Albany County Legislature Appointment Speech
   Thank you, Mr. Chairman and the Albany County Legislature for the privilege you have provided me in addressing this assembly.  I am running for the office of county legislator to help the ordinary citizens of Albany County – you know, the ones living in the small 1950’s and 1960’s ranch houses – by working with my fellow legislators to improve the quality and reduce the cost of county services or, if unable to do so, at least provide eyes, ears and a voice for these citizens too often ignored in the apparently zero-sum game of government expenditure allocation.  One should not have to be a state deputy commissioner to afford to live in the Town of Bethlehem.
   In a represent-ative democracy, the only way to refocus govern-ment to serve the ordinary citizens is to provide the citizenry with information so they can make informed deci-sions.  Treating ordinary citizens like mushrooms – covering them with manure and keeping them in the dark – is no way for government officials – whether they be national, state, county or municipal government officials – to treat their countrymen or neighbors.  It is for this reason that I ask Mr. Cotrofeld to participate with me in debates without preconditions sponsored by community organizations and not to engage in unfair campaign practices during our election campaign.
   Government officials’ glowing, self-congratulatory press releases would hardly be worth mentioning if it were not that they are being reprinted or rebroadcast as news and as a replacement for expensive investigative journalism.  At a salary of $180,000 per year, the New York State Senate finance secretary is certainly getting rich on a government salary, but, as I am sure Carol DeMare will confirm, no one is getting rich working on a newspaper salary or being a newspaper owner.  The intractable problem of how to finance investigative reporting while maintaining independent journalism – a problem that affects us nationally but is a more serious problem locally – is one for which I have no easy answer but, if elected, would work with any of you, including Ms. DeMare, to try to solve.
   It is heartening for me as a citizen of Albany County to see that even members of the majority conference are starting to examine the shenanigans of county officials in the executive branch.  Keep up the good work, and thank you.
   I attended the March 12, 2007 legislative meeting in which the legislature selected Ryan Horstmyer to fill Ann Comella’s vacant seat.  No comment is necessary on the ballet the public observed then or the ballet it may observe tonight for the majority conference to fill vacant legislative seats with the candidate its conference prefers.  Tom Cotrofeld certainly has been a loyal committeeman for many years when it was neither easy nor fun to be a Democratic committeeman in Bethlehem and has been a longtime confidant of Bethlehem Democratic Chairman Matty Clyne.  Yet, I share the concerns expressed by Legislator Willingham and Legislator Morse regarding the majority conference’s hiring procedure as applied with the hiring of Public Defender Toricello:  Were multiple Democratic candidates – let alone Republican, Independence, Conservative Working Families or unaffiliated candidates – interviewed?  Were rank-and-file legislators allowed to interview the party leadership’s candidates so they could make an informed choice when they vote tonight?  I avouch that I was not interviewed by the majority conference.  The Democratic Party’s perceived interest in running its candidates for the fall election as incumbents is not necessarily in the interest of the constituents of the 34^th District or of the citizens of Albany County.
   I vow that, if appointed or elected this fall, I will represent and communicate with all the citizens of the district, regardless of party affiliation and regardless of whether I think they will vote for me in the future or not.  The preceding legislator for the 34^th District did not follow this principle – a principle embodied in the oath he took as a legislator – and for that he should be reproached.
   On a more humorous note, I want to thank all of my friends from Colonie who I didn’t know I had and who did not know they were my friends until they found out I was the Republican candidate for the 34^th District who have nominated me for this appointment tonight.  I also want to reassure Majority Leader Commisso that I have no political designs on his County Democratic Co-chairmanship; Frank, your back is safe with me.
   If not sooner, I hope to see and work with all of you in January.  I will be available to answer any questions of legislators for the duration of this meeting.  Again, thank you Mr. Chairman and Albany County legislators.

Albany County Legislature Public Comment re:  Local Law J

   Like our beloved sheriff, I’m for the firemen.  However, I’m also for the nurses, teachers, dental hygienists, policemen, doctors, automobile mechanics, construction workers working two jobs and single mothers who also comprise the citizens of the 34^th Legislative District of Albany County.  Even if the special interest is as worthy a special interest as volunteer firemen, Local Law J is still special interest legislation.  The enabling state legislation allowing for the 10% reduction in assessed value for local and school property taxes was sponsored by Neil Breslin in the Senate and Jack McEneny in the Assembly.  It applies to counties in New York between 292,000 and 297,000, a definition sufficiently restrictive to make it apply only to Albany County.  These circumstances beg the questions, “If recruiting volunteer firemen is so important, why does it only apply to Albany County?”  and “If recruiting volunteer firemen is difficult, is Albany County really the only New York county that has difficulty in recruiting volunteer firemen?”
   If we need to recruit volunteer firemen, then let us do it in the most effective and tax-efficient way possible to put the least financial burden on the citizens of Albany County, who, as citizens of the State of New York, have the highest tax burden compared to the citizens of other states.  After having spoken to several fire commissioners from the three fire districts located in the 34^th District, you might want to consider:
1) The Elsmere Fire District does not need any volunteers; they have a waiting list.
2) The Slingerlands Fire District does need volunteers, but it particularly needs young male volunteers, ages 18-25, or young volunteers who have the strength of young male volunteers.
3) The Delmar Fire District needs two emergency medical technicians but no firemen.
4)Proposed Local Law J provides that the property tax exemption is permanent if the volunteer maintains a certain minimum level of service for twenty years, when the need is to attract and retain younger volunteers.
5) The permanent property tax exemption proposed in this legislation is a future liability for county taxpayers that, I suspect, no one in the state or county legislature has estimated its magnitude and thus what the property tax burden for future taxpayers will be.  As drafted, this legislation is very similar to the U.S. Social Security Act, and that should be a matter of concern for all conscientious Albany County legislators.
6) Not all volunteer firemen in the fire districts, particularly the young ones the districts wish to target, own residential property.  They would receive no benefit from this legislation.
7) The fire districts do need to retain some experienced firemen.  As one fire commissioner told me, “We do need people who know what the hell they’re doing.”  The five-year enrollment requirement for eligibility, therefore, might be a good idea.  An even better idea might be to make the property tax exemption dependent on, or vary by, the skill of the firemen, which would provide an incentive to attract new recruits to the time-consuming training to become and continue to be an EMT and keep skilled firemen, instead of rewarding the length of time a volunteer has been enrolled in a fire company, since longevity does not necessarily reflect skill.
8) Local Law J, as currently drafted, is not providing tools to the fire commissioners to attract talented volunteers for the benefit of fire district residents, but, rather, is providing an entitlement to volunteer firemen who, through their choices, choose what qualifying activities they wish to perform to be eligible for the tax exemption.  Particularly noteworthy is Section 4(1)(e), which provides for fulfilling a credit for participation in a single response or standby.  Many more volunteers than can be sent for a particular call respond to fire alarms, because currently all calls go out as general calls and because fire districts require that all volunteers have seat belts available for any call on which they participate.  This situation allows for volunteer firemen to qualify for the tax benefit, placing the burden on fire district residents, while completing activities that may be deemed unnecessary by fire chiefs or of little value to fire district residents.
9) If the money were assessed at either the fire district or at the county level and sent to the fire district, each fire district would have the flexibility to spend the money in the best way each district believes it can recruit and retain new volunteers.  For example, in Delmar, the district could build a new firehouse.
10)  Fire departments (the nonprofit entities associated with governmental fire districts) are 501(c)(4) organizations.  Contributions to such organizations that are used for social welfare or educational purposes are tax-deductible to the contributors who itemize their income tax deductions.  Although as structured, this property tax exemption is “tax wise” for volunteer firemen, because it reduces a nondeductible expense for them, it is “tax unwise” for fire district residents, because they cannot deduct the additional property tax burden on their personal residences.  It would be very easy to structure a benefit for volunteer firemen that maintains the tax deductibility of fire district residents’ payments.
11)  Building a new firehouse and creating greater perceived benefits to firemen volunteers – e.g. social center, an X-box console, big screen TV, pool table, are all lower cost amortized over time than Local Law J and provide for a benefit to other citizens and nonprofit groups who could use the facilities.  One of the fire commissioners did tell me, however, that these recreational facilities generally go unused by the volunteer firemen and therefore may not be of high value to them.
12)  A carefully created coupon book – where one uses the wealth created by profit margins and thinks big (e.g. build a house or improve an existing house for volunteer firemen) – could provide better benefits to volunteer firemen while improving the local business communities.
   It is campaign season, and this legislation’s lineage indicates to me that it was meant to allow sponsors of the legislation to trumpet its passage to the local firehouses.  As I said at the beginning of this treatise, I’m for the firemen, but I think the Albany County Legislature can do better for them and for their other constituents than Local Law J as currently proposed.

My opponent, Tom Cotrofeld, voted in favor of Local Law J.  In fact, he co-sponsored it, which, in the Albany County Legislature means that he raised his hand in the committee meeting when asked whether he wanted to be a co-sponsor or not.