Natasha Vaughn-Holdridge is reporting for Columbia-Greene Media the Columbia County Department of Health on February 3, reported four new COVID-related deaths. The four people were residents of nursing homes, Columbia County Department of Health Director Jack Mabb said. Three of the four died in the nursing home. The fourth died in hospital. “We have one nurse whose job it is to periodically look at the obituaries because what we don’t find out is if someone dies with COVID in a nursing home, we may not find that out,” Mabb said. The four deaths occurred over the past couple of weeks. The youngest of the four was 78 years old and all four had comorbidities, Mabb said. They were all vaccinated, but Mabb did not know if they had received a booster shot. Nursing homes and assisted care facilities are not required to report COVID-related deaths to the county department of health, Mabb said. Three of the deceased had been residents at Ghent Rehabilitation and Nursing Center and the fourth was a resident at Livingston Hills Nursing and Rehabilitation Center, Mabb said. The latest deaths bring the total in Columbia County to 133 since the beginning of the pandemic, with 18 deaths reported since the beginning of this year. “When you look at individual deaths, you’ve got seniors in a nursing home that are very vulnerable,” Mabb said. “It may not be the primary cause of death but it really contributes to it....We seem to have more deaths lately, maybe it’s the wintertime and other complicating things. The flu could be making its rounds, but some of these folks don’t have a chance.” Mabb said the county had 41 new positive cases as of February 4. At this time in January, the number of new daily cases was in the triple digits. “I think for the month of February, we may stay around 30 to 40 cases a day,” Mabb said. Read the full story at HudsonValley360 [dot] com.

Brendan J. Lyons is reporting for the Times Union a federal judge on February 4, gave final approval to a $65 million settlement in a class-action lawsuit against Saint-Gobain Performance Plastics, Honeywell International and 3M and DuPont Co. for polluting public and private water supplies in and around the village of Hoosick Falls. The approval begins a 30-day period for someone to file an appeal challenging the settlement, but the ruling by U.S. District Senior Judge Lawrence E. Kahn noted that no none of the settlement class members have objected to the terms and no opt-out requests have been received. Kahn had previously called the settlement "fair, reasonable and adequate." The settlement is expected to secure cash payments and long-term medical monitoring for thousands of property owners and residents of Hoosick Falls. The case was filed in 2016, in U.S. District Court In Albany. The complaint accused the three companies of playing roles in the decades-long pollution of the community water supplies, which are contaminated with the perfluorinated chemicals used at various factories in the village. The settlement is intended to compensate residents for the potential health consequences of their exposure to the chemicals, the potential loss of property value, and to provide a system of early detection for any related health issues in the years ahead. Read the full story in the Times Union.

Andrea Macko is reporting for Porcupine Soup firefighters from multiple departments responded the night of February 3, to a fire at the County Waste and Recycling facility in South Cairo. The call went out at 6:30 p.m. for reports of smoke coming from one of the buildings at 465 Ross Ruland Road Extension. Cairo Fire Chief Raymond Feml said two garbage trucks, a service truck and a building are a complete loss. It is believed that one of the garbage trucks caught fire inside a garage and the flames spread, setting the building and two other vehicles on fire. The blaze remains under investigation. Feml said no injuries were reported. The Cairo Hose Company, Round Top Fire Department, Leeds Hose Company and Catskill Fire Company, as well as Cairo Ambulance, Greene County EMS and the Greene County Fire Investigation Team all responded. Houston-based County Waste provides waste management services to residents, businesses, and contractors in Greene, Columbia and Ulster counties. Read the full story at porcupinesoup [dot] com.

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.

The world is in its third year of a deadly virus that has taxed healthcare workers like no others. At the same time, some members of Congress, including Paul Tonko locally, have signed on to a letter to get the federal government to cap nurses pay. HealthAffairs.org reports that, "An unprecedented number of nurses are retiring early and exiting the workforce or quitting their hospital employment to return as employees of staffing agencies." Tonko and the other representatives see rising wages for nurses as a problem. "We are writing because of our concerns that certain nurse-staffing agencies are taking advantage of these difficult circumstances to increase their profits at the expense of patients and the hospitals that treat them," the letter to White House COVID-19 Response Team Coordinator Jeffrey Zients says. The almost 200 Congressional representatives signing on to the letter are a mixed lot, with far-right figures such as Elise Stefanik, conservative Republican Liz Cheney, centrist Democrat Tonko, and liberal Ilhan Omar all in favor. Nurses, however, mostly do not want their salaries capped. There is evidence that nursing wages are up, like in many other fields with high demand for workers. The American Health Care Association last year sent a letter to the Federal Trade Commission, urging the FTC to protect consumers from anti-competitive and unfair practices regarding agency staffing. Tonko, who represents all of Albany County and other parts of the Capital District, was not joined by Hudson Valley Democrats Antonio Delgado nor Sean Maloney in signing the letter.

Rep. Antonio Delgado on Jan. 30 joined those calling for a ban on members of Congress trading stocks while in office. Rep. Abigail Spanberger, a Democrat from Virginia, and Rep. Chip Roy, a Republican from Texas, last year introduced a measure to ban members of Congress from trading stocks after revelations that several Republicans used insider knowledge during the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic to buy stocks in companies likely to do well through the outbreak. The bill got little traction until Democrat Nancy Pelosi, the Speaker of the House, came out against the proposal. That incited support, from both sides of the aisle. There is now a similar bill in the Senate, and momentum to pass something. The bills would require members of Congress, their spouses and dependent children, to place their stocks in a blind trust while the member is in office. Lawmakers often have access to privileged information, and these bills would attempt to quash efforts to make money on that insider knowledge. "This is a bipartisan, bicameral effort that I am proud to be a part of. Members of Congress should work to represent their communities, not to turn a profit," Delgado said in a Jan. 30 Tweet.

Colby Itkowitz and Adrian Blanco report in the Washington Post that New York Democrats unveiled the redistricting maps for Congress on Jan. 30, and the proposal boosts the chances of Democrat Antonio Delgado in the 19th Congressional District. Democrats could win an additional three seats in Congress if the plan is voted on and signed by Gov. Kathy Hochul later this week as expected. Delgado's 19th Congressional District adds Binghamton and Utica under the plan, moving the district from one that President Joe Biden won by 1.5 percent, to one where Biden won by 10 points. That comes at a bit at the expense of Democrat Paul Tonko's 20th Congressional District, which moves from a Biden plus-20.5 district to one where Biden won by 17.3 points, as parts of Albany County switch to the 19th District. New York lost one Congressional seat in the latest Census count. A 10-member, supposedly independent commission where eight members were appointed by partisan legislative leaders, could not reach a decision on district lines, so the legislature has taken over the process. “This is not a good night for New York Republicans,” said Blair Horner, executive director of the New York Public Interest Research Group, which opposes partisan gerrymandering from either party. Democrats and Republicans had differing opinions on the redistricting proposals. “I’m thrilled with the maps that have come down, they listened to the public input the commission received, and I think that’s reflected in these maps,” said David Imamura, the Democratic chairman of the redistricting advisory commission. Nick Langworthy, chairman of the New York state Republican committee, said, “These maps are the most brazen and outrageous attempt at rigging the election to keep Nancy Pelosi as Speaker.” Read more about this story in the Washington Post.

More information continues to come out about the proposal for Congressional redistricting from the New York legislature, including maps of what could be the new districts. The biggest changes locally include in Rensselaer County, which was previously entirely in the 19th Congressional District, but would now be split in half, with the everything above North Greenbush, Sand Lake, and Berlin switching to the 21st Congressional District, currently represented by Republican Elise Stefanik. Albany County was previously all in the 20th Congressional District, now represented by Democrat Paul Tonko. The new proposal moves Albany County towns Coeymans and Bethlehem from the 20th District, to the 19th District, currently represented by Antonio Delgado. Schoharie County moves entirely from the 19th to the 21st Congressional District under the proposal. And only the northwest corner of Dutchess County remains in the 19th Congressional District, with the rest of Dutchess County moving to the 18th Congressional District, now represented by Sean Maloney. Redistricting occurs every ten years after the Census, and an independent redistricting commission was supposed to do that work. But that body was designed by the legislature to be toothless, so when they failed to agree on new district maps, the legislature took over, proposing these maps. Republican Dutchess County Executive Marc Molinaro, who is running in the 19th Congressional election this year, called the the redistricting process led by Democratic state lawmakers "a scam to begin with.... The Democrats in the Legislature wanted to control the outcome," he told reporters Jan. 31. "At the end of the day, I'm hopeful the courts will step in because this is a blatant effort to gerrymander for no other purpose." The New York state constitution states, “Districts shall not be drawn to discourage competition or for the purpose of favoring or disfavoring incumbents or other particular candidates or political parties.” But the courts have never turned down a map approved by the Legislature. "The state courts are really going to be really reluctant to overturn a state legislatively enacted plan," said Jeffrey Wice, who heads the New York Census and Redistricting Institute. But even if the courts agree to the new maps, that does not mean they are fair. "The lines are so heavily gerrymandered they will be non-competitive," Susan Lerner, executive director of Common Cause/NY, said in a statement. "It's a major disservice to the voters, who were first denied any hope of a truly independent process ten years ago when the so-called Independent Commission was conceived." The legislature plans to vote on the proposal later this week.

The Daily Freeman reports that Rep. Antonio Delgado had $5 million more in campaign funds then Republican challenger Dutchess County Executive Marc Molinaro, in their 19th Congressional District election. Molinaro must defeat Republican Brandon Buccola in a June primary to face off against Delgado, who so far does not have any challengers from his party. Delgado ended the year with $5,480,936.71 in cash on hand, according to the Federal Election Commission. Molinaro, who began his campaign in September, had $423,619.64. Delgado is completing his second term after beating Republican John Faso in 2018. Both candidates live in Dutchess County, with Delgado in Rhinebeck and Molinaro in Red Hook while serving his third four-year term as Dutchess County Executive. Read more about this story in the Daily Freeman.

Today's daily news update.

Liz Montgomery reports for Porcupine Soup that on Feb. 2 Greene County Public Health Director Kimberly Kaplan made a rare public appearance during the COVID-19 pandemic telling members of the Greene County legislature that wearing masks during a global pandemic of an airborne virus saves human lives. The legislators asked many questions that have long been settled by scientists. Legislator Matthew Luvera, a Republican from Catskill wanted to know about herd immunity “There is always discussion of that, but we aren’t there yet,” Kaplan said. Michael Bulich, another Republican from Catskill, equated COVID-19 to the common cold, while coronavirus causes far more deaths, and has long-term effects. “By definition this is airborne,” Kaplan said to the legislators pushing back on wearing face coverings. “Masking is part of a general layered approach which they said from the beginning… it does afford them some level of protection.” While other leaders and health officials of surrounding counties held public forums and answered questions from citizens during the pandemic, Greene County officials have not held similar public information events. Read more about this story at Porcupine Soup.

Kenneth C. Crowe II reports in the Times Union that lawyers for Rensselaer County Executive Steve McLaughlin now have 30,000 pages of records from the state Attorney General’s Office as part of discovery in the criminal case alleging misuse of campaign funds in 2017. McLaughlin made his first court appearance Feb. 3 since he was arraigned on Dec. 1, 2021. That comes after a Rensselaer County grand jury indicted McLaughlin with grand larceny and offering a false instrument for filing for allegedly stealing $5,000 from his campaign account on Nov. 21, 2017. That was just weeks after winning his first election for county executive. His attorney, Ben Hill, said Feb. 3 that he was preparing a motion to dismiss the indictment against McLaughlin for “a lack of sufficient evidence.” Assistant Attorney General Chris Baynes told Judge Jennifer Sober that he was ready for trial, and Sober set a March 21 deadline for defense motions. McLaughlin, a Republican, continues to say he will win the case but did not speak during the court proceedings Feb. 3. McLaughlin is accused of using campaign funds to pay $3,500 to a former member of his state Assembly staff, Jennifer Polaro. A check for $5,000 was drawn from the campaign account in November 2017 to Hudson Valley Strategies, which is run by Richard Crist, a county Republican political operative who works on McLaughlin’s county staff as director of operations. Crist then deposited the check, the indictment claims, and wrote a $3,500 check to pay Polaro. Read more about this story in the Times Union.

In other news, Gov. Kathy Hochul signed the Democrats redistricting plan Feb. 3, after it passed in both the Assembly and State Senate. Republicans, angered by the gerrymandered redistricting, are suing to get the district lines redrawn..... On Feb. 2 the Greene County Legislature approved the recommendation of the Catskill Republican Committee and appointed Jay Lucas, 67, to the legislature, to fill the vacancy left by Jack Keller who passed away in late December..... If you plan to vote in the June primary elections in New York, but want to change your party registration first, Feb. 14 is the deadline this year. Applications to change one’s party enrollment for any primary election in 2022 must be received by the board of elections no later than February 14, 2022.

Today's daily news update.

Click above to download or play today's "Better Weather." Produced by Joe Demanso of the Catskill Makers Syndicate.

Closings and delays for Fri., Feb. 4:
Updated 8 a.m.

Closings in Columbia County
Chatham Central School District | Schools and offices closed.
Chatham Kids Club | Closed
Coarc Adult Transportation | Open. Staff report. No transportation.
Columbia Opportunities, Inc.,| All locations closed.
Columbia-Greene Community College | All on-campus and remote classes canceled.
Germantown Central School District | Closed
Hawthorne Valley School | Closed
Hudson City School District | Closed.
Ichabod Crane Central School District | Closed
Little Wonders Early Childhood Education Center | Closed
New Lebanon Central School District | Closed
O.K. Kids, Inc. | Closed
Questar III Columbia-Green Education Center | Closed
Taconic Hills Central School District | Closed

Closings in Greene County
Cairo-Durham Central School District | Closed.
Catskill Central School District | Closed
Circle of Friends, Ravena | Closed.
Coxsackie-Athens Central School District | Closed.
Early Childhood Learning, Cairo |Closed
Grapeville Christian School | Closed
Greene County Transit | Closed. No buses running.
Greenville Central School District | Closed.
Hunter-Tannersville Central School District | Closed
Questar III Catskill Academy | Closed
Questar III, Durham Heave Equipment | Closed.
Ulster-Greene ARC, Catskill | Open. No transportation. No buses running.
UMC Daycare Norton Hill | Closed.
Windham-Ashland-Jewett Central School District | Closed

Ted Remsnyder is reporting for Columbia-Greene Media the town of Catskill is now in the process of crafting zoning regulations for short-term rental properties. The town board examined the first draft of the zoning proposals from the planning board on Feb. 1. Under the first draft of those changes, a short-term rental permit would be required prior to a property being used as a short-term rental. The short-term rental agreement would be good for one calendar year. The units would have to be inspected by the town code enforcement officer for compliance with town and state codes. “We’ve still got a ways to go,” Catskill Town Supervisor Dale Finch said this week. “We fine-tuned it a little bit more last night and we’re really going to go back and look at it again. So we’re probably not looking at a public hearing until March. Then we’ll get into the public hearings and depending on how that goes, we’ll move forward with enacting some of those zoning changes.” Under the proposed zoning codes, a short-term rental permit would be transferable to a new owner, as long as the new owner registers with the town, updates the short-term rental permit application and agrees in writing to comply with the requirements of the short-term rental permit and these regulations within 30 days of sale. Town board member Jared Giordiano said, “The town board made some changes and then it’ll go back to those guys and they’ll look at them again and see if they want any additional changes. Then we’ll move forward with the process.” The board is also weighing changes to its solar zoning regulations. Under the potential changes to the solar zoning laws, capacity would be increased for residential solar units. Read more at HudsonValley360 [dot] com.

Brendan J. Lyons is reporting for the Times Union agents with the Federal Bureau of Investigation on February 3, confiscated the mobile phones of Rensselaer County Operations Director Richard W. Crist and Jim Gordon, the county's director of purchasing and a political ally of county Executive Steve McLaughlin. The phone seizures took place at the county office complex in Troy. The FBI is continuing to investigate alleged absentee ballot fraud in the county. William J. Dreyer, Crist's attorney, declined to comment. Gordon could not be reached for comment. The mobile numbers for Crist and Gordon were turned off that same afternoon. In November and December, absentee ballots handled by Crist and Gordon were being examined by State Police and FBI agents in separate, but coordinated investigations. Those probes are examining allegations of fraud stretching back several years. The FBI's investigation into absentee ballot fraud has focused on Gordon's role in gathering absentee ballots at a public housing apartment complex in Lansingburgh. Crist's involvement with absentee ballots in the Rensselaer mayoral race has also been examined by the State Police. Investigators seized incumbent Mayor Michael Stammel's mobile phone in mid-December at City Hall. The ballot fraud investigation involves the U.S. attorney's office in Albany and the state attorney general's office. The FBI seizure of the two phones happened the same day that McLaughlin appeared in Rensselaer County Court for a pre-trial conference in his unrelated criminal case involving the alleged theft and misuse of campaign funds. Read the full story in the Times Union.

MidHudson News is reporting Acting Dutchess County Sheriff Kirk Imperati has declared his candidacy for sheriff. He plans to run for his own four-year term on the Republican and Conservative ballot lines in November. A 30-year-veteran of the department, Imperati was appointed interim sheriff in September after the late Butch Anderson died. He served as Anderson's undersheriff for 14 years. “I have the experience, I have the expertise, and I have the drive and desire to take the Dutchess County Sheriff’s Office to the next level,” he said. “We have done a lot of great things over that time from developing an internal affairs bureau to being the architect for the police modernization and reform plan for the Dutchess County Sheriff’s Office, helping other law enforcement agencies in Dutchess County develop a police modernization and reform and I think I have what it takes to take it to the next level,” he said. Imperati is a 1987 graduate of Arlington High School and holds degrees in criminal justice from Dutchess Community College and Marist College. He was hired by the sheriff’s office in 1993. He started as a road patrol deputy in the Harlem Valley and made detective in 2004. Imperati instituted the School Resource Officer program, implemented the department’s Internal Affairs Division, and was the architect for the Police Reform and Modernization Plan for the sheriff’s office and other agencies in the county. He has already been endorsed by several police unions and the corrections officers at the Dutchess County Jail.  Dutchess County GOP Chair Michael McCormack said of Imperati, “His decades of service in the department are stellar and beyond reproach. Dutchess County is so very fortunate to have Kirk watching over and protecting our families and we need to stay the path.” Dutchess County Democratic Party Chair Julie Shiroishi said her party has no one to challenge Imperati yet, but she does not envision her party cross-endorsing him. Read more at MidHudsonNews [dot] com.

Paul Kirby reports in the Daily Freeman the Ulster County Surrogate Court inside the Ulster County Building begins hosting an exhibit featuring important documents from the life of abolitionist Sojourner Truth on Feb. 4. Truth was born a slave as Isabella Baumfree in Ulster County in 1797 and escaped with her infant daughter to freedom in 1826. Under her new name, she campaigned to eliminate slavery in America, and helped recruit black troops for the Union Army during the Civil War. After the war she campaigned for African-American rights in the land of the Klu Klux Klan. The exhibit in Ulster County contains two competing newspaper accounts of Truth’s “Ain’t I A Woman” speech as well as a handbill advertising her speaking engagements, and some of her own probate documents. “A few months after I took office in 2017, I learned that our County archives contain a bond filed in Sojourner Truth’s 1828 lawsuit to win her son’s freedom, a proceeding Truth brought only two years after she was emancipated from slavery,” Ulster County Surrogate Judge Sara McGinty said in a statement. “Then I learned that the County also has a Surrogate’s Court document dating back to 1810 which lists Sojourner Truth as an asset of the estate of her deceased owner. The document, which I’ve seen several times, is an Inventory of Assets — a form of report still employed in Surrogate’s Court,” McGinty wrote. “Truth is described as ‘Negro wench Isabella.’ She is valued at $100. At the time she was about 8 years old. The exhibit is open to the public each Friday to anyone who makes reservations at nshultis@nycourts.gov.Read more about this story in the Daily Freeman.

Today's daily news update.

Natasha Vaughn-Holdridge reports for Columbia-Greene Media that one of the three wells that supplies drinking water to the people of Valatie is contaminated with the forever chemical PFOS. “We exceeded the MCL,” Village Mayor Frank Bevens said Feb. 2. “So when that happened we immediately shut down that well. We contacted the county Health Department. And we’re working with the county Health Department and the state Health Department because we’re under their guidance when it comes to stuff like this.” The well tested at 14 parts per trillion, exceeding New York's limit of 10 ppt. “They found out in the fourth quarter (of 2021) and they immediately switched the well off,” Columbia County Department of Health director Jack Mabb said. “So there are no issues for any of the residents whatsoever.” Except for the tainted water residents drank before the well was shut down. PFOS, a toxic chemical, has also been found recently in the drinking water at New Lebanon Junior-Senior High School, in Cairo's drinking water in Columbia County, at two locations in Rensselaer County, and in Newburgh. Natasha Vaughn-Holdridge reports for Columbia-Greene Media

Bethany Bump reports in the Times Union that Gov. Kathy Hochul signed an executive order Jan. 31 extending a statewide disaster declaration and postponing a law that would require nursing homes to boost spending on resident care and staffing while capping profits at five percent. The law is now suspended through at least March 1. Two new reports found that the nursing homes suing to block the law would have reported over $510 million in “excess” profits had the law been in effect in 2019. “Nursing homes are entrusted to provide decent care and dignity for our most vulnerable residents,” said Richard Mollot, executive director of the Long Term Care Community Coalition, a group that advocates for better nursing home care. “The fact that so many joined in this lawsuit to avoid even modest financial accountability speaks volumes about the industry’s priorities. Is there anything that we can do to get them to stop putting profits over patients?” The law that is being delayed would require nursing homes to spend at least 70 percent of their annual gross revenues on resident care, including at least 40 percent on staff. A report issued last week by the Center for Medicare Advocacy found that New York nursing homes already receive hundreds of millions of dollars that they could redirect to resident care. "Policymakers must require greater transparency and accountability in how facilities spend the money they receive for care before they consider increasing payments to facilities," the report concluded. Hochul’s office did not respond to a request seeking comment, but a spokesperson for the state Department of Health said that nursing homes were still encouraged to comply with the law but would not be penalized if they didn’t “in light of the current staffing crisis.” Read more about this story in the Times Union.

The Daily Freeman reports that Rep. Antonio Delgado had $5 million more in campaign funds then Republican challenger Dutchess County Executive Marc Molinaro, in their 19th Congressional District election. Molinaro must defeat Republican Brandon Buccola in a June primary to face off against Delgado, who so far does not have any challengers from his party. Delgado ended the year with $5,480,936.71 in cash on hand, according to the Federal Election Commission. Molinaro, who began his campaign in September, had $423,619.64. Delgado is completing his second term after beating Republican John Faso in 2018. Both candidates live in Dutchess County, with Delgado in Rhinebeck and Molinaro in Red Hook while serving his third four-year term as Dutchess County Executive. Read more about this story in the Daily Freeman.

Today's daily news update.