The River Reporter Online - Letters to the Editor

[EDITOR'S NOTE: The River Reporter welcomes letters on all subjects from its readers. They must be signed and include the correspondent's phone number. The correspondent's name and town will appear at the bottom of each letter; titles and affiliations will not, unless the correspondent is writing on behalf of a group.

Letters are printed as they are received, or at the discretion of the editor, and without correction to grammar or spelling. It is requested they be limited to 500 words; correspondents may be asked to cut longer letters. Deadline is 1:00 p.m. on Monday.

For the first time in a long time, I have been trying to follow the presidential race rhetoric to determine the most important issues and where each candidate stands on them. With all the hype about more oil, more money and less government, I have not heard very much about the environmental impact of population growth as the issue that should guide man's future decisions on this planet. Understanding and reducing the effects of global warming, from man's industrial by-products of the past hundred years, needs more political attention. Existing research data on rising temperatures seems to be pointing toward a strong potential for serious impacts to the natural balance that supports all life on the planet. Instead of placing greater emphasis on finding better ways to understand and reduce the threat, one candidate proposed drilling new oil wells in ecologically sensitive nature preserves to support the American lifestyle. We have been hoodwinked into believing that one cannot navigate the potholes in New York City streets without a $35,000 Sport Utility Vehicle. At the same time we are demanding that our political leaders free us from our dependency on foreign oil. Instead of designing better mass transit systems, we take on longer and longer commutes, in those gas guzzling off road vehicles, to get out of crowded cities to sleep. All those creature comforts we crave only add to our dependency on foreign resources. Our standard of living creates some very nasty by-products that are beginning to seriously affect the quality of our lives. Worldwide, 30,000 children die each day from starvation or disease because they were born to parents that could not provide for them. In most instances there was little or no governmental safety net to fall back on. Some politicians are supporting the belief that every life, no matter the quality and degree of its existence, should come into the world. For rich and poor, all choices must remain open, including abortion, based on the parent's right to decide if they can provide love and a quality life for their offspring. Those who want or can afford large families need to strongly consider adopting a few kids instead of perpetuating their DNA. Otherwise, we will be remembered by our children as the generation that failed to see the need for the forest or the trees until it was too late.

As a committee was being organized to negotiate with Park Place Casinos re: compensation to the town and county, a Sullivan County Legislator properly proposed that committee members agree not to work for Park Place for five years. (The two-year delay now contemplated would free them just in time to work for a casino, should Park Place's plans work out.) Tony Cellini's incredibly primitive response to the proposal is one illustration of just how badly a well-formulated ethical code is needed in Sullivan County. He said, "How can he tell me what to do with the rest of my life, even though I don't have a job and haven't been offered one."

Tony Cellini, despite his naiveté, may well be an honest, well-intentioned and often effective politician. I believe, however, that he and everyone else on the proposed committee will be in way over their heads in dealing with Park Place. Hiring a professional negotiator is very much in order. Tens, even hundreds of millions could be at stake. It seems more than strange that our politicians imagine they can personally handle negotiations concerning such huge sums when their decisions have not been conspicuously productive in the far more modest matter of the Concord. First-rate professional negotiators can be fearsome beasts and worth whatever they cost, should gambling come.

A cynic might imagine that our pro-gambling politicians are anxious to do the negotiating themselves in order to ingratiate themselves with Park Place so that they or their family members would be in line for some of the juicy consultancies or other perks that Park Place so famously proffers. A well-crafted ethical code might help in damping down such suspicions. Even Mr. Kunis, for example, who occasionally and selectively proclaims reluctance to engage in anything that even appears questionable, might ultimately agree. Mr. Cellini's primitive position would lead to the overt, rather than the usual covert, rule of big money.

Which brings us back to the question of a well-formulated ethical code for Sullivan County. In the recent past, legislators seemed to cast votes concerning entities in which they had an interest and/or with which they were actually doing business as casually as Tony Cellini took umbrage at classical ethical constraints. Colleagues appointed colleagues to assess the ethics of other colleagues and politicians at several levels indulged in attorney-blessed, illegal, secret meetings (free of the inconvenience of the presence of reporters) and boasted of the subterfuge with which they evaded the intent of sunshine laws (and media scrutiny.)

Though some sort of panel on ethics does exist, it seems, both sadly and laughably, to consist entirely of people in the business community. Though it is certainly possible that they are good people, they seem to have an absurdly permissive ethical code to work with which may explain why we rarely, if ever, hear from them.

Hiring a panel of experts on ethics from not-too-nearby universities to develop a well-formulated ethical code for us, one that places the good of the people ahead of that of the politicians, may save the county a good deal of embarrassment and money and some possibly vulnerable politicians their freedom.

In the interim, though I have always opposed any physical criteria for public service, it might be interesting to check and see how many of our politicians (happy as pigs in mud with the current code) have opposable thumbs.

In my opinion most voters know and understand the value of a good library. They appreciate the hard work and effort expended by countless volunteers and the small staffs of all our facilities in Wayne County. I do not believe the people of Wayne County intend closing their libraries by voting against a tax that costs the average property owner a mere $18 a year. Americans in general are generous people, and the people of Wayne County in particular are smart enough to know a good deal when they see it. Spending a single penny of every tax dollar for libraries is money well spent.

Wayne County seems to be on the threshold of real progress. I believe the next ten years can be both exciting and profitable for all our citizens, if they choose to be involved. One path to that involvement is understanding that we must have institutions, like libraries, to give everyone an opportunity to invest in their own future.