KINGSTON - A newly formed Charter Transition Team will begin the process of changing Ulster County's form of government during its first meeting next week.
The seven-member transition team will have more than its fair share of work in readying county departments for the change that will take effect on Jan. 1, 2009, when the first county executive takes office.
"A big part of it will be gathering information, looking at what other counties do, what works and what doesn't work, brainstorming and trying to figure out what works best in Ulster County," said Legislator Gary Bischoff, chairman of the Charter Transition Team. "And a large part of it will be the actual reorganization, which may or may not take place incrementally."
The team comprises a bipartisan group of lawmakers as well as members of the county's former Charter Commission, which spent two years researching and drafting the 90-page charter.
Ulster County residents narrowly approved the charter this past November, clearing the way for the county to be led by a full-time executive rather than a part-time Legislature chairman.
Another key change is that the current appointed county administrator and elected treasurer will be replaced by an appointed commissioner of finance and an elected comptroller.
"The main thing to address is to put a structure for Ulster County government in place, so when the comptroller and county executive start working, there is a structure already in place," said Bischoff, D-Saugerties.
Under the charter, the county executive will be the point person responsible for the county's entire budget and will have the authority to appoint and supervise the heads of each of the county's roughly 25 departments. The Legislature will relinquish most administrative duties and become a policy-making body.
"There are certain departments that will need to be transformed or phased in to a certain degree. We'll have to decide what structure some new activities will have," said Gerald Benjamin, chairman of the former Charter Commission and a former chairman of the county Legislature. "It's a matter of identifying needs, creating a timeline and bringing in the people with the expertise to meet the needs, mostly from inside the government."
The county's new commissioner of finance will take on the duties of the current treasurer, addressing the factual details of the county's annual budget. The comptroller will conduct audits and exercise broad decision-making powers - a change designed to create more accountability in the county's finances.
"The administrative accountability structure, and certainly how the finances are managed and accounted for, will be the two most critical areas," said Transition Team member Marianne Collins, who also served on the Charter Commission. "That will be our trick - to lay a document on top of a pre-existing administrative structure and then to reconfigure that structure so that, at the end, we have an efficient and effective outcome."
The Transition Team will discuss its course of action during a meeting at 4:30 p.m. Tuesday in the Ulster County Office Building on Fair Street in Kingston.

©Daily Freeman 2007

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