Today's daily news update.

Patricia Doxsey is reporting for the Daily Freeman that a retired Dutchess County sheriff’s deputy and the office’s first openly transgender employee announced February 14, that she is a candidate for Dutchess County sheriff in November. T. Jillian Hanlon, 57, of Millbrook, said she will seek the Democratic and Working Families party lines. The office is currently held by Republican Kirk Imperati, who became acting sheriff in 2021, following the death of veteran Sheriff Butch Anderson. Imperati is running on the Republican and Conservative lines. “It’s really important that the people in Dutchess County choose a sheriff who is competent and compassionate,” Hanlon said. “I’m more than just about policing. I’m about justice in policing. I’m about justice in corrections and I’m about justice in our communities,” she said. A 24-year veteran of the Dutchess County Sheriff’s Department, Hanlon served as a corrections officer from 1997 to 1999 and sheriff’s deputy from 1999 until her retirement in 2021. During her time as a deputy, Hanlon held a variety of positions, including road patrol deputy, school resource officer, analyst, trainer, and public information officer. If elected, Hanlon said she would bring a new vision to the office’s corrections division and to make sure the county’s new Justice and Transition Center is successful. Hanlon said blame for the decades of jail overcrowding and chronic understaffing sits squarely on the shoulders of the county’s Republican leaders. She warned that without a significant cultural change within the Sheriff’s Department, the “new facility will fail.” Hanlon holds an associate’s degree in criminal justice and a bachelor’s degree in organizational leadership and communication. If elected, she said she will be the first openly transgender sheriff in the country. Read the full story in the Daily Freeman.

The Greenville Middle/High School Robotics Team on Feb. 13, advanced to the New York Regional Championship following a win in the qualifier tournament, according to a statement on the district website. The Greenville "SpartanBots #10475" competed in the FIRST® Tech Challenge Peekskill Qualifier Tournament for the Excelsior Region and was part of the winning alliance at the event. The robot created by the SpartanBots performed well throughout each of the tournament matches. The team received the Innovate Award for demonstrating Gracious Professionalism, building and programming a stable, reliable robot as well as documenting their journey through a written 100-page engineering notebook. The team now advances to the New York Regional Championship on March 6, to be held at the Mohawk Valley Community College in Utica. The Peekskill Tournament featured 23 teams from all over New York, including several from John Jay High School, Albany Academies, Scarsdale, Seton Catholic Central in Binghamton, along with community teams from Putnam, Warwick, and Ossining. Read more at the Greenville Central School District website.

Nick Reisman reports for New York State of Politics that Republican Joe Pinion hopes to unseat Democrat Chuck Schumer, who has been a New York Senator since 1998, in the November election. "I think when you look at the pain many New Yorkers have been enduring for the last 24 years, when you look at the pain many Americans have been feeling over the last two years in the grasp of COVID, it felt it was it time to build an uncommon coalition to achieve an uncommon outcome to build an America that works for we the people again," Pinion, a former personality on the right-wing "Newsmax" network said. Schumer is also the Senate Majority Leader, and only one senator holding that post has ever lost an election. "On paper, if you're looking at the history, then this is a fool's errand," Pinion said. "But the hard truth is when you're looking at the reality of New Yorkers we are a state of 19 million and shrinking, because we are a working-class state filled with working-class people and not nearly enough working-class opportunities to be found. If you're unhappy with the world as it is today, you cannot vote for the architects who built it." Ballotpedia reports that Republican Alex Mici is also running for Schumer's Senate seat, so at least those two will face off in New York's June 28 primary election. Read more about this story at New York State of Politics.

Today's daily news update.

Several online videos and photos show that dozens of local residents turned out in Woodstock Feb. 19, to protest the dozen racists with their faces hidden who rallied at the same location on Feb. 11. The counter-protest drew significantly more people than the original demonstration by the group White Lives Matter New York. Also locally, the New York chapter of the hate group "White Lives Matter" held a banner Jan. 14 in front of the gazebo in the park in Chatham. The group has been recently placing recruitment stickers on park benches, parking meters, utility poles, and road signs in Hudson and Stockport and have posted a video of a “meet-up” in North Greenbush. The Southern Poverty Law Center, which tracks hate groups nationally, says the White Lives Matter group first formed in Texas about seven years ago by leaders associated with neo-Nazi groups. In Woodstock Feb. 19, as a snow squall passed, the group mingled, chanted, and demonstrated there are many more people who do not hold racist views. Here is a short excerpt of what the event sounded like, from the Anti Racist Catskills" Instagram feed. (Click here to play or download a short excerpt of the sound at the rally.)

Nick Reisman reports for New York State of Politics that as the world waits to see if Russia attacks Ukraine by land, air, and sea, New York officials are preparing for a cyber attack here. On Feb. 20, Gov. Kathy Hochul said New York state officials are assessing cybersecurity vulnerabilities and infrastructure amid "geopolitical uncertainty." President Joe Biden has claimed an invasion of Ukraine by Russia could occur in the coming days. If so, U.S. officials say they will apply sanctions to Russia or Russian-backed assets. And Russia may then strike back against finance, health care, energy, and transportation online infrastructure headquartered in New York, Hochul says. "It is my top priority to keep New Yorkers safe, and we will remain vigilant by continuing to monitor for threats and ramping up our cybersecurity shields as necessary," Hochul said. "New Yorkers should also remember they are vulnerable to cyberattacks on their personal devices, and I encourage them to use best practices around passwords and multi-factor authentication, and to make sure that older loved ones are protected from scams." Hochul proposed $62 million in cybersecurity spending in her $216 billion budget plan, twice as much as last year. Read more about this story at New York State of Politics.

MidHudson News reports that it is maple syrup season locally, but the weather has not quite agreed yet. “So far no. We had that Arctic cold. You want the sap to run around 40 (degrees) and freezing at night, so you get that difference in pressure, the expansion when the sap runs,” said Carl Heitmuller, from the Hudson Highlands Nature Museum in Cornwall. “When it does run, it runs for a week or two, and it runs heavy.” The process is fairly simple, as maple trees are tapped for their sweet sap. It takes about 40-43 gallons of sap boiled down to get a gallon of maple syrup. Sap season runs from four to six weeks from the middle of February to the end of March. “The sugar we are collecting was from last year in the summer. It shuts down and stores the sugar into the root system,” Heitmuller said. “And now it pulls the water up into the tree, goes over the sugar and becomes sap.” Temperatures will warm this week, possibly reaching the 60s by Feb. 23 with cool or cold evenings, which should get maple syrup sap flowing throughout the Hudson Valley. Read more about this story at MidHudson News.

Here is this week's WGXC Congressional Report, tracking the votes, statements, positions, and campaigns of the representatives and candidates for the 19th and 20th Congressional seats in New York. Current Democrat Reps. Antonio Delgado and Paul Tonko vote with the positions of President Joe Biden 100 percent of the time, according to the fivethirtyeight.com website. Click here to listen to this report.

Maury Thompson reports in The Post-Star that Liz Lemery Joy is once again running for the Republican nomination to challenge incumbent Democrat Paul Tonko in the 20th Congressional District, which includes Albany County. Joy won the GOP nomination in 2020, and lost to Tonko in the general election in a district that then included the cities of Albany and Troy, and voted for Joe Biden by 20 points. The new district lines, however, move parts of Albany County into the 19th Congressional District, and Biden would have won this area by 17.3 points. “Right now, most Americans do not believe that there is a strong future,” Joy said. “We now have a climate in our country where more people are politically engaged than they were in 2020,” she said. Congressional off-year elections, however, never draw more voters than in presidential election years. Joy says what is different this year is more potential support from national Republicans in this local race. The National Republican Congressional Committee has designated the district as “top-targeted race” this year, Joy says. “That did not happen in 2020.” What did happen in 2020 is that Joe Biden was elected president, a fact that Joy won't exactly say. Joy said that if she had been in office on Jan. 6, 2020, she would have voted against certifying the election. “Joe Biden is the president — period,” Joy said. “But I do believe there was massive voter fraud in our 2020 elections. And we have to get it right before we have the 2022 election.” Joy said on Twitter she attended the rally Jan. 6 in Washington D.C. that preceded the coup attempt. Joy said she rode on a bus chartered to take people from the Capitol Region to the rally before the riot. Joy Tweeted that day that, "Hundreds of thousands of people attended today’s rally to stand for Election Integrity." So far, Joy, a 53-year-old who lives in Schenectady, is the only Republican running in the June primary election. Read more about this story in The Post-Star.

Maury Thompson reports in the Post Star that Rep. Paul Tonko, a Democrat from Amsterdam who represents Albany County and the rest of the 20th Congressional District, has a lot more campaign cash heading into 2022 than his Republican opponent. Tonko had $1.05 million in his campaign fund on Dec. 31, when the last reporting period ended. Republican challenger Liz Lemery Joy of Schenectady, who the story calls "a former blogger and public speaker," had $163,022 in her campaign fund, as of Dec. 31. Tonko raised $782,402 in contributions in 2021, including $73,220 in small dollar contributions. Joy raised $316,879 in 2021, but beat Tonko with $151,751 in small dollar contributions. Read more about this story in the Post Star.

The Cook Political Report released its latest ratings of competitive elections Feb. 16, and Rep. Antonio Delgado, a Democrat representing the 19th Congressional District, got good news with his new district being called "likely Democrat." Just to the south, Democrat Sean Maloney's 18th Congressional District is listed as "lean Democrat." To the north, Democrat Paul Tonko's 20th District, and Republican Elise Stefanik's 21st District are not listed as competitive races, as the incumbents are expected to win easily. Larry Sabato's House ratings for the University of Virginia's Center for Politics judges Maloney's 18th District as "lean Democrat," Delgado's 19th District as "likely Democrat" and calls both Tonko's and Stefanik's seats "safe."

Congress will be back in session Feb. 28.

Today's daily news update.

Diane Valden is reporting for The Columbia Paper that Salvatore Cascino is working on his 300-acre property along the east side of Route 22 in Copake, to undo some of his past misdeeds. Cascino, 82, is a convicted felon who has spent a great deal of time during the past 23 years amassing violations of federal, state, and town laws for illegal dumping, building, and excavating at a place he calls Copake Valley Farm. Both the state Department of Environmental Conservation and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers have cited Cascino for violations involving the dumping of solid waste and other unauthorized materials in and along the Noster Kill, and associated protected wetlands dating back to March 1999. In 2009, Cascino was court-ordered to remove a 30-foot-wide steel bridge he illegally constructed over the Noster Kill. It is unclear why Cascino has undertaken all the dismantling, remediation, and restoration work now, but Copake Town Board member Stanley Gansowski said this week that Cascino had to come up with a plan for removal of all of the illegally dumped materials as well as dismantling the bridge and restoration of both the stream and the wetlands back to the way he found them. In December, he was informed the plan had been approved by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. In addition to the removal of the bridge over the Noster Kill, the plan calls for a major restoration of a site north of Lackawanna Road and east of State Route 22. In addition, Cascino will be required to grade, plant, and seed the area in conjunction with the wetland restoration. The deadline to reestablish the wetland is July 1. He must also install two groundwater monitoring wells and submit full documentation to the Army Corps of Engineers. If he does everything he promised, the Corps will rescind the cease and desist orders from 2008 and 2016. If he fails to follow through, Cascino will face additional enforcement action. Michael Sussman, Cascino’s attorney for the past three years, said, “Mr. Cascino is committed to complying with the law and beautifying and well utilizing his farm. He is also dedicated to providing wholesome produce that can be marketed and benefit the community. He is exploring ways of developing the property towards these objectives ...” Read the full story in The Columbia Paper.

Ted Remsnyder is reporting for Columbia-Greene Media the Greene County Legislature has declared its opposition to a plan by the State Farm Laborers Wage Board to lower the overtime threshold for farmworkers from 60 to 40 hours, the same as most other workers in New York. New York Labor Commissioner Roberta Reardon will make the ultimate ruling on the issue in the coming months. Until that decision is made, however, the county Legislature is hoping to put pressure on elected officials to maintain the 60-hour overtime threshold. The resolution lawmakers approved on February 16, reads the legislature, “Emphatically opposes any decrease to the 60-hour farmworker overtime threshold proposed by the Farm Laborers Wage Board.” Legislature Vice Chair Matt Luvera, a Republican who represents Catskill. said, “...This overtime threshold would just be another burden with more government regulations. It’s going to increase costs to farmers, who already operate under tight budgets, and still continue to give back to the community. We felt we needed to oppose this latest mandate.” Republican Michael Bulich, who also represents Catskill, owns and operates the Bulich Mushroom Farm. He said that farm workers should not be paid the same way as grocery workers, because it will cost him money. “The economic reality that farms face, whether they’re in Greene County or anywhere across the state, is that labor is the biggest cost to anything,” Bulich said. He abstained from the vote. After passage, the resolution was sent to Gov. Kathy Hochul, state Sen. Michelle Hinchey, and Assemblymember Chris Tague, among other state officials. Read the full story at HudsonValley360 [dot] com.

Roger Hannigan Gilson is reporting for the Times Union that scammers pretending to be part of the Columbia County Sheriff's Office sent a mass text message the morning of February 18, as part of a phishing swindle. The texts were from the 518 area code and addressed the recipient by first name. They were then offered a $10 discount on a Columbia County Sheriff's Office T-shirt if they clicked on a link. Columbia County Sheriff's Capt. Kevin Skype said he did not know how many people received the text, and he was unaware of anyone who had fallen for the scam. Phishing scammers contact people online masquerading as someone the intended victim knows or would trust in an attempt to gain information, which can then be used to steal from or defraud them. Officials discovered a similar swindle last week, wherein county residents received texts claiming to be from the United States Postal Service. In that case, recipients are told a package has arrived, but that it will be returned if they do not update their shipping information by clicking a link. According to Skype, phishing scams are common and difficult to investigate. He said the 518 numbers could have been fake numbers generated online. Anyone who has a question about an email or text received, or been a victim of a scam is advised to contact their local sheriff's office, state police or local police department. Read the full story in the Times Union.

Today's daily news update.

Jeanette Wolfberg is reporting for The Columbia Paper that the Hudson Catskill Housing Coalition has offered to pay the back rents of Hudson Housing Authority tenants. The offer was made in an email to HHA officials on February 9 and in their regular monthly video conference February 10. The Housing Authority runs the 125-unit Bliss Tower building and the 15-unit Columbia Apartments, all located in Hudson's Second Ward. The Hudson Catskill Housing Coalition defines itself as a black-led initiative that empowers public housing and low-income tenants to fight for housing justice. Housing Authority Board Vice-Chair Claire Cousin is also the executive director of the HCHC Board and county supervisor representing the city’s First Ward. The offer from the coalition was triggered by the expiration of New York's eviction moratorium on January 15. And, said the coalition's Senior Policy Advisor Quintin Cross, “public housing tenants are at the bottom of priority for Emergency Rental Assistance Program support.” The February 9 email was sent to the six members of the Housing Authority board and to its interim executive director, Nick Zachos. Zachos called the offer “Amazing! An incredible thing for a lot of folks! ...” Cross said the coalition does not know the number of people behind on their rent. The amount of money was under “discussion.” The offer is only for people who live in Bliss or the Columbia Apartments. Read more in The Columbia Paper.

Roger Hannigan Gilson is reporting for the Times Union that Greene County officials sent a letter to Gov. Kathy Hochul February 17, demanding that she drop masking requirements in New York schools no later than Feb. 25. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, run by scientists, currently recommends wearing masks to prevent sickness and death. The letter from the legislature, which is not made up of scientists, demands the mandate requiring unvaccinated teachers to be frequently tested be dropped, as well. Hochul in August ordered universal masking in schools, and last week confirmed she would reconsider the policy on March 4 and possibly rescind it later that week. With schools closed this week, the legislators are asking for Hochul to speed up her timeline by a week, without citing any scientific reason. Read the full story in the Times Union.

Liz Montgomery is reporting for Porcupine Soup that New York hunters killed 1,346 black bears during the 2021 hunting seasons, the Department of Environmental Conservation has announced. Overall, hunting numbers declined from last year, but the Catskills dead bear count was the highest. In Greene County, 63 bruins were killed. Statewide, the largest bear reported to DEC was a 560-pound bear taken in the town of Hunter. Hunters killed an estimated 403 bears in the Northern Zone and 943 bears in the Southern Zone. Statewide there is generally an alternating pattern of high and low bear harvest from year to year, which is influenced by fluctuating patterns in cub production and food availability, the DEC says. In Greene County, bear death totals included: two in Ashland, 14 in Cairo, ten in Catskill, three in Durham, three in Greenville, one in Halcott, 15 in Hunter, two in Jewett, three in Lexington, one in New Baltimore, eight in Prattsville, and one in Windham. Read the full story at porcupinesoup [dot] com.

Today's daily news update.