These are my notes and thoughts about the March Efficiency and Reform committee meeting. Minutes will be posted as soon as they are available.
Board of Election Commissioner Tom Turco briefed the committee on the work being done in the Board of Elections with respect to HAVA and the 5% budget cuts. HAVA – Tom was at a meeting in Albany last week with state election officials. The Dept. of Justice is suing New York State because of our slow implementation of HAVA legislation. The state is trying to satisfy the DOJ concern about disables accessibility. The state is considering requiring counties to buy equipment to make our lever machines more accessible to the disabled community. The two options are for the county to spend approximately $164K to add an integrated voice system or spend over 1⁄2 million dollars for an AutoMark ballot marker. See: http://www.vogueelection.com/products_automark.html
There was extensive discussion about a Fleet Manager. If we implemented the Fleet Manager position, that person would be responsible for scheduling preventive maintenance, inspection and repair of county vehicles. Three legislators will look into this and report back next month.
The Board of Ethics also reports to the Efficiency and Reform Committee. We moved forward with a resolution that will be voted on at the April 12 legislative session appointing the ethics panel. This panel will be charged with rewriting our existing ethics law, coming up with a plain language ethics disclosure statement and the normal function of rendering ethics opinions as necessary. Pending a vote by the full legislature the Board of Ethics will consist of: Legislators Brian Shapiro, Chair, Brian Cahill and Glenn Noonan along with four citizens, Lori Rosenberg, Alice Tipp, Peter Cordovano and Lanny Walter.
The committee also did something that is not usually done by legislative committees. We spent time brainstorming. There was free flowing discussion of ways to improve efficiency of county government and save taxpayer money.
The draft Policy Statement of the Employee Suggestion Program was reviewed and will be sent to county attorneys for review and comment.
The next regular meting will be on April 10. There will also be a special meeting on March 13 to vote on a resolution favoring Paper Ballot / Optical Scan voting machines over Direct Recording Electronic machines.