WHITE PLAINS CITIZENETREPORTER SETS RECORD VISITS FOR YEAR 7,017,658 VISITS! 2,098,003 VISITORS MADE 6 VISITS A DAY EVERY DAY. 63,330 UNIQUE VISITORS MADE 133,730 VISITS IN DECEMBER. WPCNR AVERAGED 17,284 VISITORS A WEEK, VISITING 31,270 TIMES.

Hits: 0

WPCNR MR. AND MS. AND MRS. WHITE PLAINS VOICE.  March 21, 2005, UPDATED MARCH 22, 2005, 4:30 P.M. E.S.T.:  Glen Hockly told The CitizeNetReporter today his attorneys have not arrived at a recommendation as to whether they believe he should begin the deposition of affidavit signes. Hockley said they are evaluating past cases and simply have not reached a conclusion. Mr. Hockley is pondering whether to proceed and conduct legal depositions on the 103 affidavit-signees who swore they voted for Larry Delgado, November 5, 2001. Hockley has until June 30, 2005, to conduct the depositions at his expense.

Mike Amodio, a local attorney close to the case says the Appellate Court of the 2nd Circuit in Brooklyn has given Mr. Hockley a hard choice. Here is Mr. Amodio’s “take:” 

Hits: 0

WPCNR CITY HALL CIRCUIT. March 21, 2005: The missing portrait of Mayor Alfred Del Vecchio has returned to its benevolent perch in the rotunda of city hall. The portrait had not been on display for eleven days. When first reported missing, a city hall spokesman said its support mechanism had been compromised by a custodian cleaning the picture and it was being repaired through the City Clerk’s office.

WPCNR has since learned the portrait was located by a maintenance man underneath the auxiliary staircase in the rear of city hall, raising the question of who or what removed and apparently hid the Del Vecchio portrait, raising questions about whether the picture was out for repairs in the first place.

The portrait was returned to its place of honor as mysteriously as it had disappeared with no pomp, ceremony or official rehanging ceremony.

Hits: 0

WPCNR’S LATIMER ON THE LEGISLATURE. By Assemblyman George Latimer. March 19, 2005: The State Budget deadline is nearly at hand – April 1st. For twenty  years, that deadline has been missed, and in some years, such as 2004,  by quite a lot (late August). In the past few years, the media has raged, and citizens have become, quite properly, furious.

A few years ago, Assembly members and Senators stopped receiving paychecks on April 1st, until a budget was passed. Primaries and General Elections have been lost by a handful of members of this issue. But they weren’t the answers. School Districts and Village governments, organizations and institutions, with springtime starts to their fiscal year, still suffer  through unsurety and delays.

All of this is because, we are told, the dysfunction of New York State government – dysfunction that exceeds all other states.

And it is dysfunctional in many ways. But it is not just that alone; in fact, dysfunction may be the lesser part of the problem. The greater part may be assessed to a division in political thinking – disagreement – that in the highly charged national and local political climate of recent years has become partisan battling to the death.

The latter is nothing restricted to Albany. We turn on television and see Washington, D.C., and some (but thankfully, not all) of our local governments tied up in hyper-partisanship. Name-calling and negative attacks that make every issue fodder for the next campaign. We face a time when conservatives and progressives are each highly motivated, and unwilling to give an inch in philosophy. The extremes of both political parties dominate the primary selection process; moderates are the endangered species.

The results are battles between elected officials who represent extremely different views of the world, who categorize
each other’s views in stark, negative terms. The once-hailed talent of compromise, the give-and-take of legislative work intrinsic in our Founding Fathers’ insistence on checks and balances, has become a weakness in our current ideologically-driven politics. To compromise is to show insufficient commitment to absolute principle, and must, by
definition, represent a sell-out.

Our disagreements in Albany are real. The Assembly, the Senate and the Governor are working through very difficult financial matters every single year. This year, at stake are major cuts to the Medicaid program. What will those impacts be on Sound Shore Medical Center, on the heels of the failure of both St. Agnes and United Hospital. What will those cuts do to local nursing homes like Sarah Neuman (a $2.8 million loss)? This budget includes a battle over housing funds – and groups like the Washingtonville Housing Alliance, reeling from last year’s cuts, faces more of the same this year. We are in disagreement as well on cuts to higher education, increases in tuition to SUNY, which just jumped up two years ago, and underfunding to school districts. These disagreements are what cause late budgets – again.

Upstate needs disagree with New York City needs and vice versa. The suburbs fall in-between. Republicans control the Senate for nearly 40 years, and the Democrats control the Assembly for 30 years – the longest run of split control in the U.S. by far. Is it any wonder we also have late budgets? It must be said: Each chamber, and the Governor, have very different interests and attitudes they defend.

Some of the dysfunction has been reduced in 2005. Newly constituted Joint Budget Committees have been meeting, well in advance of the deadline, and making progress, outside of the “room with three men”. Rank and file in both parties and both chambers are being heard, if not heeded. But we appear to be heading for yet the 21st late budget in two weeks – even with the improved procedures.

We need more reform in our legislative and Gubernatorial system. My commitment is to continue to push for those structural changes.

Even more, we need a spirit of compromise, beginning with the citizens among us, who will recognize and reward those who are willing to find common ground at the cost of ideological purity. And we need to reject the absolutism of those so convinced they are right, and that everyone else is wrong, that deadlines never matter.


March 19, 2005

Hits: 0

WPCNR VIEW FROM THE BALCONY. March 19, 2005: Those Bad Boys of Hockey, the Danbury Trashers, the scourge of the United Hockey League, the biggest fastest meanest men on ice are skating on the road in the hinterlands this weekend, but their fans follow them on the internet. A fan, reading the WPCNR feature on the Danbury Trashers exciting and well-supported first season in Danbury, has sent along this letter to explain why he and his friends head to The Hatter City (Danbury) for their hockey. He writes:

SHOT…SAVE! AND A HONEY BY STERLING. Danbury Trashers — The Men in Black in action. Photo, WPCNR Sports Archive.