It’s hard to remember a time when William Steinhaus didn’t have a firm grip on the tiller of Dutchess County’s ship of state. Although the man has indeed been county executive for a somewhat remarkable run of four four-year terms starting in the pre-millennial dark ages of 1992, if it sometimes seems like he’s been around even longer, it’s because he has. And that’s because the onetime boy wonder from the Town of Wappinger rose improbably through the bureaucratic ranks to become county clerk and commissioner of motor vehicles at the tender age of 28, way back in 1979 when most of us were still trying to outlive the mind-leveling excesses of the Disco Era. While most of his contemporaries were busy avoiding growing up, Steinhaus was taking care of business and getting handily re-elected in 1981, 1984, and 1987 before ascending to the top of the county bureaucratic heap. He was elected to the top spot in 1991 and successfully defended his position in ’95, ’99 and 2003, against a series of weak, professorial opponents who failed to stir the public’s imagination.
However, the air of inevitability surrounding a Steinhaus campaign has thinned somewhat this election season, as the independent-minded Republican stalwart faces a formidable challenge from a sharp-tongued, politically savvy and well-financed opponent from his hometown, Wappinger Town Supervisor and Dutchess County Democratic Party Chairman Joseph Ruggiero — one of the most prominent cards in the county Democratic deck, and a man who has chosen as a jumping-off point a hot-button issue close to the hearts of his core constituency: groundwater contamination. Here’s a piece of shrapnel from the shot across Steinhaus’s bow launched by Ruggiero last week following the county executive’s announcement of a program of random well-water testing to be conducted under the aegis of the county Health Department. Calling the program “nothing more than a cynical effort to deflect attention from [Steinhaus’s] well-documented history of obstruction to any real effort to address the impending crisis in our county,” Ruggiero lambasted his opponent with what he characterized as “his refusal to enforce the Dutchess County Board of Health’s well-water testing rules and his veto of the county legislature’s well-testing law, a law with widespread support among Republican and Democratic town leaders alike.”
When we asked Ruggiero to explain last week’s rather harsh response to Steinhaus’s well-testing announcement, he explained that the executive’s handling of the groundwater issue was a lightning rod that convinced him to run for county executive in the first place. “The big turning point for me was in February [2007] when the county executive vetoed the well-testing bill that would test the wells of homes being sold to let the incoming homeowner know if their home is safe or not. And I thought that’s such a clash of values. You know, government’s first and foremost objective is to protect the people. I don’t think that’s a dispute — that’s the role of government. And when he vetoed that, I thought to myself, you know, he’s been in there a long time ... and I said, ‘Well, I am going to make a shot, because I’ve done a good job in Wappinger. I can bring my experience as a chief executive of this government, and bring those experiences to the county, and give the people of this county a clear choice for change come Nov. 6.’”
On the offensive
Ruggiero, who announced his candidacy in May, became further emboldened regarding his campaign’s signature issue following last week’s well-testing announcement. “I was stunned,” he said. One hundred wells out of 35,000 wells? It’s like spitting into the ocean. And you know, people deserve ... people are tired. Tired of cynical politics. People are tired of switch-and-bait.”
Thus warmed up, Ruggiero forged into a deeper and even more pointed criticism of his opponent’s record. “He has a radio advertisement now telling people that your tax rates are as low as since 1973,” said the challenger. “Well, do you know what? Do you feel your home’s taxes are as low as 1973? The answer is no. I pulled my parents’ tax bill from the early ’70s. They had an assessment on their home of $8,800. You know, 30-something years ago. And their taxes, their county taxes alone, have tripled since 1973. So what is this ad about? It’s misleading people. You know, sometimes in government we have to face tough decisions, have to raise taxes. But, you know what? The taxpayers are adults. If you can rationalize it, explain it, they accept it. But don’t fool them; don’t insult their intelligence. And that’s what he’s doing.”
“And look at what he’s doing with the Dutchess County Cares branding program,” continued Ruggiero. “Spending nearly $850,000 of taxpayers’ money in a time when he’s raised property taxes 15 percent, he’s just extended the sales tax, and called for a brand new county mortgage tax of $6 million. And, at the same time, he didn’t do anything to cut spending. They cut $850,000 out of the budget last November for this branding program, which is nothing more than a publicly financed campaign commercial for Bill Steinhaus’s administration to tell everybody that ‘Dutchess County cares.’ Well, you know, that $850,000 could have been spent on the community college. The tuition is raised because the county is not funding its fair share of the county community college. It’s supposed to be one-third county, one-third state, one-third tuition. Well, the county’s only funding about 26 percent of the community college, therefore forcing tuition increases. You know, it’s a priority of spending. So he has the Dutchess County Cares logo, with a little apple, and he puts it on everything from key chains to Frisbees to the signs of the rail trail – everything. So he is a branding program. Well, the people of the county have a hard time believing that Dutchess County cares when you’re raising their sales taxes, raising their property taxes, and not passing water legislation.
“And then he’s done nothing on affordable housing. Affordable housing is going to be a key issue in this campaign. And I really have submersed myself into learning all the things that are going on with affordable housing, and not going on with affordable housing in the county. He has dismantled the workforce housing coalition, which is a partnership between private and public, and the executive directorship has been vacant for well over a year-and-a-half.”
Steinhaus, well aware that he has a battle on his hands, doesn’t shrink from Ruggiero’s charges but meets them with an equal dose of carefully calculated derision: “My opponent, in his desperation to create an issue, actually had a 7 a.m. town board meeting to try and ram through a [well-testing] mandate which imposed people in the Town of Wappinger — a governmental regulation mandate, which I do not believe is in the best interest of the residents of Dutchess County,” said Steinhaus, his face reddening slightly. “We in Dutchess County have actually 1,500 different well source site locations where we monitor and test groundwater. My opponent, I guarantee, doesn’t even know that — because he really knows virtually nothing about county government. And I think that’s probably based on the fact that, as a political party chairman, he really comes at things from a political context, not from a leadership or government context.”
Regarding the community college, Steinhaus — who is president of the school’s scholarship foundation — counters: “My opponent is chair of his party, and his party has really done great damage to the college, and I’ve been a great champion of the college. The community college is the most affordable, lowest-cost college in the state. But my opponent and his party have opposed the funding for the college. We have almost 40,000 people who are alumni of the college — including myself — but if it were up to my opponent and his party, they wouldn’t be able to go to college this year.
And regarding workforce housing? “Well, isn’t that interesting. I’m glad you raised that question. Ask him — in the 14 years that he’s been in town government of the Town of Wappinger — to take you on a ride or show you on a map one house that he has been responsible for being built, constructed or occupied, that meets that criteria. Just one. Not 10, not 20. Ask him to show you one. I can tell you over 1,000 affordable housing units that are the direct result of my policies and my decisions here.”
Outside support
Steinhaus characterizes Ruggiero’s attacks on his record and accomplishments as the statements of a partisan politician, and he is concerned about it more this year because of the level of outside support he says Ruggiero is receiving. “My opponent is a partisan by definition, because he’s the chairman of his political party. And this year we are facing an onslaught of huge, huge sums of money and resources from outside of Dutchess County — from Albany, from Manhattan and from Washington — that are being spent in Dutchess County on behalf of the county chairman to win this office,” said Steinhaus. “That’s not something that we’ve faced before.”
Ruggiero estimated his current war chest in the $130,000 range, saying that he’s far behind Steinhaus. He estimates, though, that by the end of September, his campaign will have drawn upwards of $200,000 in donations.
Faced with such challenge and criticism, not to mention a mountain of cash arrayed against him, Steinhaus is quick to refer to his long and unimpeachable record as a tireless administrator of the largest single entity in the county after IBM, against which he makes an unfavorable comparison of his foe’s record of achievement. “Being the executive of a dynamic successful county like Dutchess is a round-the-clock job, all day, every day, all year, every year,” he said. “I typically put in an 80-hour work week, and we function at a very high level of intensity.” Steinhaus can rattle off a list of successful initiatives with impressive facts and figures as effortlessly as another person might breathe or eat an ice cream sundae.
Steinhaus is particularly proud of his office’s initiatives to jump-start funding and opportunities for quality-of-life improvements, using private/public partnerships to create small nodes of attractive, multiple-use public space that do double duty as magnets for economic development. He cited a long list of examples, starting with the Mid-Hudson Children’s Museum on the waterfront, which has spawned a small rehabilitative renaissance of surrounding properties. “And if you go up a little bit further, we were the municipal sponsor for the Marist waterfront project; we directed $225,000 from our IDA economic development grant fund to help with that,” he continued, “and a little farther up we have our new Quiet Cove county park in the Town of Poughkeepsie, upon which we’re going to be putting in millions of county, state and federal money.” The long list of county-led initiatives included the new Peach Hill Park in the Town of Poughkeepsie; an expansion of the Locust Grove property and a $3 million community rowing center boathouse on the Hudson. “The planned centerpiece will be the 12-mile Dutchess Rail Trail project from Morgan Lake up by the community college through the Town of Poughkeepsie, Lagrange, Wappinger and down to Hopewell Junction,” said Steinhaus, before coming full circle and returning his attention to his opponent’s lack of an agenda.
“So, keep in mind: if you have no agenda for creating new jobs in Dutchess County — and my opponent has no agenda for creating jobs in Dutchess County. He has no agenda for recruiting new high-tech or high-wage jobs in Dutchess County; he has no agenda for public safety, for reacting to the challenges and emerging public safety concerns that residents of America have. He has no agenda for 911 emergency operations centers; he has no agenda to address the tidal wave of senior citizen population growth. And he has no agenda for children’s health. So if you have no agenda for, or proposals or strategies or public policy initiatives for that, or open space, or any of those areas that are critical to the future of the county, you try to invent an issue. And that’s really what he’s tried to do.”