COUNTY DEPT MANDATE REVIEW

Sometimes events happen on the national level that resemble what we do locally. President Obama will sign into law today the Improper Payment Elimination Act -- an effort designed to slim down wasteful government programs and curb fraud in federal spending. He said: "The fact is, Washington is a place where tax dollars are often treated like Monopoly money, bartered and traded, divvied up among lobbyists and special interests,"

Without any prior knowledge of what the House & Senate were doing on the issue of transparency and efficiency, the Ulster County Legislature voted in favor of a similar measure. Though with a slightly different focus.

The Government Efficiency Committee presented the full body this past Tuesday with Resolution 192, which asks that the departments within the government operations in Ulster County, provide a detailed review and explanation to the Legislature on what mandates they face, funded and non-funded, and how they work their limited funding and staff around those mandates.

In the new charter, the Legislature has the ability to delve into the workings of these departments only after the impending budget has been offered by the Executive. What the committee is looking for, is the ability to look at these mandatory spending priorities before the budget process begins. This would give us more time as freshmen to get a better understanding of what our limitations are.

In the City of Kingston, we went through a similar transition when our Comptroller, John Tuey, came onboard and walked the Council through the details in depth. He now does this annually. Many of the Legislators however, find we don't have that level of knowledge for department operations. Since the departments are ten times larger than those in Kingston, it makes sense to get the information right from the department head.

With a little investigation, it turns out that much of what we are asking for is presented in the level of detail we desire, to the Executive already and it's a matter of having copies made and repeating whatever presentation they've made to him, to the committee that oversees that department.

My friend Dave Donaldson claims that we, as guardians of the county purse strings, have always had the option of delving into the mandates. Others on the Legislature, say they just haven't acted on that right. What I, and the rest of the committee are looking for is information before the budget process starts. We didn't get that. In order for the resolution to pass, the language had to be watered down to reflect what was already limited in the Charter. That gives us the usual two months to investigate the annual status of the departments.

The Resolution passed along party lines with the exception of Gregorius, Zimet and myself voting in favor. At least we are guaranteed the information through resolution.