership had turned over by 50 percent, Black would later explain. “If I were a new person, I wouldn’t support what the people before me supported,” the Chair insisted.

Shawna Black’s parliamentary initiative pushed to the limits the dictates of New York’s Open Meetings Law.  That law is supposed to require “to the extent practicable” that action items get publicized 24 hours in advance.  There was no emergency here, just a legislature chair’s preference.  “Practicable” necessity regularly gets stretched in legislative chambers (just as it does, for that matter, by the Enfield Town Board).  No matter.  Legislators accepted the agenda’s additions willingly.  No one bothered to seek the County Attorney’s opinion.

The resolutions, we were told, were drafted by County Administration at Shawna Black’s request.  One would pay deference to reality, acknowledging that costs and departmental needs had grown, and would enlarge the Downtown Center of Government’s size to the Administration’s recommended 57,000 square feet and inflate project cost to as much as $60 Million.

A second, scaled-back alternative would contain the new building to a maximum 40,000 (originally 37,000) square feet and limit maximum cost to $45 Million.  Rough calculations that night projected the property tax levy would rise by three percent for the leaner option, by 4.5 percent for the more expensive choice.

Battle lines were drawn; strategies plotted; votes taken.  But decisions came only after debate; much, much debate.

Both resolutions would fail in the end.  First, the 57,000-sqiuare foot option lost, seven votes to nine.  Then, the scaled-back alternative failed as well, six votes to ten.  Many of those who supported one resolution opposed the other.  After their second vote, legislators, bewildered, exasperated, and woefully deadlocked, retreated to a half-hour’s worth of other business, then to an executive session, and then home.

Among lawmakers representing Enfield, Democrat Rachel Ostlund supported the more expensive choice, but opposed the scaled-back alternative.  Republican Randy Brown first signaled he’d endorse the 37,000-square foot scale-back, but ended up opposing both resolutions.

“My constituents, by the way, are not for this—any of it.” Brown said of the Center of Government.  “I think we need to measure ourselves,” Brown continued.  “You need to meet people where they are, and they’re not at this building,” Newfield-Enfield’s legislator observed.  Brown would prefer Tompkins County seek out unused “public-facing” space at local schools.

Ithaca’s Veronica Pillar emerged as a leading proponent of the big building option. 

“I think the question is, are we going all in with—we are going to give our employees what they need to do their jobs… or are we going to continue to squeeze for the goal of saving  tax money from our constituents?” Pillar questioned. 

“It’s not nothing to raise property taxes,” Pillar acknowledged, “but no one’s going to be like, ‘My gosh, I’m so glad the county tax levy was like kind-of low; I’m so glad they made that building smaller.’  They’re going to be like, ‘My school taxes are high,’ or whatever it is.”

A newer legislator, Ithaca’s Judith Hubbard, drew a different comparison, one that raised a number to remember.

“If I take the construction cost of the buildings and I divide them by the number of people who are going to be working in the building, those costs… are between 325 and 380 thousand dollars per person, which is the cost of a median house in the county,” Hubbard pointed out.  “It’s startling to me that we could buy a house for each person that’s going to be working in this building for the cost of this project,” she said.  “I just don’t know how to wrap my head around that fact.”

Korsah Akumfi pushed back on Hubbard’s comparison.

“This is a public building,” the Administrator countered.  “So we cannot quantify the cost by the number of people who will be working there, but we need to look at the intrinsic value of the building (to) the community as well and the number of residents that will be accessing services and issues of that nature.”

Akumfi compared the COG to the Tompkins County Public Library, renovated for government use decades ago at a cost of $10 Million.  It employs just 20 people.

“I don’t think that’s a reasonable comparison,” Hubbard responded.  She noted that the library lends books.

Judith Hubbard, like Randy Brown, opposed both resolutions.

The Center of Government design that Holt architects unveiled last December would stand four stories tall.  To pare down size and cost, designers would likely delete its planned fourth floor, yet provision the building to accept one or two more stories later, should government grow to demand added space.

Departmental relocations for any downsized project never drew much discussion at the March 3 session.

“We’re not going to be putting departments into rooms,” Shawna Black told lawmakers that night, admonishing them not to get too granular.  Nevertheless, if the building’s top floor is lopped off, the resulting departmental musical chairs would likely retain Workforce Development in rented space, rather than move it to the Old Jail.

Under Administration’s calculations, a 37,000-square foot building could accommodate 105 full-time equivalent employees.  The larger option would accommodate 165.  The half-measured option would keep several departments in leased space indefinitely.

“So on a 50-100-year building, 20-24 extra work spaces isn’t rally that absurd, and a 37,000-square foot (building) is really underbuilt and not sufficient from day one,” Dryden legislator Greg Mezey concluded.

During the evening’s discussion the inadequacy of on-site (or even available off-site) downtown parking was carefully glossed over.  It never got mentioned.  Nor were the other detractors of downtown construction seriously examined, problems like limited expansion opportunities, heightened building costs, and recent increases in downtown crime.

Instead, a footprint firmly anchored in downtown Ithaca soil emerged as a foregone conclusion.

“We have accomplished a lot already,” Dryden’s new legislator, Dan Wakeman, observed.  “We have determined that we are not doing several different things, and we want a building downtown.  Remember that everybody,” Wakeman established.

During January and early-February, as new legislators were christened and veteran lawmakers commenced their fresh terms, the Tompkins County Legislature convened a trio of closed-door executive sessions, meetings totally apart from their public gatherings.  One can infer that alternatives like Harold’s Square and the Cornell Business Park were considered, and then discarded during those closed conclaves. meetings that none of us could attend.

About the time the June 2025 resolution gained passage, the business park option and its cornucopia offering of as many as 18 foreclosed buildings came to light. Administrator Akumfi was cool to the business park idea and recommended against it.  Then, last September, Harold’s Square owners approached the Legislature in near desperation, asking Tompkins County to buy or lease long-unrentable office space.  Again, Administration proved reticent.  Administration wanted, and still does want a downtown, stand-alone structure.  They want it to the point of twisting arms.

“I was not for Downtown originally,” Greg Mezey reminded colleagues.  “I encouraged us to look at alternate spaces.”  But now, he said, “I feel very confident that I can go back  to my constituents and say we have turned over every rock, we have looked in every corner of the county… and this really in the long-term health of the county is the best possible solution.

Greg Mezey’s departure from “what-else” alternatives likely seals the deal for a downtown choice.

“Of course, you’ve got to look at Harold’s Square.  It’s right there, for goodness sakes,” Lansing’s Mike Sigler, a frequent skeptic of downtown relocation, reasoned.  “It would be ridiculous for us not to look at foreclosed properties up at the airport,” Sigler likewise reasoned.  “And that didn’t work out, either,” he lamented. “And of course, we’re always going to look at the mall, because we always look at the mall.”

But Sigler was more than a touch annoyed March 3; upset that legislative directives were not followed, that the Legislature last June instructed one thing, and administrators and architects did something else.

“Why wasn’t this directive followed?” Sigler asked anyone who would listen.  “So you’re asking me for mission creep, all the way up to beyond $65 Million.  I just couldn’t get there,” he said, adding, “But now I’m looking at this eight months later and I’m going why don’t we just like follow the resolution that was there?”

Shawna Black and legislator Deborah Dawson usually stand allied.  That recent Tuesday night they departed, throwing a verbal jab or two.

“I’m astonished to hear people say we don’t want to put constraints on this project,” Dawson spoke out.  “It’s our job to put constraints on things.  It’s our job to put constraints on spending.”

And pushing back on Black’s desire to offer new legislators an opportunity to shift direction or even reverse course, Dawson stated, “If there’s anything I hate it’s wasting time.  I hate it when people waste my time. And I agree with Mike (Sigler), if we’re going to end up with what we passed eight months ago, we have just wasted a colossal amount of time.”

And that’s just about all that’s been done so far, other than to unveil an oversized, overpriced, arguably ugly building.  One legislator on meeting night tried to calculate how much member compensation got wasted because debate had dragged for three hours.   Of course, members get paid a salary, not by the hour.

And for now,  the resolution of last June remains the Center of Government’s guiding directive.  A 48,000-square foot building size and a $50 Million cost ceiling remain the standard.  Designers must return to their drawing boards.  And maybe administrators must curb their appetites as well.  Maybe.

Groton’s Lee Shurtleff recalled last June’s building promises.  He opposed the project then.  He’d support it now.

“One of the guiding points that night was this was not a commitment to a contract, but a commitment to the project, to the tune of $50 Million” Shurtleff recalled.  As for the present, “I know that we have to move forward and that significant construction has to occur,” Shurtleff said.

There’s a futility in all of this, of course. Shawna Black warned that the absolute moment of truth won’t arrive until construction bids get opened, weighed, and then accepted or rejected; that is, presuming that the Center of Government ever advances that far.

“It doesn’t matter because the numbers are really going to come in where they come in,” Black cautioned, “and we’re going to have to make that decision at that point.”  In other words, do or die.

“I think the idea of compromise is an interesting sort of political solution,” architect Quay Thompson remarked at one point in the discussion.  Read into that what you may.

Then, again, as Mike Sigler suggested, presumably in jest, yet perhaps carrying a grain of truth, maybe we should just buy each County employee a house. They could all work from home.  It would be cheaper.

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Enfield confronts NYSEG rate hikes

Town Board tags Cincinnatus’ call for stricter oversight, transparency, thrift

by Robert Lynch; March 3, 2026

The Town of Cincinnatus may be tiny, but its leaders shout through a loud megaphone.  They’ve shouted again.  And once more, the Town of Enfield has listened.  Let’s see if anyone else does.

At a special meeting February 25, a session called principally to enact a senior citizens tax benefit before a fast-approaching state deadline had passed, the Enfield Town Board (with member Jude Lemke excused) unanimously endorsed a Town of Cincinnatus resolution that takes aim at the large, double-digit increases in electricity delivery charges that New York State Electric and Gas Corporation, NYSEG, seeks to impose.

“Be It Resolved, that the Town Board of the Town of Enfield formally and strongly urges the New York State Public Service Commission [PSC] to conduct a thorough and immediate review of electric delivery charges, rate increases, and cost-recovery practices applicable to NYSEG customers;” the Town of Enfield resolution states.

“Be It Further Resolved that the Town Board calls upon the Public Service Commission to prioritize ratepayer affordability, demand greater transparency from NYSEG, and require demonstrable cost-containment and operational efficiency measures before approving any future rate increases…” Enfield’s resolution continues.

What the local Town Board adopted that recent Wednesday night was not a product of Enfield’s own creativity or initiative.  No, the 11-paragraph, 450-word plea to regulators was lifted almost word-for-word from a similar resolution adopted February 10 by the Town Board of Cincinnatus in eastern Cortland County.

Census records show Cincinnatus claims just 998 residents, fewer than one-third of the more than 3,300 who populate Enfield.  All five Cincinnatus Town Board members are Republicans.

Credit Enfield resident and recent Town Board aspirant Rosie Carpenter for having brought the Cincinnatus resolution to the Enfield Board’s attention.  She did so at the regular monthly meeting two weeks earlier.  Some will recall that Carpenter, running as an independent, lost last November’s election for Councilperson by a mere 19 votes.

“They’re asking that anybody in the smaller towns that are around, if you’d like to join them… they’re asking that you would do so and get some more people behind it because the rates are outrageous,” Carpenter conveyed Cincinnatus’ appeal to the Enfield Board during her privilege-of-the-floor remarks.

Enfield Supervisor Stephanie Redmond requested Carpenter send her the Cincinnatus text.  Carpenter did so.  And Redmond placed Enfield’s own redraft onto the February 25 agenda.

It’s the second time in four months that the Enfield Town Board has followed Cincinnatus’ lead.

In mid-October, Cincinnatus Board members adopted a resolution to oppose implementation of New York’s earlier-adopted, yet initially overlooked “All Electric Buildings Act.”  Cincinnatus had urged Washington lawmakers to override New York’s planned restrictions through preemptive federal legislation.  Had the state law taken effect, it would have banned the installation of fuel oil, propane or natural gas furnaces and cook stoves in any newly-built home beginning at the start of this year.

The Enfield Town Board October 22 took its cues from the arguments that Cincinnatus had made.  It then retooled Cincinnatus’ recommendations so as to mollify one board member who’d objected to outright federal pre-emption.  Enfield then passed its own resolution to encourage New York delay the All Electric Buildings Act’s implementation.  Enfield argued that the local grid can’t handle the increased electrical demand that an all-electric mandate would require.

Frustrating many climate activists, Governor Kathy Hochul in November imposed a temporary legal roadblock to the electrification law’s imposition.  The mandate remains on hold.

Nevertheless, the Town of Cincinnatus’ objections were heard loud and clear back then, definitely in Enfield and perhaps in Albany and elsewhere as well.

What’s before the Public Service Commission now is NYSEG’s proposed 34.7 percent increase in delivery charges for electricity and 39.4 percent increased delivery charge for natural gas.  (No natural gas lines currently extend to Enfield.)

In a two-hour deep-dive examination into the NYSEG rate issue February 17, utility officials explained their rationale and fielded a barrage of questions from members of the Tompkins County Legislature.

As summarized in a County-authored news release, “NYSEG is proposing over $10 billion in system investments over five years, aiming to provide cost stabilization for customers and address infrastructure needs.”  The release added, “For the Ithaca Division, NYSEG is proposing investments of $991 million to area substations, addressing emergent capacity constraints, meeting future electrification needs, and reinforcing the transmission system for increased resilience and reliability.”

A trio of NYSEG managers, including the company’s Vice President of State Government relations, Timothy Ellis, sat at the end of the Legislature’s oval table for the marathon interrogation.  They fielded a wide range of questions, ranging from whether the planned expenditures are truly needed, why ratepayers must now fund long ignored infrastructure maintenance, and why NYSEG, as reported, intends to close its customer service office in Etna.

Farther away, other, maybe more influential voices can also be heard.

At Public Service Commission hearings in late February, 19^th District Congressman Josh Riley alleged that NYSEG is raising rates while syphoning off profits to its Spanish-based corporate parent, Iberdrola.

Cross-examined by Riley, “NYSEG executives confirmed for the first time they authorized a $450 million dividend to Iberdrola (while) effectively asking Upstate New Yorkers to foot the bill for their massive corporate payout,” according to a February 20 statement issued by Riley’s office. 

“NYSEG ripped hundreds of millions out of our community to line the pockets of their foreign parent company in Spain, and they admitted under oath yesterday that they knew all along they were going to jack up rates and make Upstate New Yorkers pay for it,” the Democratic Congressman said in his office’s statement.  “It’s robbery, plain and simple,” Riley insisted.

And among those seeking to unseat Congressman Riley, a more radial initiative emerges. 

Alexander Portelli is a Republican, perhaps lesser known than State Senator Peter Oberacker, the GOP’s apparent front-runner in the race to oppose Riley.  But for his lack of name recognition, Portelli compensates with radical ideas.

“I will introduce a bill to Congress banning foreign companies from having any part in our power grid,” Portelli said as he launched his campaign.  “With this,” Portelli said, “we will kick NYSEG, National Grid, and Central Hudson out of New York forever.”

Informed February 25 that some people like Portelli want to kick NYSEG out of New York, Enfield Supervisor Stephanie Redmond, a generally progressive Democrat, appeared to welcome the idea.

While both Congressman Riley and potential rival Portelli take aim at NYSEG’s alleged $450 Million profit-skimming scheme, most talk in Enfield this recent, late-February night became far more granular.  It was not about nine-figure payouts, but rather of monthly utility bills lying on the kitchen table.

Councilperson Melissa Millspaugh talked of her older-adult in-laws getting a $1,300 monthly NYSEG bill.  “My father-in-law nearly had a panic attack,” she said.

Millspaugh, her husband and their two young kids closed off rooms to conserve heat during the late-January/early-February cold snap. “We spent two weeks in my kids’ bedroom and their playroom, and that was it,” the Councilperson reported.

The Millspaugh’s still got a NYSEG bill for $1,700.

Councilperson Robert Lynch (this writer) brought “homework” to the meeting, six years’ worth of NYSEG December monthly statements.  He compared delivery charges from each year to the next.

From 2020 to 2021, the rate rose by 22 percent.  The next year it jumped again, this time by a more modest seven percent, only to bound again in 2023 by a further 25.5 percent.  Annual increases were 24 percent in 2024, and 23 percent in December 2025.  Over those six years, the delivery rate had jumped from 3.6 cents to nine cents per kilowatt hour.

“We have to figure out why this rate for electricity delivery is going up so much faster than inflation,” Lynch told meeting attendees. “And I hope that more towns will sign onto this,” he said, referring to the Cincinnatus resolution.  “I think it’s a good thing to put before the state.”

As many know, everybody’s NYSEG bill conflates three separate charges.  The two costliest ones arise from the supply of electricity and the cost of delivering it to you.  (The third component includes taxes and miscellaneous expenses.)  Supply charges comprise about 44 percent of the current bill; delivery charges another 40 percent, Enfield-Ulysses legislator Rachel Ostlund informed Enfield leaders in her February 23 report to their Town Board based on the mid-February NYSEG meet-up.

Supply charges, Ostlund reported, are those “which NYSEG doesn’t control and doesn’t profit off of.”  They are just pass-through expenses, Ostlund said she’d been told.

“I somewhat doubt that,” Councilperson Lynch said of the “pass-through” assertion, “because I know that NYSEG’s supply rates can vary a whole lot more than a number of the independent ESCO’s (Energy supply companies) can vary.

As an example, Lynch reported that while the variable rate on a privately-run ESCO service had stayed flat from January to February of this year, NYSEG’s supply charge at another address had spiked from 13 cents to 25.3 cents per kilowatt hour during that same monthly period, a 92 percent, one-month increase.

Supervisor Redmond holds an enviable position at the moment.  By choice, her family lives off-grid.

“I don’t pay an electric bill.  It’s great,” Redmond told the meeting.  “I don’t even know when the power goes out.”

That said, the Enfield Supervisor is thinking of others.  And Redmond took a few minutes’ that night to tout “Community Choice Aggregation,” a municipally-orchestrated arrangement whereby a town or city government selects a favored energy supply company and then generally subscribes every resident to that supplier unless the resident chooses to opt-out.  At bottom, it’s collective buying power.

The City and Town of Ithaca have attempted for years to implement an aggregation model locally, only to be thwarted by regulatory red tape.  Latest word is aggregation under the “T-Gen” banner could launch this September.

Community Choice Aggregation has a heavy “Green New Deal” component within it.  And that’s an element that Stephanie Redmond likes.

“I’m really having high hopes for it because it’s basically taking solar farms and breaking them apart, and put them on people’s houses,” Redmond stated, “so you’re able to pay your regular amount that you’re paying and gradually gain ownership of the solar panels,” she said.”

Community Choice Aggregation is a bit more complicated than that description, and not every home—or neighborhood—is fit to have its own mini solar farm.  What’s more, unless it supplies all of one’s needs, rooftop solar won’t negate the proposed—maybe threatened—34.7 percent NYSEG delivery charge increase now before the PSC.

By contrast, blunt defiance is more the Town of Cincinnatus’ style.

“Rubber‑stamping rate increases without explanation will no longer be tolerated,” the Cincinnatus Town Board wrote in the “Official Announcement” accompanying its February 10 resolution.  “Cincinnatus is demanding answers, accountability, and fairness.”

Leaders of that tiny Cortland County town continued to vent: “No town should stand alone in defending its residents from unjustified utility costs.  We cannot ask our residents to choose between putting food on the table and keeping their lights on. Cincinnatus is standing up, speaking out, and pushing back.”

And likewise, by adopting Cincinnatus’ narrative chapter and verse, so is the Town of Enfield.

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Of Media and Politics:

Carr, Colbert and Broadcast Bona fides

by Robert Lynch; February 18, 2026

As the week of February 16 dawned, James Talarico was slipping badly in the polls. The Austin-area State Representative stood as many as eight points behind intra-party rival, Congresswoman Jasmine Crockett, in the latest University of Houston poll comparing the two in their Democratic fight to face Republican U.S. Senator John Cornyn or his own primary opponent, Attorney General Ken Paxton, in the fall.  Early voting in the primary would start that Tuesday.  The primary would conclude March 3. Talarico needed a miracle, a game-changer.

That miracle flew in from out of nowhere Monday night.  Representative Talarico got more free exposure than his big campaign budget could ever have purchased.  It came courtesy of Steven Colbert, host of the CBS Late Show.

“You know who is not one of my guests tonight? Colbert asked as he began his opening February 16 monologue. “That’s Texas State Representative James Talarico.  He was supposed to be here, but we were told in no uncertain terms by our network’s lawyers, who called us directly, that we could not have him on the broadcast.”  Colbert continued, “Then I was told in some uncertain terms that not only could I not have him on, I could not mention me not having him on.  And because my network clearly doesn’t want us to talk about this, let’s talk about this.”

Wow. Steven Colbert had not only just baited his bosses, but he was marching forth to torpedo the powerful bureaucrat who bosses those bosses.

“I can’t interview James Talarico. I can’t show any pictures of James Talarico. I’m not even sure I can say the words James Talarico,” Colbert told viewers.  But what the always irreverent host did reveal for us was the frontal graphic of a nude male model with a potted cactus concealing his privates and the face of the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) Chairman photo-shopped as his head. [Yes, Colbert’s humor is an acquired taste.]

What happened Monday underscored the controversy from which Representative Talarico so greatly benefited.  It showcased the ongoing battle between late night comics and FCC Chairman Brendan Carr.  Although CBS has claimed its planned cancellation of The Late Show this coming May was “a financial decision,” Colbert and others believe Brendan Carr’s and Donald Trump’s dislike of him had much to do with it.

The Late Show monologue went viral the next day.  So, too, did Colbert’s 15-minute interview with Talarico.  It was relegated to YouTube by necessity, yet still got watched in record numbers.  Jasmine Crockett should have been so lucky.

I, your Enfield Councilperson, don’t often write about national politics, certainly not something as detached as a Senatorial primary in the Lone Star State.  But what’s at stake here is not political jousting in a faraway place.  No, the issue here is the overarching reach of governmental control into broadcast decision-making.  It’s about a media-hostile Administration’s incursion into First Amendment freedoms.  I’ve invested most of my career one way or another into over-the-air broadcasting.  This stuff is my baby.  When I think it’s threatened, I deserve to give it some ink.

Many others will write about this dustup, I’m sure.  I’ll approach it a little differently.

My memory is long.  I recall the 1971 election for Ithaca Mayor. Democrat Ed Conley would be elevated to his first of four terms in office. Candidates crowded the field.  Keith McNeill was the Republican, Hunna Johns the incumbent, funeral director John Bangs and taxpayer advocate Florence Rumph were thrown in for good measure.  I was a Cornell student and volunteer reporter at WVBR-FM.  Back then, unlike today, the Voice of the Big Red actually covered local news.  We’d interviewed each mayoral aspirant. Then a handful of days before the election, panic struck.

“We’ve forgotten Sonny Day,” someone said. (Excuse any misspelling; Sonny’s name is now lost to antiquity.) “Sonny,” I recall, was a lowly cook at Cornell Dining.  He’d launched a last-minute write-in campaign for Ithaca Mayor—or had been arm-twisted into doing so—perhaps in an effort to assuage the counterculture and gay rights communities, or maybe to boost his own ego.  Records show Day never drew many votes.  But that still didn’t stop his supporters from demanding equal airtime.

WVBR management solicitously obliged, finding itself under the gun to provide the write-in aspirant everything he’d sought.  A last-minute interview was speedily arranged. Even though the candidate’s legitimacy held question, WVBR exercised excess caution.  It stood well aware that Richard Nixon sat in the White House and his loyal foot soldier, Dean Burch, reined as Chairman of the FCC.  Fines could be imposed; licenses challenged, even pulled.  Broadcasters those days ran scared of the “Friendly Cookie Company.”  History has a way of repeating itself.

“So, you might have heard of this thing called the Equal Time Rule, okay?” Stephen Colbert reminded his viewers on this more recent Monday night.  “It’s an old FCC rule that applies only to radio and broadcast television, not cable or streaming, that says if a show has a candidate on during an election, they have to have all that candidate’s opponents on as well… There’s long been an exception for this rule, an exception for news interviews and talk show interviews with politicians.”

But as Colbert would go on to say—and as Brendan Carr has countered, and this essay will attempt to explain—the interview exception to the FCC’s Equal Time Rule is not without limits.

Let’s first go to legal authority, the regulation’s text.  It holds more weight than does Colbert’s conjecture.

Unlike its onetime companion “Fairness Doctrine” that FCC Commissioners neutered decades ago, 47 CFR 73.1941, the “Equal opportunities” section, remains in force.  It holds that:

“[N]o station licensee is required to permit the use of its facilities by any legally qualified candidate for public office, but if any licensee shall permit any such candidate to use its facilities, it shall afford equal opportunities to all other candidates for that office to use such facilities.”

Yet, immediately after that command, the “Interview exception” qualifies it:

“Appearance by a legally qualified candidate on any: (1)   Bona fide newscast; (2)   Bona fide news interview; (3)   Bona fide news documentary… or (4)   On-the-spot coverage of bona fide news events… shall not be deemed to be use of broadcasting station….” (The Rule mirrors FCC powers under Section 315(a) of the Communications Act of 1934.)

Note the key qualifier, “Bona fide.”  And on that compound word, the Carr-Colbert controversy emerges.

On January 21 of this year the FCC’s Media Bureau, overseen by the five-member FCC, an agency chaired by Brendan Carr since Donald Trump most recently took office, issued “guidance” on how the “Equal Opportunities” rule should be interpreted and a “Bona fide” interview defined.  Critics view the reinterpretation as chilling.  It may be only “guidance” and  not a final rule.  But Brendan Carr’s Trump-friendly fingerprints are found all over it.

The four-page, 12-paragraph, heavily-footnoted guidance document addresses late-night and daytime TV talk programs exclusively.  It makes no reference to conservative-biased talkradio, arguably today’s far more egregious offender. 

And as to TV talk, the document calls into question the most recent FCC ruling on the subject, a 2006 staff decision that exempted former California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger’s interview by then- Tonight Show host Jay Leno from triggering an equal time opportunity by competing candidates.  The Leno decision reportedly reversed a 1960 holding in which the Commission had declined to uphold the exemption concerning an earlier Tonight Show host, Jack Paar.

“Concerns have been raised that the industry has taken the Media Bureau’s 2006 staff-level decision to mean that the interview portion of all arguably similar entertainment programs— whether late night or daytime—are exempted from the section 315 equal opportunities requirement under a bona fide news exemption.  This is not the case,” the January guidance document cautioned.  “[T]hese decisions are fact specific and the exemptions are limited to the program that was the subject of the request.”

“Importantly, the FCC has not been presented with any evidence that the interview portion of any late night or daytime television talk show program on air presently would qualify for the bona fide news exemption,” the document continued.

Thus, as the Carr FCC sees it, there is no precedent.  We, the FCC, will judge case-by-case.

If you feel a chill in the air, you’re not imagining things.  And with an overly-ample sprinkling of snark, Stephen Colbert this past week felt the chill as well.

“Let’s just call this what it is,” Colbert’s caustic monologue rolled on.  ”Donald Trump’s administration wants to silence anyone who says anything bad about Trump on TV because all Trump does is watch TV. Okay? He’s like a toddler with too much screen time.”

Colbert said a lot more, opprobrium not relevant to this story.  Suffice it to say, Stephen Colbert’s words did not enhance his venue’s status that The Late Show is a “bona fide news interview” program. 

And that’s why what’s happening on programs like Colbert, Jimmy Kimmel, or daytime’s “The View” defies a lazy-minded, partisan-tinged kneejerk rejoinder.  Instead, what’s happening here points to a troubling, partisan double-standard applied by government’s First Amendment gatekeepers to those they must regulate.

Addressing a news conference following the FCC’s January 29 monthly meeting, Chairman Carr said his agency had no plans to impose the latest cautionary guidance upon America’s talk radio programs, despite those broadcasts’ nearly-universal right-leaning bias.

“Carr said it wasn’t part of the agency’s calculations because there wasn’t the same need,” John Hendel of Politico reported that day.  “There wasn’t a relevant precedent that we saw that was being misconstrued on the radio side,” Hendel quoted Carr as saying.

And that’s what’s become most worrisome.  Tightened government oversight applied to liberal commentators, but a hands-off approach when it comes to Trump-friendly talkers.

From Noon until late at night, Ithaca’s talk station, WHCU, carries a string of syndicated, conservative voices: Sean Hannity, Mark Levin, and a trio of bozos at midday, Markley, VanCamp and Robbins.  Each host makes no effort to avoid maligning Biden, Kamala Harris, or just about anybody President Trump hates.  There’s no Fairness Doctrine to bridle them.  No fines issued or licenses pulled.  And Laisse Faire rules in market after market.  We locally are no exception.

There’s another primary election underway in Texas, this one on the Republican side.  Incumbent Senator John Cornyn faces a formidable challenge from State Attorney General Ken Paxton.  Representative Wesley Hunt is also in the Republican race.  If Cornyn, Paxton, or Hunt avail themselves for interviews, no doubt, right wing radio will talk to them.  They’ve likely done so already.  And when conservatives grant and conduct those interviews, hosts will do so with complete impunity from Brendan Carr’s FCC.

On Tuesday, CBS denied Colbert’s account that the corporate counsel had spiked the Talarico interview.

“The Late Show was not prohibited by CBS from broadcasting the interview with Rep. James Talarico,” a network spokesperson told The Hill.  Instead, the network maintained that in light of Carr’s earlier guidance, Jasmine Crockett and a lesser-known candidate could have petitioned for equal time.

“It was ‘The Late Show’ itself, CBS said, that ‘decided to present the interview through its YouTube channel with on-air promotion on the broadcast rather than potentially providing the equal-time options.’” The Hill reported.

Colbert later called the CBS response “crap.”

On this finer point, however, the network may hold the better side of the argument.  Nothing in the text of the Equal Time Rule or the Commission’s January 21 guidance document muzzles a broadcaster or network from talking to a candidate, even should the forum at issue fall short of a “bona fide news interview” to allow an Equal Time exception. 

In Jasmine Crockett’s case, she’s a liberal Democrat, like Representative Talarico, if not more liberal than he.  Crockett’s young, photogenic, articulate, and outspoken perhaps to a fault.  She’d draw eyeballs.  She’d energize the audience.  She’d make them roar. (Colbert has said Crocket has appeared twice before on his show.)

And on the other hand, had the Late Show also invited Republicans Cornyn, Paxton, and Hunt, none would likely show up.  They’d fear the host would grind them into mincemeat and provide them no purpose toward pleasing their base.  Even if one or two from the GOP side had the courage to come on, it would still have made great TV.

The same benchmark should apply to all; late-night TV and AM talkradio.  AM talk is dangerous ground where progressives seldom tread.  Maybe they should.  Maybe responsible regulation should erase the long-ignored double-standard.

Rule 47 CFR 73.1941 places the burden upon the competing candidate to prove his or her qualifications for the election and to a request any equal time.  Or they can all be invited.  In Colbert’s case, what harm would it have done to think and act outside the box?

Brendan Carr chairs the Federal Communications Commission, but he does not own it.  Anna Gomez holds the lone Democratic-assigned seat on what should be a five-person board, but is now two members short.  Gomez made it clear the day after the Monday Colbert meltdown that what had happened at the purported behest of the CBS suits never should have.  She faulted both her agency and CBS:

“This is yet another troubling example of corporate capitulation in the face of this Administration’s broader campaign to censor and control speech,” Gomez said in a statement.  “The FCC has no lawful authority to pressure broadcasters for political purposes or to create a climate that chills free expression. CBS is fully protected under the First Amendment to determine what interviews it airs, which makes its decision to yield to political pressure all the more disappointing,” she said.

But of course, with CBS, the motivation was money, and also, no doubt, the desire to grease the skids with the Trump Administration for a hoped-for merger, their (so-far) hostile takeover bid for Warner Brothers-Discovery.

“It is no secret that Paramount, CBS’s parent company, has regulatory matters before the government, but corporate interests cannot justify retreating from airing newsworthy content,” Commissioner Gomez observed.

On Wednesday (Feb. 18), NBC quoted Brendan Carr as doubling down on his earlier warnings of stricter Equal Time Rule enforcements.

“What’s so ironic about it is, you know, had they gone down the path of complying with equal time provisions here, it would have meant more air time for more Democrats to say whatever those Democrats wanted,” NBC quoted Carr saying about the CBS incident.

****

What went viral on YouTube this week didn’t tell us much about the Texas Senate race or why Texans should elect James Talarico rather than Jasmine Crockett.  Talarico consumed much of his YouTube quarter-hour with Colbert criticizing Christian nationalism.  He was asked briefly about a one-time comment he’d made against a candidate no longer in the race, and talked about a frivolous Texas bill somehow tying in school kids with cat litter boxes.  Talarico never mentioned Congresswoman Crockett, by name, nor did he directly counter any of the Republicans whom he may someday face.

Meanwhile, on February 18, during the noon hour at WHCU, one of those laughing, right-tilting wags on Markley, VanCamp and Robbins described James Talarico’s supposed media manipulation to upstage African-American Crockett as a “racist and misogynistic stunt.”  Where, oh where on today’s media highway, Brendan Carr, do we most need a traffic cop?

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Billboard Ban: Do we need one?

Enfield Board suggests first-ever Sign Law; advances senior tax “sweetener”

by Councilperson Robert Lynch; February 16, 2026

It grew out of a single, fleeting call to Enfield’s Codes Officer.  “Alan (Teeter) was approached by someone who had questions about billboards,” Town Supervisor Stephanie Redmond first informed Town Board members when they met January 14.  One month later, Teeter would describe the inquiry as only “kind of general.”

That said, Redmond got worried.  And other Board members have grown to share her concern.  As a result, the Enfield Town Board at its February 11 meeting instructed the Planning Board to begin drafting a first-ever sign law.  It would be a law to regulate off-premises outdoor signage, if not ban new billboards altogether.

Mind you, it’s not that billboards are proliferating wildly in Enfield.  The only ones the town has right now are those adorning two sides of a metal storage shed at 1683 Mecklenburg Road (NY Route 79).  The boards beg for business. They currently have no takers.  They’re just naked sheets of weathered plywood.

“I don’t worry about that,” Redmond said of the Mecklenburg Road boards at February’s meeting.  “I just don’t want to be going down Hayts or 79 and seeing billboards all the way through.”

Banning new billboards—if that’s what Enfield wants—is a tricky thing to do, Planning Board Chair Dan Walker told the Town Board this month.  Any billboard regulation has to find its place within a more comprehensive sign law, Walker advised.   And you can’t just tuck the regulations within the Town’s Site Plan review Law, he cautioned, because putting the rules there would imply that billboards are normally allowed.

“I just don’t see that there’s going to be big demand because we just don’t have that much traffic,” Walker told the Town Board concerning billboard proliferation. 

The Planning Board Chair offered as fact a statistic that outdoor advertisers purportedly want to see 20,000 vehicles traveling a highway each day to make a billboard cost-effective.  One may think Route 79 carries a lot of traffic, but apparently not 20 thousand cars a day.

“I’d rather be protective about it,” Redmond responded.  “I don’t want ‘Billboard Enfield.’”

The Supervisor found no objections from others at the table that night.  The Town Board weighed the potentially overstated billboard threat for a brief ten minutes during its two-hour February meeting.

“I am along with the Supervisor on this one because Enfield has its rural character,” Councilperson Robert Lynch (this writer) affirmed, the only Town Board member to extensively address the issue other than Redmond.

“Old-fashioned” fixed billboards aren’t too bad, Lynch said.  Neither are those smaller, lighted signs outside the Enfield Community Council and the Enfield School.  “But you get those lighted billboards with moving graphics, and it really commercializes; it makes little Enfield into Times Square,” Lynch observed. “And I think that’s a situation where sometimes libertarianism has to take a back seat to responsible recognition of the nature of the community we are, which is a rural community.”

Neighboring Newfield has its own sign law.  It was adopted in 1989, and then amended in 2003.  The initial law ran 16 pages; the later amendment added a few pages more.  The 1989 law provided that all billboards not conforming to the new regulations had to be removed by 1996 or else brought into conformance with the law. The 1989 law had banned billboards outright.  The 2003 amendment implied some signs greater than four-by-eight feet could be allowed, but only when given landowner consent.

The Town of Ithaca’s sign regulations stand far more complex.  They occupy a separate, 19-section chapter of the Town’s exhaustingly-complex Zoning Law.  The Ithaca law explicitly prohibits “off-premises signs, as well as “animated signs and all electronic message centers… including signs with blinking, flashing, strobe, chasing or alternating color lights or moving parts or messages.”

“The sign law from Newfield is really long,” Walker advised the Enfield Board. “I don’t think it needs to be that extensive,” he said.  (Of course, Ithaca’s law is much longer.)  Based on Walker’s assessment, envision the Enfield Planning Board handing up something that might run two or three pages.  “I don’t think we want to overdo it,” Walker cautioned. “I don’t think the Town wants to regulate every sign.”

Whatever the Enfield Planning Board comes up with in the months ahead, don’t expect it to force removal of those plywood sheets facing Mecklenburg Road; or for that matter, the front-yard markers at Enfield Elementary or the Community Center.  Each would likely be “grandfathered” into any new law, if not permitted outright given the yard markers’ modest size.

Had the Enfield Fire District secured a major, federally-sponsored recruitment grant last year, some of the proceeds might have been spent erecting yet a third electronic sign along Enfield Main Road, one to promote the Enfield Volunteer Fire Company and to invite new members. 

But in late-December, Board of Fire Commissioners’ Chair Greg Stevenson announced that the “Staffing for Adequate Fire and Emergency Response (‘SAFER’)” grant had been lost to others. There’ll likely be no money for any new sign.

“I think what we’ve got right now in Enfield is OK,” this Councilperson, Lynch, advised the Town Board February 11.  “But what is going to happen in the future?  That’s what we have to think about.”

On another matter, the Town of Enfield will need to move fast.  But if completed quickly enough to satisfy Albany, a few of Enfield’s older adults may qualify for an enhanced property tax benefit next year.

By unanimous vote, the Board February 11 scheduled a legally-required public hearing for two weeks thereafter.  The February 25 hearing will take comment on a proposed local law to expand the senior citizens tax exemption for those with the lowest incomes, raising the exemption to as much as 65 percent.  The current maximum exemption is 50 percent.

The enhanced exemption results from state legislation signed last year.  But to apply to property owners’ bills next January, the local law must be adopted and filed with the Secretary of State before March 1. Counting the days required for posting and notification, the Town will just barely meet the deadline.

The extra benefit was defined as an “additional sweetener” during Board discussion.  It would affect only those seniors—and just seniors, not disabled persons—whose adjusted annual incomes, calculated under state criteria, fall below $34,000.  Those earning less than $32,000 would receive the full 65 percent exemption.  Those with incomes between $32,000 and $34,000 would gain benefit on a sliding scale.

Enfield action followed a similar move by Tompkins County legislators, who earlier in the month scheduled a February 17 public hearing to address their own exemption that would apply to the county portion of January tax bills.

“My parents had to leave Tompkins County because property taxes on a fixed income became unaffordable,” newly-elected county legislator Christy Bianconi said February 3 when she advanced her own version of Enfield’s newly-proposed exemption.  This law, Bianconi said, “helps seniors stay in the homes that they have, and this also helps those who live with seniors to stay in their homes as well.”

Tompkins County Director of Assessment Jay Franklin, in an email of Enfield the day of its Board’s meeting, estimated the local change would for the rest of us raise Enfield’s tax on the median house by between four and five dollars, but save the fully-qualifying senior $100.

Among other Enfield Town Board action February 11:

• The Board authorized a new one-year lease agreement with the Tompkins County Sheriff’s Department for the department’s rent-free use of a portion of the former Highway Garage at the Town Hall as a satellite station for law enforcement.  The station’s been in use since 2020.  Supervisor Redmond indicated the Sheriff would like to employ a second bay in the five-bay garage for parking.  But members left that revision for future negotiations.

• The Board discussed, but did not resolve, an issue which could cost Enfield dearly in the years ahead.  The problem stems from the Ithaca Area Wastewater Treatment Facility’s (IAWWTF’s) decision late last year to no longer accept stored drain wastewater from the Enfield Highway Facility, effluent that it’s accepted by truck for years, but without a permit.  The Town is proceeding on parallel tracks.  It’s seeking bids for more expensive, long-distance trucking to treatment plants elsewhere, and also taking steps to secure a valid IAWWTF permit.

• The Town Board accepted Codes Officer Alan Teeter’s recommendation to slightly raise building permit fees to adjust for inflation.  Under the revised schedule, permits for improvements of between $1 and $5,000 in value would rise from $50 to $75.

• And proceeding steadily, albeit cautiously, toward revising Enfield’s 2012 Site Plan Review Law, and weighing revisions recommended more than a year ago by its Planning Board, Town Board members agreed to one significant change.  They recommended that when site plan reviews call for a public hearing, the radius of neighborhood notifications expand outwards from the current 600 feet to approximately one-half mile. The change followed complaints voiced by some who said they weren’t notified when they should have been.

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NYSEG presents rate case; Tompkins lawmakers question

Highlights of February 17 meeting; Tompkins County Legislature

Reporting courtesy, Tompkins County Department of Communications; Monika Salvage, Communications Director; February 19, 2026

[Editorial note: The Tompkins County Legislature consumed two and one-quarter hours of its February 17 meeting receiving prepared presentations from New York State Electric and Gas Corp. (NYSEG) personnel and asking NYSEG representatives a variety of questions.  The Legislature directed questions only from its members, not the general public. / RL]

NYSEG Rate Matters:

The legislature received presentations on the pending rate case involving New York State Electric & Gas (NYSEG). NYSEG’s proposal includes a delivery rate increase of 35% for electricity and 39% for natural gas. In turn, NYSEG is proposing over $10 billion in system investments over five years, aiming to provide cost stabilization for customers and address infrastructure needs. For the Ithaca Division, NYSEG is proposing investments of $991 million to area substations, addressing emergent capacity constraints, meeting future electrification needs, and reinforcing the transmission system for increased resilience and reliability.

NYSEG representatives stressed that supply charges (the cost of the electricity or gas commodity itself) are passed through without profit to the company. Supply charges constitute 44% of a household’s bill and have increased due to increasingly cold weather and the high wholesale gas prices due to the high demand. Delivery charges (covering poles, wires, substations, maintenance, and operations) make up 40% of a utility bill and fund system upgrades and represent the portion of the bill affected by the rate case.

Tompkins County Chief Sustainability Officer Terry Carroll outlined the rate case process before the New York State Public Service Commission (PSC) and the county’s formal participation. He explained that utility companies file rate proposals with the PSC, which then conducts a detailed review, allows for intervenor testimony, and may negotiate settlements before issuing a final order. He highlighted that Tompkins County joined the proceedings to submit testimony focused on affordability, reliability, and infrastructure accountability, arguing for a dedicated heat pump rate and against an electrification tariff and closing the Ithaca walk-in center, emphasizing impacts on county residents.

Legislators raised concerns about the magnitude of delivery charge increases, affordability for low-income households, service reliability, vegetation management, lack of transparency, and the cumulative impact of repeated rate hikes. Several questioned how investments would translate into measurable reliability improvements and whether customers would see tangible benefits relative to the scale of the proposed increases.

Adoption of local law increases low-income senior property tax exemption:

The legislature adopted a local law increasing the maximum low-income senior property tax exemption from 50% to 65% under the New York State Real Property Tax Law. The change applies to qualifying older adults with annual incomes below $33,500 and adjusts exemption tiers for those earning under $35,500. Seniors need to apply with the Tompkins County Department of Assessment for this increased senior property tax exemption, but they may not need to apply with New York State for the enhanced STAR exemption.

Legislator Bianconi (D-Ithaca Town) introduced the measure, describing it as “an opportunity for us to give some relief to folks in our community who may be struggling,” adding that the broader community impact would be minimal ($2.36 on a median house’s tax bill) while potentially making “a huge difference” for eligible seniors.

Legislator Hubbard (D-Ithaca City, Town), who expressed initial concerns about shifting the tax burden to other property owners, ultimately supported the resolution. She emphasized that the benefit is limited to the lowest-income category and acknowledged the financial strain many seniors face. Hubbard also cited the argument that helping seniors remain in their homes may reduce long-term public costs, concluding that the measure offers “an obvious positive with possibly no negative.”

The local law was adopted in a 15-1 vote, with Legislator Wakeman (D-Dryden) opposed.

Other business:

• The Legislature considered appointments to the Tompkins County Industrial Development Agency (TCIDA) and the Tompkins County Development Corporation Board. The chair appointments included Legislator Dawson (D-Lansing, Ithaca Town) as Chair, along with Legislators Mezey (D-Dryden) and Black (D-Ithaca Town) as members, Ducson Nguyen (member at-large), and Prentice Smith (organized labor representative). Legislator Sigler (R-Lansing) pulled the resolution from the consent agenda, noting the significance of IDA appointments given the agency’s authority to grant long-term tax abatements and sales tax exemptions. The appointments were approved in a 15-1 vote, with Legislator Sigler (R-Lansing) opposed.

• The legislature unanimously approved a resolution submitting the Hanshaw Village infrastructure project in the Town of Dryden to the New York State County Infrastructure Grant Program for up to $1 million. The project would connect the manufactured home community to municipal water and sewer, addressing aging systems and enabling at least 10 new housing units by filling vacant pads.

• The Tompkins County Legislature proclaimed February 2026 as Black History Month, marking the 100th anniversary of the first formal national observance organized by Carter G. Woodson and the 50th anniversary of the first U.S. presidential recognition of the month, while reaffirming the importance of historical study to uplift present and future generations.

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Delgado’s Exit; Democracy’s Loss

A call to Challengers: Please Run

Reporting and Commentary by Councilperson Robert Lynch; February 12, 2026

I probably would never have voted for Antonio Delgado as Governor.  His platform ran pretty far to the left for me.  But I would gladly have signed a petition to get him onto the ballot.  We need choices.  This year for governor—and for other key offices—we won’t have many.

On Tuesday, February 10, Delgado, a former Hudson Valley Congressman and picked by Governor Kathy Hochul in 2022 to be her Lieutenant Governor, dropped out as a challenger to Hochul in the June Democratic Primary.  That leaves only Hochul and Republican nominee Bruce Blakeman, a county executive on Long Island, as candidates for the November gubernatorial election.  Blakeman has staked his flag firmly on Donald Trump’s right-tilting turf.  Governor Hochul is… well, Kathy Hochul.

We need other choices.  But we won’t get them.  Delgado is out.  No one has emerged to challenge Blakeman within the GOP.  North Country Congresswoman Elise Stefanik, now retiring from Congress at year’s end, had toyed with a Republican run for Governor last year.  But either Blakeman’s perceived strength or political reality as to the Empire State’s partisan leanings chased her away.

And no, not a single Independent candidate—someone neither registered within nor aligned with either major political party—has emerged to seek New York’s highest political office. 

Within Enfield and Tompkins County, the prospects for choice get even dimmer. 

As of this writing, no person of any party—or any Independent—has registered with the New York State Board of Elections to oppose incumbent State Senator Lea Webb or Assemblymember Anna Kelles.

Should the current status continue, this November’s elections for New York State Legislature in the 52^nd Senate District and the 125^th Assembly District will become a coronation for each incumbent.  If a few (or a lot) of us don’t like the course of New York governance, too bad.  Aside from that single office at the top of the ticket, the one holding the power of the veto, we’ll get no legislative say-so.

For the record, Assemblymember Kelles—full disclosure; a personal friend of mine and a commendable foot soldier in local constituent service—ran unopposed in both 2022 and 2024.  Political operatives have likely concluded that the 125^th District, one bounded within the true-blue comfortable confines of Tompkins County with a slice of Cortland County added-on, is just too Democrat-friendly for anyone else to win.

In Lea Webb’s 52^nd Senate District, the two-term incumbent has faced opposition each time she’s previously run.  When she first competed, in 2022, her win was narrow, 51 to 49 percent over former Binghamton Mayor Rich David.  Two years later, with the help of both incumbency and a Presidential election, Webb beat Lansing Tompkins County Legislator Mike Sigler, 57 percent to 43 percent.

Republican Sigler has not this year signaled any plans for a rematch.  And so far, no other challenger to Webb has registered with the New York State Board of Elections. 

Party petitioning for the November 3^rd election commences February 24 and runs for five weeks.  Independent candidates circulate petitions later, beginning April 14.

Antonio Delgado had a rough ride of it in recent weeks.  Just about everything that could have gone wrong for him did just that.

Early last June, Delgado broke with Hochul and declared his candidacy for the 2026 Democratic gubernatorial nomination.  “People are hurting and New York deserves better leadership,” Delgado told the New York Times in an interview, published the day of his announcement.  “There’s an absence of bold, decisive, transformational leadership,” he told the paper.

Even though he chose to run against his boss, Delgado stayed on as the Governor’s second-in-command.  And Hochul declined to fire him.  Yet Delgado’s role devolved into a largely ceremonial one.  Hochul stripped him of his staff, writers for The Albany Tines-Union report. “That’s left him with little to do at the state Capitol, where he’s an infrequent presence,” reporters Dan Clark and Timothy Fanning wrote.

Delgado did generate initial support within Ithaca’s progressive community.  He spoke before a packed house at the Southside Community Center last July.  Reports say Ithaca Mayor Robert Cantelmo introduced him.  Assemblymember Kelles hugged him.  Yet neither provided endorsements, nor did leaders of the Tompkins County Democratic Party.

But it was within the past couple of weeks that things turned really bad.  First, Downstate’s seemingly low-hanging progressive fruit, New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani and Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez endorsed Hochul, not Delgado.  New York’s Democratic Congressional delegation united to support the Governor. All Delgado was left with was support from a pair of democratic socialists in the State Legislature.

When state party leaders convened in Syracuse February 6, they nominated Hochul, awarding her 85.3 percent of the weighted vote, Delgado a mere 14.7 percent.  Having failed to meet the 25 percent vote threshold, Delgado would have needed to collect petition signatures, thousands of them, to gain a place on the June 23 primary ballot. That said, the Lieutenant Governor promised at the time he’d do just that.

The New York Working Families Party (WFP) could have provided the Lieutenant Governor a glide path to a separate ballot line.  But no such luck. 

When WFP delegates convened separately February 7, they chose to nominate “placeholder” candidates for Governor and State Comptroller, nominations that will eventually default to the Democratic Party nominees. City and State reports that Delgado polled 41 percent of the weighted delegate vote; Hochul a mere three percent.  But the fictitious “placeholder” candidate got the 56 percent majority.

This isn’t the first time that the WFP has backed away from being bold; from bucking the Democratic Party bosses with its own independent choices.  (Remember Cynthia Nixon?  Zephyr Teachout?)  Such timidity leaves one so tempted to rename the WFP the “Worthless Families Party.”

Tuesday, February 10, Antonio Delgado threw in the towel.

“I’ve decided to end my campaign for Governor of New York,” Delgado wrote in a six-paragraph departure statement. “After much consideration, I’ve concluded that there simply is no viable path forward,” he said.

The Lieutenant Governor who tried, but yet could not overcome “the system,” the venomous political machine that sinks its fangs so deeply into New York body politic, had more to say.  His swan-song included this:

“And though my campaign has come to an end, I fully intend to do all I can in our effort to build a more humane, affordable, and equitable state that serves all New Yorkers.  I will also support Democrats in our effort to hold the line against Trump and take back our democracy.”

Nowhere in Delgado’s statement was there an explicit endorsement of Kathy Hochul.

Whether those of you who read what’s written here love President Trump of hate him, your preferences should not color your perception of this essay’s core theme.  Had Antonio Delgado been a maverick Republican instead of a progressive Democrat, the problem identified here would remain the same:  Party machines should not pick our candidates.  We, the People, should.

Last year, Enfield had an election for town offices.  This Councilperson wasn’t up for reelection that year.  But we had a Town Supervisor, two Councilpersons, a Highway Superintendent, and a Town Clerk whose terms were up.  So were the positions of the two Tompkins County legislators who represent our town. (Each legislator was later elected unopposed.)

When party petitioning had ended last April, I surveyed the political landscape and didn’t like what I saw.  I saw incumbents each running without competition, poised to leapfrog into new terms without being tested and tempered in that oftentimes-unforgiving crucible of ideas, ideology, and controversy.

I went before the Enfield Town Board as it began its meeting April 9: 

“Nobody else stepped up.  Nobody else said, ‘I think I can do it better.’  And that’s disappointing to me,” I told that night’s meeting. “It disappoints me because we won’t know; we won’t really have a good gauge of where Enfield is heading,” I continued.  “It’s disappointing because an uncontested election really doesn’t tell you a whole lot because it doesn’t say these are the best people who are running.”

A few weeks after my remarks last April, two aspiring candidates emerged for Enfield Town Councilperson, Independents Rosie Carpenter and Robert Tuskey.  They petitioned for the ballot.  For democracy’s sake, I assisted in their petitioning.  They joined forces at times.  They posted signs at Miller’s Corners.  And each campaigned largely eschewing outside help.  On Election Day, each came close to winning.  In the final tally, Ms. Carpenter fell just 19 votes short of joining our Town Board.  Democracy had won, even if Carpenter and Tuskey had not.

The same principle I advanced in Enfield last year applies this season to New York Governor, to State Senate and to the Assembly. And it will apply next year when, if expected, I run for a third term on the Enfield Town Board. 

I do not fear potential opposition next year.  No, quite the contrary; I invite and welcome it.  Truth be told, I’ll be disappointed should an opponent not emerge.  Competition makes every candidate stronger.  It focuses attention, drives interest.  And my expectation of that future competition will motivate me today to listen more attentively, to respond more effectively, and when the time comes, to campaign a whole lot harder.

Antonio Delgado’s withdrawal from the Governor’s race saved Kathy Hochul a ton of money.  Hochul’s amassed roughly $20 Million already, money she can redirect from the primary to the November General Election, The New York Times reports.

Yes, money drives so much, and principle propels so little these days.

Antonio Delgado closed his message to supporters as he departed his campaign for New York Governor this week with these words: “Ultimately, this decision for me comes down to my belief that to walk with purpose, is to walk with love” he said.  “That belief has animated this campaign.” 

Yes, those words—and that passion—is why I, as a centrist-leaning, registered Democrat, regardless of my personal opinions on such potent hot-button issues as  taxing the rich, good-cause eviction, or the Green New Deal, would, if given the opportunity, have put my name on Antonio Delgado’s designating petition.  Democracy deserved it be there.

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Tower Wars: When One is Not Enough

Verizon seeks new cell spot; Enfield planners cautious

Reporting and Analysis by Robert Lynch; February 6, 2026

Up front, let’s make one point clear:  This has nothing to do with what you’d tell the mythical, geeky Verizon guy when he once asked you on TV, “Can you hear me now?”  It wouldn’t matter.  What this is all about is how well the geeky guy’s supposed employer, a mega-billion dollar telecommunications giant, can succeed in lining its wallet.  The telco guy admits as much.  What’s more, the rationale he asks the Town of Enfield to stomach reaffirms Adam Smith’s law of the marketplace; supply and demand.

The telco guy—more aptly put, Verizon’s agent, Tony Phillips of Kendall Communications—brought to the Enfield Town Planning Board this week Verizon’s heretofore undisclosed plans to erect a new, free-standing, 195-foot tall communications tower on a postage-stamp plot of land located at 217 Van Dorn Road North, just north of the Hayts Road intersection.  The site lies a mere two-tenths mile from another cell tower to its northeast, a site where Verizon now locates.  Verizon would like to hop its cell antennas from the old tower to the new one… and save money.

“Rent is rising and rising; the rent becomes just crazy,” Tony Phillips advised Enfield planners as he Zoomed into the February 4th meeting. “Every time we touch” the tower’s antennas, “the rent goes up.”  Verizon is in “financial hardship” and needs “another option to locate,” Phillips pleaded.

There’s a twisted irony in all of this, of course.  An industry that not all that long ago held a monopoly over the American consumers’ telephones, ruling us all as “Ma Bell,” now whines about itself becoming monopoly’s victim.

Whoever owns the nearby tower is apparently holding Verizon over a barrel.  Phillips said Verizon’s upgrade from 3G to 4G, to (now) 5G has escalated the tower’s rental expense exponentially. 

“This project is part of a High Rent Relocation program,” Phillips described Verizon’s strategy, writing in an email sent the Planning Board prior to its meeting. “By relocating to our proposed tower, Verizon and the other carriers can typically save over a million dollars in rent during the lifetime of the lease,” the agent claimed.  Phillips then wrote—we assume he wrote keeping a straight face—that, “This savings is passed on to the consumer.”

But Enfield planners had misgivings.  They spent more than an hour peppering Phillips with questions about the project’s observed weak points and then took another 30 minutes tossing around those reservations among themselves.

“I don’t like the location at all,” Planning Board Chair Dan Walker remarked at one point during the latter discussion.

“It’s great you’re making Verizon more money,” Board member Rich Teeter observed.  But as for Enfield, Teeter concluded, “It’s not going to do us any good.”

The Town of Enfield has no zoning.  And because of that, probably neither the Planning Board nor the Town Board can block the tower’s construction.  But planners can impose restrictions under Enfield’s Site Plan Review Law.  They could move the tower back on the property or expand the size of the leased footprint on which it would sit.  That would provide a sufficient “fall zone” should the tower ever collapse.

Cell carriers typically lease tower space from third party providers.  And documents indicate that a Charlotte, NC-based firm, Harmoni Towers, would own the tower now being proposed. 

Harmoni would build a 195-foot self-supporting tower centered on a tiny 100-foot by 100-foot lot leased from owners Michael and Jamey Kartychak.  The lot, already staked out, lies just south of the Kartychaks’ driveway.  And the tower would stand a mere 125 feet from Van Dorn Road’s centerline, according to survey documents presented the Planning Board.

The Kartychaks did not attend Wednesday’s Planning Board meeting, nor did anyone from Verizon.  Documents list Kendall Communications as the project’s “Site Acquisition Firm.”

“I think we’re going to get a lot of pushback from the public, given the location of it and proximity to other houses,” Chairman Walker predicted Wednesday.  He said were the current plan to go to public hearing as it stands now, objecting neighbors could fill more seats than they did for the Planning Board’s last controversial project, the 33-lot Breezy Meadows subdivision approved three years ago.

“We have to take into consideration the public’s concerns and the environmental concerns,” Walker advised Phillips and Board colleagues. 

Expect “a lot of pushback from a lot of people living right there,” Teeter agreed with the board chair.  Rich Teeter said he owns rental property across the road from the proposed tower.

The stretch of Van Dorn Road north of Hayts is rural residential, with homes at roadside; fields and open areas behind them.  Board members questioned Kendall’s representative as to why the tower couldn’t be set further back on the Kartychak property, possibly behind the house and barns.  They never got a firm answer.

We have to be one-half mile from the existing tower, Phillips explained.  But that said, a rear portion of the owners’ property would still appear to satisfy the requirement.

One by one, more communications towers pop up in Enfield.  The tallest and most expensive of them, the 365-foot, multi-lighted American Towers’ structure on Alfred Eddy’s farm south of Bostwick Road, was built first, just when cell phone technology hit the Ithaca area.  This writer’s been told it’s one of the best cellular antenna sites in the county.

At least seven communications structures would exist in Enfield, should the newest one be built.  Each of the others is shorter than the one on Eddy’s farm and requires no lights.  Most accommodate cell phone antennas.  A few serve specialized functions. 

Clarity Connect built a tower north of Route 79 to facilitate a terrestrial broadband Internet network that never really caught on.  In 2021, Family Life Ministries built a tower off Enfield Center Road for its Christian FM station, WCID.  Tompkins County owns a tower off Tucker Road, within the Breezy Meadows subdivision, employing it for emergency communications services.

Most of these other towers are set well back from their respective roads.  This newest one would not be.

“I’m not opposed to technology, but I don’t like the location, close to the road and next to ten houses,” Rich Teeter told Verizon’s agent.  “You don’t have a very big area (should the tower fall),” Teeter maintained.  “Roofs aren’t supposed to do that either, but things happen.”

Tony Phillips held firm to the frequently-made argument that failing towers are designed to collapse upon themselves, rather than fall intact.  And if this one ever fell straight, it might tumble across Van Dorn Road or the Kartychak’s driveway.  They “very rarely” fall that way, Phillips asserted.

Those are the key words you said, “Very rarely,” Board member Mike Carpenter rebutted.  “How would neighbors be protected?” 

Philips and the Board then danced around the issue of exactly who would carry the liability insurance and what catastrophes might be covered.  At one point Phillips equated the falling risk to that of a “six-story building right close to the road.”

Dan Walker questioned whether Verizon could hang its antennas on the Clarity Connect tower perhaps a mile away.  Phillips dismissed the suggestion.

Additionally, planners raised in their discussion whether tower owners should post some sort of decommissioning bond to ensure prompt removal should the tower’s use discontinue.

Wednesday night’s “sketch plan review conference” marked the first of three steps tower developers must take before they can break ground.  A formal application and an environmental assessment must first get completed and filed.  Once reviewed by the Planning Board, the board would hold a public hearing prior to its granting final consent.

Phillips doubted that he and his client could meet the deadlines required for review by the March meeting.  More likely, that review will occur in early-April, placing any public hearing later in the spring.

Yet consider this: The public interest considerations that underpin this whole Verizon initiative are negligible, if not nonexistent.  If the tower were built, you’d get the same number of bars on your Verizon phone as at present; no better, no worse.  Dead spots in Enfield would persist.  If the new tower goes up, the one that’s so near it would not come down.  It’s owned by somebody else.  The current tower would remain even were it nothing more than a useless, ugly, naked stick stuck in the air.

“Carriers can have another place to go,” Tony Phillips represented to the board, implying that more total tower space may invite new, competing cell providers into the market.  Yet those are business decisions, speculative ones at best, and decisions made by those far removed from Enfield.  Don’t count on them.

“It’s being built to do a favor for the industry,” Planning Board member Henry Hansteen asserted.

“It’s all financial.  It’s not like the Town’s going to get any benefit,” Rich Teeter reiterated.  There’ll not be any better service, he pointed out.

But “it’s an allowed use under the Site Plan Review Law,” Chair Dan Walker cautioned.  “Denying something like this is complicated,” he said.  Worst case, Verizon or Harmoni could take Enfield to court.

But what most struck an observer at the meeting that night was the perceived level of corporate hubris.  It represented another instance of a big-city business interest praying upon presumed small-town naiveté, and playing those at Enfield’s board table as patsies.  One can argue it happened with the giant Applegate Road solar project in 2020; and then, again, with the Breezy Meadows subdivision three years later.

With the solar project—safely-stated, the one thing Enfield residents of all political stripes have most derided this decade—outside developers had first said one thing, and then done something else.  The Planning Board had specified woven-wire fencing, and builders erected chain-link.  Legally-mandated open areas were abandoned to weeds and scrub.  And whereas owners had first represented they’d keep forested areas near the solar arrays undisturbed, they later clear-cut.

“They didn’t do their homework,” Mike Carpenter appraised what Verizon’s agent had presented the Planning Board Wednesday night.  A colleague remarked, partly under her breath, “It’s a snow job.”

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