A year ago this month, I was elected chairman after one of the most contentious years in the Dutchess County Legislature. With a 13-12 split between Republicans and Democrats, the chief lawmaking body of Dutchess County was so polarized that we did not even talk to legislators from across the aisle. It wasn’t like this when I first joined the Legislature back in 2000; it shouldn’t be that way now.
My first act as chairman of the Legislature was to design a seating chart that paired Republicans and Democrats at each table. The result was more discussions between Republicans and Democrats on the mundane things of life: family, vacations, hobbies, work, etc. So it also facilitated discussions, conversations and even the occasional humor about important county business. Republicans and Democrats still disagreed on key philosophical issues, but at the end of the day my bipartisan seating chart resulted in unanimous, bipartisan votes on public safety issues and most significantly, the 2008 county budget.
The 2008 county budget was a marvel in gathering unanimous bipartisan support, but it was also a huge success for the Dutchess County taxpayer. Not only did the working together of Democrats and Republicans slash the county tax rate by 10.5 percent, but we also maintained vital county services. We provided funding to the Grace Smith House for battered women, the Dutchess County Arts Council, the Cornell Cooperative Extension environment programs and also enhanced the Office of the Aging to serve our seniors and Veterans Affairs, to help our veterans, and increased road patrols in our sheriffs’ office.
I am pleased that the unanimously approved 2008 county budget capped off my one-year term as chairman, and I credit my bipartisan seating chart for facilitating the dialogue that brought it about. With a new chairman at the helm of the Legislature, I am alarmed that the successful inter-party dialogue that was a true benefit to the Dutchess County taxpayer is about to come to an end.
Chairman Roger Higgins is taking the Legislature back to the old ways, where legislators barely ever talked to each other. Not only did Roger reverse the seating chart so that Democrats sit on the left and Republicans on the right in their isolated encampments, he has gone to the extreme of physically rearranging desks to reintroduce polarization in legislative chambers. Ignoring past precedents where the majority party’s seats overflowed into the other side of the aisle, Higgins instead instructed that a desk be moved from one side of the room to the other to stifle even the remotest chance that the Republicans and Democrats might converse and work together for the common good. With eight new freshman legislators, how can they begin to meet each other, let alone work together under Higgins’ faultly seating chart?
Higgins is showing early signs of becoming the most partisan Legislative chairman in the history of Dutchess County. He has entertained dismissing capable and long-serving legislative staff members merely because he can replace them with Democrat party people. He has sponsored a resolution to breach a five-year contract with the Legislature’s legal counsel to replace him with a different lawyer who ran on the Democrat line for public office this past November, but who, interestingly enough, even the voters of Dutchess County chose to reject.
Furthermore, Higgins broke from the tradition of having a Dutchess County judge swear in new legislators, instead importing a Democrat judge from Orange County. Who really wins when the leader of the Legislature elevates politics over precedent and policy? Not the taxpayers, not the voters and certainly not the working men and women of Dutchess County who rely on the objectivity and reason of their elected officials to govern fairly.
I’m not sure where the county Legislature is headed under the partisan-gamesmanship of Chairman Higgins, but early signs are making me really worried about the welfare of the good people that I was elected to represent. It is my honest hope that Higgins will come to realize that the Legislature is supposed to serve all the people of Dutchess County equitably and not just those who belong to the Democratic party.
(Gary Cooper is a Republican legislator representing the towns of Pine Plains, Stanford, Milan and North East and the former Legislature chairman. He is the current minority leader).