MONTICELLO – The Sullivan County Legislature held its first round of committee meetings to start the new term on Thursday, January 11. The committees that met were Public Safety, Government Services and Planning, Real Property and Economic Development. 

Chair of the Legislature and District 2 Legislator Nadia Rajsz decided to have the Chair of each committee sit in the Chair seat, instead of her sitting there for every committee meeting. 

During the Planning, Real Property and Economic Development Committee meeting, which is now headed by District 1 Legislator Matt McPhillips, all but one of the six resolutions passed unanimously. 

That contentious resolution passed, although not unanimously, and had caused some tension to build was regarding reappointing two members, Carol Roig and Scott Smith, and appointing former legislator Ira Steingart to the Industrial Development Agency (IDA) board. 

Newly elected District 9 Legislator Terry Blosser-Bernardo made a motion for discussion on the resolution and stated that when she got the resolution she “didn’t know the individuals” and “reached out and asked for a resume.” 

Bernardo said that she has an obligation to the people who elected her to explain her votes. 

“I reached out to a number of members in my community,” Bernardo said. “Some were okay and some said do whatever you want. But some people had a concern, that one of the people had an ethics issue on the board before.”

According to Blosser-Bernardo, the person in question with the supposed ethics issue is Steingart. 

Bernardo then said that she wished to make a motion for Rule 36 to hold over for more information. Parliamentarian Tom Cawley explained that the committee has the authority to overturn the motion for Rule 36 by a two-thirds majority. 

“Two of the members that are on the IDA are being reappointed,” District 7 Legislator and Legislature Vice Chair Joseph Perrello said. “The third person is Ira Steingart, who was the Chairman of the IDA for over 10 years. He’s brought a casino and a water park to our community and worked hard for the IDA. For people not knowing that person, they don’t know what the IDA did for many years and don’t know the members that were on it that got us to where we are today. So I hope the Chairman will override that rule 36.”

District 6 Legislator Luis Alvarez agreed, saying “I am very confident in [Steingart’s] ability to do the job.” 

District 3 Legislator Cat Scott said that Blosser-Bernardo brought up a good point about “process” and that people going for board openings need to “polish up their resumes.” 

“My concerns aren’t about this particular situation,” Scott said. “It’s just about having process for these board openings.”

Bernardo also claimed that there are a lot of residents that live in her district who “don’t know who these people are.”

After a back-and-forth debate, Cawley once again jumped in about the opportunity to override Rule 36 as well as reminding the board to be careful when referencing particular names. 

“You can now call for a vote to override [Rule 36],” Cawley said. “If you have four votes to do that, then you can call for the vote on the resolution itself. Though, we have to be careful when we’re discussing a particular person. There have been issues in the past that people have withdrawn their name from different boards because their name was bandied about and they didn’t appreciate it.”

Chair of the committee Matt McPhillips did call to overturn Rule 36, which got four votes, so he made a motion for the resolution. The resolution to reappoint Roig and Smith and appoint Steingart to the IDA passed by a vote of 4-1, with Bernardo the only one to vote no. 

Comments from Steingart

With the resolution still needing to go through the full board to be official, Steingart said that he is “excited” about the appointment once it is official. He also said that the IDA made him the CEO, where he will be involved with bringing a depth of development to the area amongst its nine diferent pilot programs. 

“I feel that I have a great deal of knowledge to greatly support the economic development,” Steingart said. 

When asked by the Democrat about how he would respond to Blosser-Bernardo, Steingart said, “I did get brought up on ethics issues, but half were thrown out. The ones that weren’t thrown out were regarding failure for disclosure. I made sure after that to disclose information and there were no ramifications from that.”

Steingart also said that he could have fought it and cleared his name fully, but it would have cost him $100,000 to do so. 

“It was just political positioning by the Chairman [Doherty] to keep me doing what I was doing with growth,” he said. 

In regards to Blosser-Bernardo referencing the need for resumes, Steingart said, “I don’t know what else you need from someone who was Chair of the IDA for 10 years. It was just political.”