My Middle-aged White Lady Perspective: Republican Shenanigans in NYS

As a person with a multi-colored voting record, including support for blue, red, and green candidates,  libertarians, and more, I've long expressed a willingness to vote for the ideas that I find supportable, regardless of where on the ballot the candidate may land.

I've expressed to county and state Republican organizations, directly and in posts such as this one, my frustration that they don't even bother to reach out to people who aren't Republicans, and generally share only the goal of "getting rid of the Democrats," as if that's a policy around which folks like me should rally.

About the only time I hear anything at all about the Republicans is when they pull a boneheaded trick like this one, which comes to us from Monroe County, down the road a piece from me in Syracuse.

According to a story in the Democrat and Chronicle, the Republican-controlled Monroe County Legislature decided it  needed to urgently restrict the power of incoming County Executive Adam Bello, the first Dem in nearly 30 years to lead the county. Here's how things would have changed, under a plan submitted a week after the election, per the D&C story:

A series of last-minute charter amendments released little more than an hour before the Legislature convened, would give the Legislature authority to approve Bello's appointments of his deputy county executive, the county attorney, and not just all department heads and directors but other management staff within those departments. 

He (Bello) would lose his authority to create new positions and adjust salaries. While Dinolfo (the outgoing Exec) can spend up to $20,000 without Legislative approval, Bello's authority would be capped at $5,000, reverting to a limit last in place in 2014. 

His budget would be due a month earlier. The Legislature would also assume oversight of public works contracts and purchasing.

The article pointed out that some of the changes, including the earlier budget due date, have previously been suggested by Democrats, but were rejected. So, you see, that makes all of this OK, right, because the other guys wanted to do this five years ago?

In a letter that went along with the legislation, which was signed by all of the Republicans, the changes were described as needed "to ensure that transparency and accountability are the foundation of Monroe County government." And, the letter noted,

As the legislative branch of county government it is imperative that we identify additional opportunities to provide the checks and balances the taxpayers demand. 

From my middle-aged white lady perspective, this is a sham, plain and simple.

Anyone with any common sense understands that if an executive's power is too great, it's too great whether it's wielded by a Democrat, a Republican, a green, a libertarian, or a unicorn. And anyone with any common sense understands that this has everything to do with the shift in power, not with taxpayer-demanded checks and balances.

We know this, because we've seen this before - it's not unique, at all.  The Republicans have pulled this before, at the state level, in Wisconsin and Michigan in 2018 when Republican governors were voted out, and in North Carolina in 2016.  I'm sure it's being done at the local level elsewhere, too.

Ultimately, we learned from WHAM, an ABC affiliate in Rochester, that this was going nowhere, at least for the immediate future.

The Checks and Balance for Legislative Equity Act (CABLE Act of 2019), a measure which critics argued would limit the power of the Monroe County executive, has been withdrawn by its sponsors in the Monroe County Legislature.

After saying that the Act "ensures" that the two branches of Monroe County government can come together, to infinity and beyond (OK, in 2020 and beyond), Legislature president Joe Carbone says

On Election Day, the voters did elect a Democrat county executive. They also returned a Republican majority to the Legislature to serve as the checks and balances for county government. 

So, the  election installed checks and balances, but we need urgent legislation to install checks and balances, before the "checks and balances" take office? They must think their constituents are stupid.

This is exactly the kind of thing New York Republicans need to stay away from, if they want to get any of the purple voters, moderates like me, to pay any attention to what they say. And comments like this, from Majority Leader Brian Marianetti?

If this ends up being delayed, (if) it needs to be tabled in order to come to some bipartisan - we'd rather have it be bipartisan, of course. Was there a desire, an interest in maybe getting this taken care of at the end of the legislative cycle? Yes. If it doesn't happen, that's okay. 

Yeah, us purple folks see right through this nonsense.