Times Herald-Record Editorial: It can’t be about politics because they say it’s not

Despite encouragement from above and below, it has been difficult to get local governments to merge operations.

The governor has made it a priority. Many a taxpayer has made it a crusade. So when two governments show that they are ready to get started, that they have considered all of the details and need only final approval from Albany before they start moving the boxes, you would think that nothing could stand in the way.

But something did after the towns of Marbletown and Rosendale had agreed to use the old Rosendale Elementary School, a handicapped-accessible, energy-efficient building that straddled the town border. Legislation sponsored by Assemblyman Kevin Cahill, D-Kingston, allowing Marbletown to operate its town hall and court 2.8 miles down the road from its present location and just a short distance outside the town boundary zipped through the Assembly. Marbletown even had plans to save more tax money by renting out the old town offices.

Sen. John Bonacic, R-Mount Hope, helped get the noncontroversial measure through the Local Government Committee but then things stalled, leaving the towns stranded as the legislative session ended.

It turned out that the bill had a problem in the form of its sponsor, Sen. Cecelia Tkaczyk, D-Duanesburg. As Marbletown Supervisor Michael Warren explains it, the merger was going nowhere in the Republican dominated Senate because Tkaczyk, a Democrat, would be getting credit for it in an election year. The majority leader, Dean Skelos, would not let it come to the floor for a vote.

She ran into a similar problem earlier in the session when she tried to stop other states from disposing their wastewater from hydraulic fracturing in New York. That bill died in committee and the spokesman for the Senate Republicans, Scott Reif, said that Tkaczyk was wrong when she blamed political opposition. She simply did not do her job:

“Instead of issuing disingenuous press releases accusing people of having dark motives for voting the way they did, maybe Sen. Tkaczyk should have spent a little more time making the case and trying to earn the support of her colleagues,” Reif said.

How about the Marbletown/Rosendale plan? Reif had a familiar answer:

“Instead of issuing disingenuous press releases accusing people of having dark motives for voting the way they did, maybe Sen. Tkaczyk should have spent a little more time making the case and trying to earn the support of her colleagues,” Reif said.

 Don’t blame Reif. He’s only saying what Skelos and the party bosses tell him to. And although Skelos is the villain in this story, the tendency to put partisan politics above the public good is not limited to the Senate or to Republicans. There are plenty of examples of Democrats flexing their legislative muscles to keep Republicans from getting credit for good ideas as elections approach, most often in the Assembly where Democrats rule.

 That will change only when so many good ideas pile up in the Albany graveyard that they can’t be ignored and either those in the Legislature demand changes in procedures or the voters make the change at the polls.