NOVEMBER 13, 2006 MEETING OF THE EFFICIENCY, REFORM, AND INTERGOVERNMENTAL AFFAIRS COMMITTEE OF THE ULSTER COUNTY LEGISLATURE

The meeting convened at 5:10 pm. Attending were Legislators and committee members Bischoff (Chairman), Busick, Cummings, Shapiro, and Bartels. Legislators and committee members Rodriguez and Liepmann were absent. Legislators Donaldson and Loughran attended part of the meeting. Also attending for all or part of the meeting were Election Commissioner Parete and deputy commissioner Fraser of the Ulster County Board of Elections (BOE), concerned citizen Tom Kadgen, representing the League of Women Voters, Mike Hein, county administrator, and Kevin Dumond, representing CSEA.

Board of Elections Report

Commissioner Parete reported that no absentee ballots have been counted as of today due to impoundment by the state. Bischoff asked if this was a trend. Parete said it’s hard to know. The only outcome from last Tuesday’s election that could be affected is the charter referendum and the open space propositions in Gardiner and Marbletown. Parete reported on the charter vote counts and raised the issue whether the city totals count with the county totals and that the county attorney has to advise on the subject. Cummings noted that on the absentees there is less likelihood for blanks. Bischoff and Parete discussed potential absentee outcomes and concluded that while possible it will be difficult for the charter to be defeated.

Bartels noted that it was mentioned in Ways and Means that there is no money in the 2007 budget for charge backs to the towns for election expenses because the county administrator said he couldn’t budget for something the legislature hasn’t made a determination on. Ways and Means would like a resolution to be moved in this committee to include a certain amount of charge backs in the 2007 budget. Bartels moves for the Dec 6 meeting that rates of charge backs be established at current levels. Seconded by Shapiro. Two formulas were discussed based on registration or population. Shapiro asked whether actual cost wouldn’t make more sense. Hein said that the budget numbers were based on 2005 actual cost. Bartels amended her motion to make a resolution based on actual cost based numbers. Bartels said the county should standardize rates for custodians which now are not standardized. Motion is restated as follows: that the county charge back the towns for 2007 at rate of $676,842, which is based on actual costs in 2005. The resolution will contain a “whereas” that the towns have been notified of these charge backs and have included it in their budgets. Hein noted that supervisors/town clerks have been notified of the coming charge backs. Cummings didn’t think that basing cost on registered voters would, in her opinion, provide a disincentive to voter registration. Unanimously approved.

What is the status of voting machine technology, Bischoff asked? Parete reported that now the date is early January 2007. Bischoff noted that Suffolk County is suing to keep the lever machines and many voters expressed a desire to keep the machines on Election Day. Cummings believes we can save Ulster county $2 million dollars making everyone vote by absentee ballots. Voting by mail like it is done in Oregon was discussed. Parete noted that this would take a change in state law to have voting by mail and stated his belief that New York State is doing a good job of avoiding the problems of other states and is trying very hard to address everyone’s concerns about reliability.

Employee Suggestions. Rodriguez in an earlier conversation with Bischoff suggested that a subcommittee be established to consider employee suggestions. There are a great many of them. Shapiro noted that some legislators on other committees have been looking at this for months and wondered what the status was of those efforts. Bischoff believes that the suggestions he has are a different set of suggestions from the ones that other committees have been considering. Dumond confirmed this understanding and noted that the whole process went no further than the distribution of the suggestions. Loughran noted that a lot of the suggestions were anti-management and were not viable suggestions to improve operations. Shapiro would like to find out what has been done already before this committee acts and asked why this committee would want to start a subcommittee without knowing what has already been done. Bartels said that the committee needs to find out what has been done but noted that no matter what has been done it has not reached any conclusion and supported establishing a subcommittee. Shapiro suggested that he and Bartels be the subcommittee to go over the suggestions. Bartels said that it makes sense of this committee to deal with the suggestions as the efficiency and reform committee. Dumond noted that some suggestions may seem not to make sense because the reader may not know how a department works and often when an employee explains his or her suggestion it may be a good one. Bischoff noted that most of the suggestions are blind. Dumond said he would be able to figure out who made what suggestion. Cummings asked about a suggestion that said $18,000 can be saved by terminating the wind power contract. It was explained that this was passed by the legislature—10% of county electric is purchased from wind power. Bischoff said that Rodriguez offered to chair a subcommittee. Bartels suggested that Rodriguez take the whole packet and divide it up among all the members of the committee. Bischoff says that is making more work because the package was already divided up and wants to start with this committee’s package of suggestions. Shapiro noted that other committees have dropped the ball on this and that it is the 11^th hour and that this committee should act. The committee would like to establish a 3 person subcommittee and asked for participation by a minority member to serve on the committee in addition to two members of the majority. Dumond, Rodriguez, and Shapiro volunteered to be on the committee. A minority member will be named later.

Other issues. Kadgen noted that there are other suggestions that came out of studies in the 90s that very little was done with these. He passed out copies of these suggestions to the committee. Shapiro stated that an employee has contacted him about phone calls—an employee stated that a number of collect calls were coming into the public defender’s office because prisoners didn’t have access to phones. Shapiro said there must be some way for these prisoners to speak with their counsel without having to make a collect call. Dumond has noted that it is possible to set up a line that cannot make collect calls. Bischoff thought that this should go on to the Criminal Justice Committee as well as the suggestions that Kadgen passed out.

Shapiro raised the Persen House problem. Where are we? The building is sitting empty and the county is paying heat and electric. Shapiro believes that this committee should gather information and discuss what to do with the Persen House and other space not being used efficiently. Shapiro suggested that this committee write a letter to buildings and grounds and arts and education and the administrator’s office and ask for all information collected on the Persen House, including information on grants. Bischoff asked Bartels and Shapiro to write the letter to come from the committee. Bartels believes that the arts and education committee was making progress on uses for the building, such as tourism going into the building.

Meeting adjourned at 6pm.