.png)
Because I have a sincere interest in getting to know my possible coworkers, I attended Steve Greenfield's announcement that he's running for legislature in the new district 17. The entire announcement should be on Channel 23 sometime soon.
Steve has a problem with incumbent Susan Zimet: he doesn't think it's okay that she has a lobbying business.
By contrast, he pointed to his three years on the New Paltz School Board as proof that he doesn't try to profit from his influence. He also said that he will bring his knowledge of emergency services, infrastructure, education, land use, and transportation to bear upon problems at the county level.
When asked about Golden Hill, the only specific issue which came up before I had to leave, he hedged his bets a bit. He acknowledged that there are some services which can't be provided well by private industry, because there's no profit in it; however, he didn't specifically say that Golden Hill is one of those. He would solve that problem "by the numbers," he said.
2 comments:
I appreciate you covering the announcement. I must offer two corrections to your report.
I did not say my three years on the School Board was proof I would not profit from being a legislator. It's my personal honor that would prevent that. I said it was proof that a legislative body could make overwhelmingly unanimous decisions when its members were from three or more parties, or independent, and that this fact tells me that something must be interfering with the reasoning process in a body where so many party-line votes are seen. I identified caucus meetings, where consideration is given to how a view of an issue affects the party, and/or to what kind of deal on another issue could be made, instead of a pure focus on the issue, as the source of the problem. I stated this is why this district should send a non-party member with a non-partisan legislative record (rather than non-partisan rhetoric) to the County Legislature. These concepts are the core of the campaign. Simple, unconflicted consideration of every single issue, no deals, no access-selling.
I also gave Margaret a direct answer to her question, with the only "hedging," if that term must be used, encompassed in the phrase "based on what I know now," and that my answer was yes, I'd keep it open, and in county hands. I think "based on what I know" is honest, because I haven't seen the books or examined in detail whether viable alternatives have been presented to the current legislature.
The comments to which you refer were made as an explanation of my philosophy of governement, and I'll restate it here. If it's a necessary service, and it either provides insufficient profit motive for private business to solve it, or is known to not be done well by private business, government should do it. I mentioned police, fire, and roads as examples.
And as long as we're here, let's observe that Zimet is annually at the bottom in attendance at both regular legislature meetings and her committee meetings. I'll show up.
Again, thanks for the coverage.
Thanks for the clarifications - I didn't go with the intention of covering the event, and relied on my memory alone.
Post a Comment