|
A friend in New Jersey alerted me to this box item in last Saturday's New York Post:
Things a do-nothing senator can do while stuck in Albany for the weekend:
-...Drive through nearby run-down Amsterdam to see the product of 50 years of state economic development efforts.
Actually, to be fair, it's more like 45 years. Come back in another five.
As cruel as the Post post may be, it should give us some pause. It really isn't out of line to question whether all this state and federal government paternalism may have had exactly the opposite of the intended effect. If left to our own devices and own resources and own markets, I wonder what Amsterdam would have looked like today?
In 1970 alone more than 27 million dollars in outside funds passed through here and not without a little corrupting effect. We had simultaneously the Urban Renewal redevelopment of downtown, the state arterial and river bridge project, the state sewage treatment plant, the water filtration plant, the Amsterdam Housing Authority projects, the UDC Woodrow Wilson Housing and I'm sure I'm missing a couple.
I remember one of the great problems our outside experts were attempting to solve for us was the critical problem of traffic jams in our downtown.
That's the one project at which they were sensationally successful.
 
Buy my murder mystery The Evil Has Landed
and don't forget The Judge Report (THE BOOK) is now available, too!
|
|
I held back on this, because it hadn't been public knowledge before today. Shortly before leaving for my birthday dinner in Albany on Tuesday I learned that Robby Phelps had died in Arizona. It is still beyond my comprehension. He was the picture of health, athletic, trim, handsome as all get out. When he'd come home I would run into him and he would invariably shake my hand and say, "Hi, Mr. Going," as though I was some old guy when he was in fact the same age as my youngest brother.
I've been close to the family for a long time. Robby's father Pete used to run the Time Out Lunch on Park Street (or the haunted house coffee shop as we sometimes called it) and many a morning and noon-time I spent there. It was like that place in "My Cousin Vinny" with breakfast being two dollars and lunch three dollars, no matter what you ordered. Pete would sometimes take off for hours at a time and the patrons would make the coffee when the pot ran dry, cook their own breakfasts, leave the money in the register and drop the tips in the tip jar until he returned. One day a neighborhood kid stole a pack of gum and Pete closed the place. Didn't want to be in a business where you can't trust your customers.
Pete's wife Donna I knew as well from playing volleyball with Mary. When she retired from Niagara Mohawk I picked her up as my Family Court secretary and I couldn't have asked for a better one, especially then. They have both been friends through thick and thin. Pete ran my campaign for Family Court Judge and helped me out the couple of other times I ran for office before that. Both have great senses of humor. Just this Monday Mike Chiara and I were laughing so hard with Pete and son Scott that I thought Bridge Street would open up and swallow us whole.
Will they ever laugh again?
It is against the order of things for a parent to bury a child, yet we know it happens. Could anything be sadder? Robby could be as rough and tumble and mischievous as any kid. He was alive, alive as anyone could be. My heart aches.
Pete and Donna made the lonely trip west yesterday to bring their son home. I can't imagine. I don't want to. There are no words.
|
|
Has City Corporation Counsel Gerard DeCusatis, my friend and relative by marriage, gone completely bonkers? He has chosen the anniversary of the day the Continental Congress voted for independence from England (July 2, 1776) to declare that the chief executive officer of the City of Amsterdam can completely ignore resolutions of the Common Council. Specifically he claims with respect to the upcoming resolution declaring void the city's contract with Uri Kaufman ,
the Mayor has the authority to administer the provisions of the option contract on behalf of the City and any resolution passed by the Common Council attempting to exercise administrative control, repudiate or cancel the option is not effective.
Wow! Citing absolutely no statutes or case law in support of his position, he simply declares that
The Common Counsel does not have the authority to cancel or repudiate a contract or otherwise direct the execution of the provisions of a contract.
The Recorder has linked to the Opinion here.
So the Uri Kaufman contract, which specifically gives the city the right to terminate the contract, can only be terminated if the Executive so deigns, according to her First Minister.
Folks, we fought a war over this issue. That is why our executives are not kings and queens or dukes or duchesses. Perhaps our ruler and her First Minister missed some of their basic civics classes.
In the United States of America, all domestic policy is made by our legislatures, representing the people of our governmental subdivisions. The executive's function, at all levels of government, is to implement the policy of the legislature. There, is that so hard? No one should have graduated from eighth grade without learning that.
No contract can be made under the City of Amsterdam's charter without the approval of the Common Council. Since ALL policy is made by the Council, the Council has full authority to alter, change, terminate or even abrogate a contract if they so desire and it is the DUTY of the Chief Executive to implement that policy.
More:
The Charter does not enumerate all of the executive powers and duties, to determine the scope of executive authority it is helpful to look to federal and state government to determine what is customarily an executive area of authority. The authority to contract is an executive authority on the state and federal level subject to a few exceptions that require legislative approval. The City Charter by its general grant of executive authority to the Mayor grants authority over contracts to the Mayor.
Total hogwash. (I used a stronger term when I first read this, but I've calmed down a little since).
Where to start? The premises are pure baloney. The authority to contract is NOT an executive function anywhere unless granted by the legislative body. The Charter most certainly does enumerate all the executive functions. If they aren't there, the executive doesn't have them (unless otherwise specifically granted by the Laws of New York State, of which we are a subdivision).
This would all be comical were it not for the serious implications of a series of steps taken this year by the mayor and her First Minister. Recall the mayor's Executive Order Number One which declared that all city employees must, under penalty of discipline, follow the directives of the Corporation Counsel and further prohibited them from seeking opinions and guidance from outside sources, including state agencies who oversee their functions and govern their professional licenses.
Not much later DeCusatis declared unilaterally that a Local Law adopted several years ago by the Common Council, approved by the mayor, certified by the City Clerk, filed with and approved by the Secretary of State and printed and bound in the City Code was null and void. He has voiced, though not declared, similar fiats with respect to a Local Law terminating health insurance benefits for the Common Council and a Local Law adopted overwhelmingly by the voters of the City limiting tax and fee increases to three per cent per year.
We do not elect kings, dictators or tyrants in this country. Frankly, no one elected Mr. DeCusatis at all. But he has, with the broad approval of Mayor Thane, set this city down an extremely dangerous path where the rule of law is tossed aside and government by decree becomes the norm.
Reasonable minds can differ about the Kaufman project, as the healthy debate on this and other blogs and other media demonstrates.
But by God this is America and I will give my last drop of blood to see that my elected legislators, boneheads though they may be, continue to exercise the rights, the powers and the duties that we have granted them on our behalf. If the Common Council bows to this dictatorial pressure they should all resign. This is disgraceful.
Show us you have the guts to stand together and do the right thing, because it is the right thing. If Mayor Thane then ignores the directives you have given her, then your recourse is to petition the Governor for her removal from office for violation of her oath to obey the charter, laws, ordinances and resolutions of the City of Amsterdam.
You also control the purse strings and have the absolute right to prevent the expenditure of a dime of funds under the city's control which do not meet with your approval.
This is no time to be summer soldiers and sunshine patriots.
********
[UPDATE] Thanks to a great American for reminding me of this:
Let the Fourth of July always be a reminder that here in this land, for the first time, it was decided that man is born with certain God-given rights; that government is only a convenience created and managed by the people, with no powers of its own except those voluntarily granted to it by the people. We sometimes forget that great truth, and we never should.
-Ronald Reagan July 4, 1981
Buy my murder mystery The Evil Has Landed
and don't forget The Judge Report (THE BOOK) is now available, too!
|
|