Spending While Saying They Save

Republican County Executive Rob Astorino claims he’s trying to save the taxpayers money but is actually spending more on duplicative services behind the scenes. When he took office, he tried to consolidate the County Police (parkway patrols, bomb squad, SWAT) and the County Fire Service (fire training, hazardous materials response and technical rescue response, dispatching) into a Public Safety group, ultimately managed by the County Police. He appointed George Longworth, a retired police chief as the Commissioner of Public Safety, retired detective Joseph Yasinsky as is Deputy Police Commissioner, and retired fire officer John Cullen as his Deputy Fire Commissioner. Are they “double-dipping”, collecting their civil service pensions or did they come back to public service and put their pensions on hold? These were all political payback appointed positions which are ultimately a “cash cow” for union support via overtime dollars.

The majority of the Westchester fire service complained openly and vociferously against the consolidation and Astorino claimed “the plan we had discussed is off the table”. Even though it was proven that any consolidation here would not be cost effective, he went to work behind the scenes with his other plan to continue the consolidation anyway. It’s like saying you going to combine an airline mechanic position and a automobile mechanic position into one because they are both mechanics. It simply doesn’t work.

The Department of Emergency Services (originally the Richard A Flynn Fire Training Facility) humbly began under the auspices of the County Police in a small basement room in their facility in Hawthorne, NY, at the junction of Rt 9A and Saw Mill River Parkway. It was never a marriage made in heaven and the volunteer firefighters in Westchester County fought to get their own facility to have control and fire-specific orientations toward dispatching, training and safety. That effort came to fruition in 1973. Raymond Rush became the first administrator of the facility until he was ousted by then-County Executive Andy O’Rourke and its leadership became a patronage position for the County Executive du jour.

The County Department of Emergency Services dispatches about 30 fire departments throughout the County. They also maintain a Special Operations Team which encompasses Hazardous Materials and Technical Rescue Response teams. These all-volunteer members and are highly trained, equipped and led by one paid Chief. Each team is comprised of volunteer professionals from numerous walks of life including the fire, medical, police, engineering, construction and other backgrounds. As volunteers, they cost the county no money, especially overtime money, which is what the county police get for training and responses through backfill funding for their participation. Backfill funding is the practice of sending someone who is working or “on-duty” to training (or putting them on another assignment) and then (back)filling that person’s position with another member on (backfill) overtime. When the “professionals” consisting of paid county personnel on overtime cannot handle a call, they call either of these volunteer Special Operations Teams to bail them out.

Without the original fanfare, Astorino began approving purchasing duplicate equipment for the county police that the Special Operations teams already have (four vehicles and numerous trailers with equipment). Since the paid fire union mandates they will not work with volunteers, and Astorino is beholden to the unions for their “support”, he has been getting them this duplicate set of gear, equipment and training, costing the county taxpayers unnecessary hundreds of thousands and maybe millions of dollars, and handing it over to the county police “just in case”. It’s this kind of subterfuge that is causing him to lose battle after battle with the public. His pandering and deceit may cost him re-election even if his challenger Noam Bramson is proven to be the lesser candidate. But his end-game is to support the police and fire union personnel in hopes of buying their votes.

As an aside, the County’s Technical Rescue Team was awarded a Congressional Unit Citation for their participation in rescuing one of the rafters in distress on Sunday, August 28, 2011, during the tail end of Tropical Storms Irene and Lee after participating in numerous responses during a 35-hour period. The County Legislators also recognized the Team for those same efforts as did the Westchester County Volunteer Firemen’s Association, The Westchester County Fire Chiefs Association and the NYS Chiefs Association. So why pay for services that are provided for free by the County to any municipality who asks for it with SWAT(special weapons and tactics), Technical Rescue and Hazardous Materials responses? Mr Bernstein is correct to question whether the Town should have a SWAT team, but needs to continue the argument to Technical Rescue and Hazardous Materials responses as well.

During the Democratic Primary Debate, and in a campaign mailing, Mr Feiner accused his opponent, for the Supervisor’s position, Mr Bernstein, of seeking to contract fire service protection away from the Village fire departments to the paid fire departments, which he claims would raise their fire protection costs by roughly 30%. Mr Feiner is famous for quoting outdated information and throwing out numbers that sound impressive but have no real basis in fact. What Mr Bernstein had said was we should look at all of the Town’s expenses and if contracting with the Village fire departments is not cost effective, put the fire protection out to bid. As long as everything throughout the Town is on the table for review, ABG sees no harm in reviewing this. Reviewing whether a duplicate SWAT team, hazardous materials and technical rescue team is needed when the county already maintains available ones for us to use at no charge is a logical choice.

The Greenburgh police SWAT unit, hazardous materials unit and a technical rescue units are comprised of individual members, some of whom are members of the paid fire departments. If called out, it automatically initiates the backfill funding overtime extravaganza for both police and fire. There is little or no oversight of these expenditures as they are automtically deemed necessary due to an emergency. There is usually little if any other overtime available due to current budget constraints. But, the paid services see this as a minimum of six to eight hours worth of extra money and treat every minor dustup as a major event. It bolsters their claims of needing these in these positions and of course the overtime. But do we really need it? 

The Villages contract fire protection service with the Village in portions of the Unincorporated Town. The largest contract being with the Elmsford Fire Department for covering the western portion of the Town in the area of Rt 119 between the Elmsford and Tarrytown and north Elmsford from about I-287 to Grasslands Road. The amount of money spent for the Elmsford, and other Village contracts throughout the Town is under $1M. To realistically think the paid fire departments can cover this space is not cost effective, practical or necessary. We urge you to check your tax bill and you’ll see the two largest expenses on it: school taxes and fire protection taxes (in Unincorporated).

Mr Feiner claims we do need the SWAT team because if something were to happen, they’re there. But so is the County – at no charge! Supervisor Feiner and the Town of Greenburgh is doing a similar union payback thing with the police and paid fire personnel by allowing it. In discussing this with a variety of beleaguered taxpaying residents, everyone ABG spoke with did not know that this took place but were not surprised, claiming there’s always abuse in every system. They knew about “normal” overtime for things like coverage for personnel calling out sick, special events, storms and so on. Most did not even know of the backfill funding component of overtime for paid emergency responders.

Backfill funding is utilized routinely in the Yonkers Fire Department with grants from (mostly) Congresswoman Nita Lowey (and NYS Senators Chuck Schumer and Kirsten Gillibrand) under various program grant names that would never indicate it was overtime or backfill funding money. Things like a grant from Homeland Security for “improved inter-municipal operations”. You might say it’s a grant from the federal government and doesn’t cost us anything. You’d be wrong. It is a grant from the federal government, but it paid for by all taxpayers and it is only going to the paid departments. Most people want and expect their taxes to be used in their communities.

Ms Lowey will rarely, if ever, get the same amounts of money (we’re talking hundreds of thousands and sometimes millions of dollars) for any of the 50 or so volunteer fire departments in Westchester. Usually the meager amounts she gets volunteer fire departments are “member items” of up to $5,000. Member items are discretionary funds each legislator maintains with the ability to give it away to any special interest they choose. Volunteer firefighters in Westchester County outnumber paid firefighters about four to one. The volunteers live and vote in and for their communities. Most paid firefighters don’t live or vote where they work. So while the paid firefighter unions lobby are more successful than the volunteer departments in the “gimme more” department, you’d be hard-pressed to prove this isn’t about paying off the unions.

September 10 is the Democratic primary. ABG has touched on a few “goings on” that most people don’t know about. Why? A lack of transparency exists throughout local, county, state and federal government that is rarely learned about until it’s usually too late or somebody gets caught doing something wrong. Greenburgh has been shrouded in secret meetings, back room deals, winks and nods, developer carte blanche and neighborhood assassinations by the current administration. It’s time for real change in Greenburgh. ABG urges concerned Democrats to come out and vote in the Tuesday primary. Vote for A Better Greenburgh.