The tale of the unpaid clerks appears to be at an end.
Last week, on Feb. 15, Dutchess County Executive William Steinhaus agreed to add two newly appointed clerks to the county payroll, despite a county-wide hiring freeze in place since December.
The clerks, Barbara Hugo and Jon Gautier, both of Red Hook, were appointed last Monday by the Dutchess County Legislature, and began working just two days later, unsure of whether they would receive paychecks.
“We were just hoping that we would get put on the payroll,” said Gautier, who was appointed as deputy clerk for the Legislature. “We were going to take it one day at a time.”
Steinhaus imposed the hiring freeze on Dec. 20, in response to the projected state budget shortfall in county aid. As a result, more than 100 county positions had been frozen, barring departments countywide from hiring staff. Earlier this month Steinhaus agreed to relax the ban, allowing Budget Director Valerie Sommerville to begin filling positions on a case-by-case basis.
In a memo Friday, Steinhaus informed legislators of his decision to hire the clerks, while accusing the Democratic majority of partisanship.
“Personnel forms for the two positions of clerk and deputy clerk of the Legislature have been forwarded from the Personnel Department to the Budget Director for vacancy control review,” wrote Steinhaus. “Upon review, the legislative requests to fill the position of clerk and deputy clerk have been granted a waiver from the current hiring freeze in the spirit of bi-partisanship and cooperation from this Executive.”
“I don’t like the idea of anybody working for free,” said Legislature Chairman Roger Higgins (D-Poughkeepsie/Wappinger). “ Now I know these people will be compensated for the job they’ll do.”
“The difficulty is not the Legislature; it was the executive,” said Hugo. “But he has moved forward, and things have changed.”
Steinhaus didn’t go down without a fight, however. In his three-page memo (not including attachments), the county executive took his time excoriating the newly Democratic-controlled legislature for its “politically motivated” actions in questioning the appropriateness of his hiring freeze. To prove his point, he cited documents from a similar Dutchess County hiring freeze instituted in 1989 by Democratic Executive Lucille Pattison. At the time, Pattison sent memos to all legislators and elected officials, including Roger Higgins, Sandra Goldberg, and Margaret Fettes, who were all, according to Steinhaus, sitting members of the legislature at the time.
“Did any of these Democratic legislators and colleagues challenge Mrs. Pattison on her Charter authority?” asked Steinhaus. “And the same Democrat legislators from 1989-90 who are now in power in the Legislature certainly didn’t sponsor and adopt resolutions authorizing litigation against fellow Democrat County Executive Pattison like Resolution No. 208011, which threatens to sue this Republican executive. They apparently have saved their selective partisan criticism for a Republican executive.”
“For the first time, the Democrats have control of the Legislature,” said Higgins. “And for the first time we are able to hire our own staff.”
Higgins speculates that the current budget shortfall may be part of a much larger economic problem.
“What about the $18 million an hour we’re spending on a needless war? States in this country are all in trouble, because of the frivolous way George Bush’s government has been spending for the last eight years,” he said. “And the governor’s budget is just that, a ‘proposed’ budget. A lot can happen until it’s adopted. Lets see what happens in April.”
Steinhaus’s grudging magnanimity only went so far. He vetoed the legislature’s attempt to appoint his nemesis and recent foe for the exec’s job, Ulster County Democratic Party Chairman/Wappinger Town Supervisor Joseph Ruggiero Jr., to the Audit Review Advisory Board. “The very partisan appointment to the Audit Review Advisory Board by the Democrat majority is shameless politics,” wrote Steinhaus, who added that another reason for the veto is that Ruggiero is not a legislator.
Meanwhile, there are still two vacant clerical positions in the office, and Fred Knapp, the newly appointed assistant to the chairman, and David Sears, new legislative council, have not yet been added to the payroll.
“I think we’ve been patient, and we certainly welcome bipartisanship,” said Higgins. “Of course, we’d like to see it extended to some of our other staff.&rdquo p>