County Executive Jimino Again Slams Unfunded State Mandates In Her State Of The County Address
By Doug La Rocque
One week after three term legislator Lester Goodermote announced his retirement due to health concerns, the Rensselaer County Legislature last Thursday night appointed Hoosick Town Board member Jeff Wysocki as his replacement in District 5.
[private]Wysocki owns and operates a farm on land near the Hoosick Falls High School. He tells The Eastwick Press “controlling costs while maintaining services to all the people of the County” is one of his top priorities. As a member of the town board and Deputy Supervisor for seven years, he is also very active in the PFOA crisis.
One of the areas being looked at for a possible new water source for the Village of Hoosick Falls is on his farm. Legislative Chairman Stan Brownell, who also represents the Fifth District, said of Wysocki, “he has an in-depth knowledge up and down this valley, as Lester did. He brings a lot to the table with the agriculture aspect of Eastern Rensselaer County.”
Brownell points out their district represents 43% of the county’s land mass with many large farms. “He knows their problems and concerns being a large landowner himself and will be instrumental in helping these folks out up and down the valley.” The legislature’s district five represents the Towns of Hoosick, Petersburgh, Berlin, Grafton and Stephentown.
These are words Rensselaer County Executive Kathy Jimino used in her annual State of the County address to the legislature, highlighting the differences as she sees it between the State’s spending plans and the County’s extensive efforts to keep local program spending under control. She again hammered home the point that “the County is now spending 8% less for locally funded services such as maintenance and patrol of roads and highways, as well as services for veterans and seniors, than we were 11 years ago.” She contrasts this with the State, which has increased mandated expenses to the County by 70% over the same 11 years.
The County Executive paraphrased the famed Charles Dickens novel “A Tale of Two Cities,” calling this instead “A Tale of Two Governments.” She described “the best of times” as being the proud examination of the operation of county government, while defining state government as “the worst of times” for not exercising “any care or concern or much less responsibility by the overt lack of any fiscal accountability”
This has been Jimino’s message for many years now, and following her address, The Eastwick Press asked her, does she think the State will ever listen? “I’m hoping that they do. There has been a renewed focus in the last few years, particularly by this Governor on the issue of the high property taxes in New York State. Again among the highest in the nation. And while the governor throws out the ideas of shared services being impactful to that, we have also demonstrated that you can’t get there through just shared services.”
She also noted that school and county taxes make up about 80 percent of a New Yorker’s tax bill, and this is predicated on how the state finances programs. “And I think that there can be no denying that if you want to really bring property taxes in line with other states, then you have to address that issue.”
The Eastwick Press posed the same question to Legislative Chairman Brownell, who said “I think they are. The New York State Association of Counties is putting an awful lot of pressure on the state, and I think the Senate and Assembly members are listening.” He hopes the state legislature will in the end recognize the squeeze they are putting on the counties in the state and do something about it.
In other portions of her address, Jimino talked about the creation of a county-wide Stop Heroin Now coalition chaired by Sheriff Pat Russo and the Public Health Director Mary Fran Wachunas, that draws on the expertise of 13 county agencies, and other organizations such as the DEA, schools, universities, recovery centers, local hospitals and health care providers, in an effort to combine resources and share ideas to combat the problem. She also touched on the Health Department’s role in the continuing PFOA matters such as conducting water testing, rallying area business to donate bottled water, flushing of municipal water supplies and acting as an intermediary between local governments and the state.
Legislative business that night also consisted in the awarding of the County’s insurance policy to a firm known as NYMIR (New York Municipal Insurance Reciprocal association). This is, according to Chairman Brownell, the result of a comprehensive rebid of the policy, that will see a cost savings of $156,000 annually, and over $800,000 over the length of the policy.
[/private]