County Leg Dems - Reform Agenda
The Dems in the County Leg have put out a Reform Agenda, which we will dig into soon. In the meantime, there’s 14 separate items they hope to enact. Broadly, there is a section devoted primarily to letting the sun shine in on how they do the people’s business, stopping the flow of accountability and responsibility to LDC’s and Authorities, and important fiscal reforms.
Sounds good to me! On the D&C Political Blog, Tom Tobin weighs in thusly:
The Democrats’ white paper
There’s much in the county Democrats’ manifesto, its pre-campaign combo-plate platform, statement of principles and complaint desk, to react to, and future blogs will get at the details. It’s good that the party put this out, and it should spark some public discussion, though it mystifies me how the party is able to drive a lot of intellectual stakes into the political ground but can’t get anyone out there to run for the most important elective job in Monroe.
Yeah, we’re all pissed off about that too. Come on, people! Someone step up! You’ll find about a zillion folks got your back.
The Republican response was as predictable as leftovers: the poor, misguided Dems didn’t address the biggest issue, the structural deficit. A bigger issue may be the complete, utter shutout the legislative majority GOP throws at the Democrats on every subject, every time out. No opposition bills, no matter how worthy, make it over the wall. That’s lousy governance here, in Albany, wherever it’s encountered.
THANK YOU! Look at counties around here. Ontario and Livingston chiefest among them. They’ve found ways to harness the ENTIRE county legislature’s power and ideas, regardless of party. With the Monroe GOP, though, it’s party over county, party over people.
Do you have a link to this whitepaper?
I can’t speak to Ontario County’s politics, but Livingston County is not a place anyone should want to emulate when it comes to politics and governance. No one can get a job in the county if they’re not Republican, and the few Democrats we do get elected seem to get co-opted into Republican practices pretty easily. I think one of our basic problems is that we have a Board of Supervisors instead of a county legislature. The supervisors are never held to account by voters for things they do at the county level; all supervisors’ races seem to be about town issues alone. Yet once supervisors get elected, their loyalties are divided between the town that elected them and their buddies on the Board. This has created a situation in two towns (Geneseo and Lima) where Democratic Supervisors (whose elections were nothing short of miraculous, given the registration imbalance,) have completely alienated their voting constituencies by trying to ramrod through big box development that the citizens don’t want. The only reason I can figure out for this pattern is that it is all about sales tax revenue for the county. The county is the only entity that gains from big boxes; research clearly shows they are a net drain on municipalities.
Of course, Monroe County’s experience proves that having a county legislature isn’t a guaranteed solution. But we have no accountability here in Livingston County. 9 years ago the Board pulled all funding from the local school districts, which produced howls of protest, but it was never an issue in any subsequent supervisor’s election.
[...] readership when their comments are frequently worthy of being put on the front page.  In my post about the Monroe County Leg Dems putting forth a Reform Agenda, I mistakenly included [...]