Ted Remsnyder is reporting for Columbia-Greene Media Greene County Legislator Michael Bulich has proposed a measure that would allow county lawmakers to carry firearms at public meetings. The Catskill Republican made the proposal in a discussion held at a meeting of the Legislature committees on January 18. The conversation focused on a resolution stating that only members of the New York State Police, Greene County Sheriff’s Office, or any village or town police department in the county be allowed to carry firearms, concealed or otherwise, onto county property. In that discussion, Bulich argued that an exception should be made for elected officials. “I think there should be an amendment to this resolution that allows elected officials who are licensed to carry to do so if they so choose in this building,” he said. “We do come here after hours. I’m duly trained and I’m pretty confident in myself to protect myself." Bulich said later that he wants the right to defend himself if an incident occurs during a Legislature meeting. “It’s important that I’m able to defend myself, not just having security at the front desk,” he said. “I’m a law-abiding citizen with a pistol permit. I’m very comfortable with a pistol and I should be afforded that right to be able to protect myself.” Bulich pointed out that he's uncomfortable sitting with his back to the door during meetings held after 4:30 p.m. when sheriff's deputies were no longer stationed in the building. During the meeting, Coxsackie Republican Charles Martinez, seconded Bulich's motion before Greene County Attorney Edward Kaplan suggested that if an amendment was made the Legislature define which elected officials would be permitted to carry firearms. Kaplan suggested the amendment be limited to members of the Legislature, with Cairo Democrat Harry Lennon adding that it should only be applied to current members of the body. When asked, Kaplan agreed to investigate whether the proposed policy would create problems with the county's insurance coverage. The Legislature eventually approved the original resolution unanimously. Builch said in lieu of amending the newly approved resolution, that the right of a legislator to bear arms on county property could be added to their job descriptions. The lawmakers are exploring that option. Read the full story at HudsonValley360 [dot] com.

The New York State Public Service Commission Thu., Jan. 20, announced it had approved a three-year rate plan for utility National Grid customers in upstate New York. In rendering the decision, the commission slashed the company's requested rate increase by more than 30 percent, according to a press release. “The joint proposal we adopted today allows for funding for the company to maintain safe and reliable service, while moderating rate impacts during the term of the rate plan and mitigating the impacts to ratepayers suffering the financial consequences of the pandemic,” said Commission Chair Rory M. Christian. “Further, this agreement is consistent with our nation-leading clean energy initiatives, as well as our social and economic policies.” The decision established a three-year rate plan for electric and gas service provided by National Grid for the period July 1, 2021, through June 30, 2024. It allows revenue to increase by 1.4 percent for electric and 1.8 percent for gas in the first year, and by 1.9 percent for electric and gas in the second and third year. The approved plan keeps annual electric and gas increases for consumers between 2 and 3 percent for the next three years. National Grid provides electric service to approximately 1.6 million customers and gas service to approximately 600,000 customers in upstate New York.  

Noah Eckstein is reporting for Columbia-Greene Media the city of Hudson has been awarded a $1.4 million grant from the state Department of Environmental Conservation as part of its Water Quality Improvement Project program. The Hudson Common Council January 18, voted unanimously to authorize Mayor Kamal Johnson to enter an agreement with the DEC for the funding to pay for the construction of a combined sewer separation system and sewer repairs. The council vote authorized the appropriation of an additional $350,000 from the Department of Public Works Sewer Fund as the required local match for the program. “I’m ecstatic,” said Rob Perry, city Department of Public Works superintendent. The project was originally proposed in 2014 when the city was awarded $600,000 as part of a Community Development Block Grant. After a three-year environmental review, a failure to secure additional funding delayed construction. The proposed new sewer system will separate the waste material from rainwater. It will send the clean, filtered rainwater into the Hudson River and ensure the sewage is consistently sent to a separate processing plant for treatment. The city will soon put out a request for proposals to find qualified companies to complete the job of repairing the sewer systems. A firm could be accepted by February and receive short-term financing by March, Perry said. Construction would then begin in the spring and conclude in the fall. Construction will involve the excavation of Front Street between Columbia and State streets. Read the full story at HudsonValley360 [dot] com.

Today's daily news update.

MidHudson News reported 17 new deaths from COVID-19 were reported in the Hudson Valley by the State Health Department on Jan. 18. Nine of those were in Dutchess County and one in Greene County. Columbia County reported 178 more cases on Jan. 18. Albany County reported two more deaths on Jan. 20, and over 600 new positive coronavirus cases. A man in his 60s and a woman in her 80s were the latest fatalities there. “This is now the fifth consecutive day we’ve announced at least one person losing their life to COVID-19 complications, and these latest two bring our total so far for the month of January to 25,” said Albany County Executive Dan McCoy in the Times Union.

Mike Goodwin and Will Waldron report in the Times Union that one worker was badly injured in an explosion of an 275 gallon oil tank in a shed at a boat shop in the Coeymans Landing Marina on Jan. 20. Officials familiar with the incident said an explosion was heard, but that they did not know the cause of the blast. The injured man was flown away on a medical helicopter at about noon. “There are a lot of waste oil barrels and three boats there that are on fire, so that is the issue right now — trying to contain the fire,” said Coeymans Town Supervisor George McHugh in an interview with The Upstater. “It looks like they have it pretty well contained and under control because I don’t see any smoke right now.” This is the second recent major fire along the Hudson River in this southern Albany County town. On Oct. 27, a large fire at the scrapyard at the Port of Coeymans sent chemical-smelling smoke into communities along the Hudson River for several hours. Read more about this story in the Times Union.

Noah Eckstein reports for Columbia-Greene Media that Amber Harris was appointed to a Hudson Common Council Third Ward seat on Jan. 18. Two weeks before, Calvin Lewis Jr., declined to accept the position and relinquished his seat. Harris will serve at least through a special election in November. “I wanted to be that person to help my ward,” said Harris, on why she asked to fill the seat held by Lewis. The Common Council voted unanimously for Harris. They also voted in three new Commissioners of Deeds: Larry Edelman Jr., Christopher Duntz, and Nicholas Hodges will serve through Jan. 31, 2024. And the Common Council also reappointed four members of the Conservation Advisory Council: David Konigsberg, Hilary Hillman, Tom O’Dowd, and Michael O’Hara will serve through Dec. 31, 2023. Read more about this story at HudsonValley360.com.

So far at least five candidates have announced they want to replace Rep. Paul Tonko in whatever ends up being the 20th Congressional District. Right now that includes all of Albany County, and much of the Capital District, but redistricting may not be resolved for weeks, so speculation on an election without a defined district is difficult. But so far, Jack Fallon-Underwood, Justin Chaires, Cole Matthews, and Rostislav Rar are running in the Democratic primary election June 28. Nick Reisman reports at New York State of Politics that Tonko wants the lines drawn too. "I just hope we're given district lines as soon as possible because the petitioning date is just around the corner," Tonko said. "I'd like to know what my district is going to look like, and if it's divided where I'm going to go from that point on." Democrats now control redistricting in the legislature, and the article asks, "Will Democrats try to make life more difficult for [Elise] Stefanik? Or make re-election easier for [Antonio] Delgado?" Tonko's blue district, which lies between Stefanik's now red district to the north, and Delgado's purple district to the south, will be altered if Democrats attempt to help one or the other of the nearby swing districts. New York Democratic Party Chairman Jay Jacobs said, "Republicans across the country are redrawing congressional lines to favor their candidates. Without being obnoxious in New York, if lines are drawn with communities and help Democrats then that is the course we should take." Republican Liz Joy lost to Tonko in 2020, and is also running again this year.

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The Mid-Hudson News Network is reporting U.S. Rep. Antonio Delgado touted his congressional record during a tele-town hall on January 18. In the three years that Delgado has been in office, he has had 18 of his bills passed and signed into law. The Rhinebeck Democrat told everyone on the telephone town hall session that each of those measures was for the benefit of his constituents in New York's 19th Congressional District. Of the 18 Delgado bills signed into law, 10 were under President Trump and eight during the first year of the Biden administration, Delgado said. “From addressing the needs of our farmers to supporting our veterans to empowering our small businesses, to protecting against toxins like PFOS, the focus is always on delivering for communities,” he said. Delgado was joined on the call by Ulster County Health Commissioner Dr. Carol Smith, to address the latest concerns about the pandemic. Other topics addressed during the one-hour session included supporting the workforce and protecting voting rights. Delgado is being challenged by the current Dutchess County Executive, Republican Marc Molinaro. Read more in the Daily Freeman.

Melanie Lekocevic is reporting for Capital Region Independent Media in 2021, calls to the Greenville Rescue Squad increased 22 percent over the previous year. The statistics were revealed by the rescue squad Chief of Operations Matthew Marlow during his report to the Greenville Town Board on January 17. The squad responded to 552 calls in 2021, 120 calls more than in 2020, when the agency took 432 calls for assistance. The increase in calls and other challenges are being attributed to hospital capacity and staffing, rising mutual aid requests and a surge in 911 calls after an early pandemic lull. “We are backfilling Coxsackie (mutual aid) because Coxsackie is backfilling Catskill, who is working in Cairo and everywhere else,” Marlow told the board. “The biggest contributing factor is hospitals. They have cut staff and have started to surge in their own right.” Ambulance crews have been forced to wait at hospitals as staff tries to keep up with demand, or travel to other hospitals further away, Marlow said. "...[O]ur mutual aid has gone up simply because there are no ambulances to answer calls.” The trajectory of the COVID pandemic, and how it has impacted health care, is another factor the squad has had to contend with over the past year, Marlow said. People refrained from ambulance trips to the hospital in the early days of the pandemic, but that changed a few months later and the number of calls began to creep upwards. He said now the squad is seeing all of the pre-pandemic volume, plus COVID-related calls on top of that. The increase in call volume has occurred locally and from other municipalities, as well, Marlowe said. Read the full story at The Upstater [dot] com.

Zach Williams is reporting for City and State on the attorneys, public relations and other professionals that are making money off former Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo. When Cuomo resigned in August, amid a plethora of scandals, he was sitting on a campaign war chest of $18 million. His latest campaign finance disclosure shows how he has spent a good bit of that money on matters other than campaigning for elected office. Nearly $2 million in payments highlight how Cuomo has expended the funds contributed by his political supporters to attack his perceived political enemies. At least $800,000 in campaign funds went to Sullivan & Cromell, a Manhattan law firm that represented Cuomo in a state Assembly impeachment investigation. The law firm of Rita Glavin, representing Cuomo in the matters related to allegations of sexual misconduct by the former governor, has received about $900,000 from his campaign account. A firm recently founded by former gubernatorial spokesperson Richard Azzopardi has received at least $42,500 in payments from Cuomo, according to the campaign filing. “All rules and regulations were followed, period,” Azzopardi said. The disclosure included expenditures for services tendered while Cuomo was still governor, such as a $25,000 payment to his longtime pollster. Read the full story at cityandstateny [dot] com.

Today's daily news update.

Jonah E. Bromwich, Ben Protess, and William K. Rashbaum report in the New York Times that in filings Jan. 18 in response to Donald Trump's efforts to avoid questioning, New York Attorney General Letitia James said that the former president repeatedly misrepresented the value of its assets and said his company had engaged in “fraudulent or misleading” practices. James is not finished in her investigation of the Trump Organization's financial practices in New York, but was tipping her hand to the judge to prove the necessity of questioning Trump and his children. In the filing James argues that the Trump Organization misstated the value of the properties to lenders, insurers, and the Internal Revenue Service, and that many of its filings were “generally inflated as part of a pattern to suggest that Mr. Trump’s net worth was higher than it otherwise would have appeared.” In a statement, James was blunt. “We have uncovered significant evidence that suggests Donald J. Trump and the Trump Organization falsely and fraudulently valued multiple assets and misrepresented those values to financial institutions for economic benefit,” she said. A spokesperson for the Trump Organization spun things differently. “Three years later, she is now faced with the stark reality that she has no case,” the spokeswoman said on Jan. 19. Read more about this story in the New York Times.

Natasha Vaughn-Holdridge reports for Columbia-Greene Media that a few days after three racists held a "White Lives Matter" in front of Chatham's village gazebo, more than 80 counterprotesters returned to the same spot to have their say. “This is the real Chatham,” Village Mayor John Howe said. “When it comes to hate, not in my village. And this is something we need to do everyday, not just today. We’re going to stand united and they will not divide us.” On Jan. 14, several photos were shared on social media of three individuals holding a banner with the name and website address of the racist group. At noon on Jan. 19, the gazebo was instead filled with dozens of people carrying signs against racism and singing “We Shall Overcome.” Read more about this story at HudsonValley360.com.

Andrea Macko reports at Porcupine Soup that Coeymans Town Supervisor George McHugh was not the only local official writing to a judge urging leniency for a local man who pleaded guilty to his part of the riot in the U.S. Capitol insurrection on Jan. 6, 2021. Westerlo Republican Chair Lisa DeGroff and Westerlo Town Councilperson Amie Burnside also wrote letters to the judge on behalf of William Tryon, 71, of Selkirk. “There could not be a more upstanding citizen,” DeGroff stated of Tryon, who prosecutors said participated in “a violent attack that forced an interruption of the certification of the 2020 Electoral College vote count, threatened the peaceful transfer of power after the 2020 Presidential election, injured more than one hundred law enforcement officers, and resulted in more than one million dollars’ of property damage.” Burnside implied that the riot was justified in her letter to the court. “Bill is simply just as frustrated as the rest of the country,” Burnside stated. Lewis County Sheriff Michael Carpinelli, who is a Republican running for governor, also wrote to the court for Tryon on official sheriff’s office letterhead. On January 14, Senior United States District Judge of the United States District Court for the District of Columbia Reggie B. Walton sentenced Tryon to 50 days behind bars and ordered him to serve 12 months of post-release supervision and pay $500 in restitution, a $25 special assessment, and a $1,000 fine. Read more about this story at Porcupine Soup.

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Nick Reisman is reporting for State of Politics incumbent New York Gov. Kathy Hochul remains the frontrunner in the June Democratic primary, according to a Siena College poll released January 18. Hochul took office on August 24, and at this point she is way ahead of her rivals U.S. Rep. Tom Suozzi and New York City Public Advocate Jumaane Williams, as well as former New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio. De Blasio announced after the poll was released that he would not run for governor. Hochul is supported by 46 percent of the Democrats polled. The former mayor drew 12 percent, Willams is supported by 11 percent and Suozzi, a Long Island congressman, received 6 percent. Hochul is the choice of 40 percent of Democrats in New York City and 40 percent of downstate suburban voters. State Attorney General Letitia James, the Democrat seen as Hochul's most competitive rival for the nomination, withdrew her bid in December and opted instead to run for a second term as AG next year. "With 22 weeks until the primary, it appears Hochul is in the catbird seat to be the Democratic nominee for governor,” said Siena College pollster Steven Greenberg. “Hochul approaches support from nearly half of Democrats, 46 percent, up from 36 percent last month — before James, who had the support of 18 percent, exited the race. ..." The poll found voters support Hochul's proposal to allow restaurants to sell to-go beverages 55 percent to 34 percent. Voters also back her proposal to expand programs in prisons that would help people get jobs once they are released, 79 percent to 14 percent. And 77 percent of voters support term limits for all statewide elected officials as proposed by the governor through a constitutional amendment. The poll of 806 registered voters was conducted from January 9 to 13. Read the full story at nystateofpolitics [dot] com.